Trump says deportation policy was 'too tough,' open to working with Dems on immigration reform

By Ryan Foley, Christian Post Reporter Monday, November 09, 2026

President Donald Trump conceded over the weekend that his immigration enforcement efforts may have been “too tough” after Democrats won complete control of the U.S. Congress, drawing praise from an Evangelical advocacy group as he suggested an openness to immigration reform. 

In an interview on CBS’ “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday, Trump reacted to the Republican Party’s historic losses in the 2026 midterm elections and was asked to name one thing he'd like to work with Democrats on as they take the majorities in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives.

The president declared that he'd "love to do something on immigration." While he defended his record on immigration, Trump suggested that his administration was “too tough” on deportations.

“I think I got an A+ for closing up the border because we had 25 million people come in through Biden over a 4-year period, and many of those people were, as you know, they were from prisons, they were drug dealers, they were from mental institutions, they were from all over the world, not just South America,” Trump said.

After stressing that “zero people came in through our southern border as opposed to 25 million people,” Trump reiterated that “I get very high marks for getting the bad ones out.” But at the same time, Trump asserted that “I get hurt because we also took people that had good jobs.”

“There’s a large part of the country that [thinks] 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,” the president acknowledged.

When interviewer Ross Douthat asked Trump if he thought his deportation policy “went too far,” Trump said yes.

“I think it might be too tough,” Trump replied.

Trump expressed openness to letting illegal immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for many years and worked as landscapers and maids remain in the country. He said Democratic lawmakers would be interested in working with him on such a deal, adding, “People have already called.” He declined to name any Democratic lawmakers he has spoken with, insisting that “I get along with a lot of the Democrats.”

In a statement on Monday, the Evangelical refugee resettlement agency World Relief, which has criticized the Trump administration's immigration policies, praised Trump’s comments during the “60 Minutes” interview.

“We agree with President Trump that the deportation efforts of the past two years have gone too far," World Relief President and CEO Myal Greene said. "They have impacted many individuals who were lawfully present when the president took office and have left many U.S. citizen children and spouses as functional orphans and widows."

“We welcome the president’s comments and urge him and congressional leaders, in both parties, to work together in good faith to forge consensus policy reforms that could actually become law — as soon as possible, before more families are harmed,” Greene added.

Although Trump made historic gains with Latino voters in the 2024 election when he won 46% of the Hispanic vote in exit polling, Republican support among this group dropped to 34% in 2026 amid two years of ramped-up immigration enforcement efforts under the Trump administration. 

Matthew Soerens, World Relief’s vice president for advocacy and policy, said “the dramatic shift in the Latino vote in last week’s midterm elections and the evidence that many Evangelical voters sat the elections out” shows “the political unpopularity of family-separating mass deportation policies.”

Soerens said, "There are serious, bipartisan proposals that avoid the extremes of either mass deportation or amnesty."

“I hope and pray the president will pursue them,” Soerens said. "We would be thrilled for President Trump to sign long-overdue legislation that Presidents Bush, Obama and Biden all tried but failed to do."

Critics have cited opposition to the Trump administration’s mass deportation policies as a reason for Republicans’ poor performance in the midterm elections. However, Vice President JD Vance, seen as a contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028, is pushing back on the idea that giving illegal immigrants legal status will improve the Republican Party’s electoral prospects.

“Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty,” Vance wrote in an X post Wednesday. “I’m open to the idea that we should change enforcement — by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you. The reason we lost is the war [in Iran].”

Trump acknowledged a variety of opinions on immigration within his administration and among the American public during his “60 Minutes” interview.

“There’s a group of people that I would say are on the sort of pretty far right that would like everybody taken out,” he said. “There’s also people that are more modified on that. In other words, 'get the killers out, … get the rapists 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.'"

The president warned of the danger posed by “the sanctuary city group,” lamenting that “they don’t want to give us the criminals” and “don’t want them out of our country” but rather “want to protect them.”

The 2026 midterm elections resulted in Democratic majorities in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. Unofficial results show Democrats have won at least 54 seats in the U.S. Senate and at least 259 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Exit polling from the 2026 election shows Republicans won the overwhelming support of voters who thought immigration was the country’s most important issue (89%) and a majority of voters who said immigration enforcement policies were “crucial” in determining their vote (57%). At the same time, 58% of voters said the Trump administration’s immigration policies went “too far.”