WASHINGTON  — President Donald Trump’s State of the Union offer of a “down-the-middle compromise” on immigration did nothing to move Republicans and Democrats closer to a deal Wednesday, as Democrats accused the president of lacing his speech with racially charged remarks and Republicans dug in on their demands.

The reaction to Trump’s high-profile overture suggested both parties were settling into a protracted tug-of-war. The standoff left serious doubt whether the two parties could reach an election-year pact to protect hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation, sharpen border security and take other steps to curb immigration. The two parties had not even settled on a deadline an agreement — a bad sign in an institution that rarely acts unless under pressure.

“If the deadline is Feb. 8, we’re not going to make it,” No. 2 House Democratic leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland said Wednesday, noting a looming deadline for approving government funding to avoid another shutdown.

“It’s going to take work for us to build a consensus,” Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., the House GOP vote counter, said in an interview Tuesday. Scalise noted that Republicans took “weeks and weeks” to craft tax legislation last year.

Earlier this month, Senate Democrats looking to pressure Republicans to reach an immigration deal forced a three-day federal shutdown. While many Democrats have little appetite to repeat that strategy, party leaders have yet to indicate if they’ll let future budget legislation move forward without an immigration accord.

The tone of the immigration debate, already testy, seemed to worsen after Trump asserted Tuesday night that “open borders have allowed drugs and gangs to pour into our most vulnerable communities” and let millions of immigrants “compete for jobs and wages against the poorest Americans.”

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Wednesday that Trump used “insulting words of ignorance and prejudice.” Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-N.M., who leads the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said the remarks were “meant to enflame tensions about immigrants” and would stir up Trump’s conservative base but damage talks.

Republicans said Democrats are not making serious offers as they bargain over Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, the Obama-era program that’s shielded “Dreamers” in the U.S. illegally who were brought here as children. Trump said last year he was ending the program, claiming executive overreach by President Barack Obama, but gave Congress until March 5 to enshrine it into law.

“If Democrats don’t figure out a way to negotiate, then the DACA program will end and that’s not an outcome I think anybody would like,” said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the second-ranking Senate GOP leader. “But they will be responsible for it.”

Even that March 5 date was in doubt, according to No. 2 House Democratic leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, who’s been meeting with other leaders. He said Wednesday that Republicans suggested Trump could extend that deadline, though a congressional GOP aide said he was unaware of that.