Trump says his own deportation policy might have been too tough

Donald Trump has described his own deportation policy as possibly "too tough" and says he wants to work out a deal with the new Democratic majority allowing undocumented immigrants who have been in the country for 10 to 15 years to stay. The comments came in a 60 Minutes interview broadcast on Sunday, days after his party lost control of both the House and the Senate.

"I think it might be too tough, yeah," Trump said. "And a lot of people would say that it's great. But a lot of people think it's too tough." He gave himself "an A+ for closing up the border" and "very high marks for getting the bad ones out," and located the political damage in the remainder of the operation: enforcement had also removed "people that had good jobs, that created one violation, or breaking of the law, and that was that they came into the country illegally." Asked what he would like to work on with a Democratic Congress, he answered: "I'd love to do something on immigration." Asked whether the deportations helped or hurt him at the polls, he said they "both helped and hurt."

His formula for a settlement: "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 Democrats had already been in touch, mentioning calls from South Carolina; the interviewer noted a new Democratic senator from Texas — whom Trump nicknamed "Talafreako" on the campaign trail — saying on television that he wanted to work with the president on immigration. Asked whether people who want everybody removed work in his own administration, Trump replied: "No, no. Well, there are a lot of those people."

The self-criticism arrived alongside a personnel signal pointing the other way: two days before the interview aired, Trump elevated Stephen Miller, the architect of the deportation program, to White House chief of staff, calling him "one of my most trusted advisors." The interview also fell in the week of the 40th anniversary of Ronald Reagan signing the Immigration Reform and Control Act — the 1986 amnesty that legalized millions — a parallel the Gateway Pundit greeted with the headline "The End of America." The Democrats Trump now says he wants to deal with arrive with new powers over budgets, hearings and subpoenas.

That Sunday morning, a deportation flight carrying at least eight Iranian nationals out of Mesa, Arizona, bound for Iran by way of Georgia and Pakistan, was cancelled without explanation, according to an attorney for several of the detainees. Stephen Miller was due to start his first day as chief of staff the next morning.