Trump says his deportation policy might have been “too tough” in 60 Minutes interview
In an interview with 60 Minutes, President Trump said his administration’s hardline approach to immigration enforcement around deportations may have been “too tough” in pursuing people in the country for a decade or more.
The president spoke with 60 Minutes correspondent Ross Douthat three days after Republicans faced jarring losses in the midterm elections. Support for the party plummeted in South Texas and other heavily Latino areas that trended toward the GOP two years ago — a reversal that many voters linked at least in part to Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Mr. Trump said his immigration crackdown “both helped and hurt” him at the polls. He believes he “got an A+ for closing up the border,” and got “very high marks for getting the bad ones out.”
“But I get hurt because we also took people that had good jobs, that created one violation, or breaking of the law, and that was that they came into the country illegally,” the president continued. “Now, there is a large part of the country that think that they should be put out. And there’s a large part of the country that think that they should be allowed to stay if they’re good people working in a landscaping company, or working in a hotel, or doing something, right? And in some cases, paying taxes.”
He continued: “I think it was too tough.”
“A lot of people would say that it’s great, but a lot of people think it’s too tough,” he said.
The president also said he’d “love to do something on immigration” with congressional Democrats, who will control the House and Senate starting next year.
It’s unclear whether the Trump administration is planning to alter its immigration enforcement strategy. On Friday, Mr. Trump replaced White House chief of staff Susie Wiles with Stephen Miller, a hardliner who is widely viewed as an architect of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
The president’s 2024 victory was fueled partly by voters’ discontent with former President Joe Biden’s immigration policies, including the surge in unauthorized U.S.-Mexico border crossings.
Since Mr. Trump’s return to the White House, illegal border crossings have fallen dramatically. Federal officials have also ramped up arrests and deportations in the interior of the country, with the number of people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement charting record highs. Miller pushed the agency to aim for 3,000 arrests per day last year.
A large share of the arrestees do not have criminal records beyond immigration offenses. The Trump administration has long said its priority is to arrest the “worst first,” while warning that anybody who is in the U.S. illegally can be arrested and deported.
And many of the administration’s immigration tactics have drawn scrutiny, including its citywide crackdowns in Minneapolis and elsewhere, its vehicle stops, its detention practices and its practice of deporting some migrants to places other than their home country.
Some Republicans have pushed back, with Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar of South Florida warning in September that many Hispanics who voted for Mr. Trump in 2024 “feel betrayed.”
In exit polling, 58% think the Trump administration’s actions on immigration have gone too far. Still, on the question of which party voters think is better able to handle immigration, voters trust Republicans (43%) slightly more than Democrats (41%).
The administration has defended its approach, saying it is targeting public safety threats.
