US President Donald Trump has admitted that his administration’s deportation policy may have been too harsh, suggesting that undocumented immigrants with good jobs and long-term residence should be allowed to remain in the country through a legal arrangement.
Trump made the remarks during an interview with Ross Douthat on CBS’ 60 Minutes in November 2026, while discussing the Republican Party’s losses in the midterm elections.
Asked whether immigration hurt Republicans, Trump said, “I think the crackdown. I think it both helped and hurt. I think I got an A plus for closing up the border. I get very high marks for getting the bad ones out. But I get hurt because we also took people that had good jobs… that they came into the country illegally.”
Asked whether his deportation policy was too harsh, he replied, “I think it was too tough. It was too tough. I think it might be too tough, yeah.”
He suggested reaching an agreement with Democrats to create legal status for certain undocumented workers, including hotel workers, cleaners, maids, waitresses and landscapers who had built lives in the country.
“When you go into a hotel and you have a woman that’s worked there as a maid, as a cleaner, as a this, as a that, as a waitress, a lot of good things, great job, and all of a sudden they’re being taken out of the country, it’s tough, it’s a tough thing,” he said.
However, Trump maintained that criminals and drug dealers should be deported, while those who had lived in the US for 10 or 15 years could be considered for an agreement.
“Get the killers out, get all the rough ones out, get the drug dealers out, but let the people that are here and in some cases here for 10 and 15 years work a deal for them,” he said.
Asked whether Democrats would support the arrangement, Trump replied, “I think so, yeah. People have already called me.”
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