US President Donald Trump has acknowledged that his administration’s immigration crackdown may have been “too tough” after the Republican Party suffered a heavy defeat in last week’s midterm elections.
Speaking in an interview broadcast on CBS News’ 60 Minutes on Sunday, November 8, Mr Trump said his immigration policies had helped some Republican candidates but harmed others during Tuesday’s vote.
“I think I got an A plus for closing up the border,” he said, adding that he had received “very high marks for getting the bad ones out”.
However, Mr Trump said the administration had also deported people who had established jobs and committed only one offence: entering the country illegally.
“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,” he said. “I think it was too tough.”
The president said he would “love to do something on immigration” with congressional Democrats, although he did not explain what form any agreement might take. His comments marked a change from an interview on the same programme a year earlier, when he said deportation raids “haven’t gone far enough”.
The White House and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), however, insisted on Sunday that the government would not reduce its mass deportation operation.
White House spokeswoman Lauren Bis said no president had taken a stronger approach to enforcement. The administration also told the BBC it “will not slow down its efforts to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens who terrorise our communities”.
A DHS spokesperson said: “ICE is NOT backing away or slowing down” under Mr Trump and Secretary Mullin.
Immigration ranked third among voters’ concerns in exit polls from the midterm elections, behind the economy and democracy. A shift among Latino voters in states including Texas helped Democrats win Congress.
Officials told CBS that the White House attributed the Republican losses to affordability and the war in Iran, rather than its immigration policies.
Vice-President JD Vance said after the election that he was “open to the idea that we should change enforcement – by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labour, for instance”.
That position came as Mr Trump promoted immigration hardliner Stephen Miller to become White House chief of staff on Friday.
Sources within Immigration and Customs Enforcement told CBS that daily arrest targets had recently increased from 2,000 to 2,700. Raids carried out during the year have prompted protests in Chicago, Los Angeles and Minneapolis.
In Minneapolis, protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti were fatally shot by immigration agents.
