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By Dan Gooding
Associate News Editor
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President Donald Trump said Sunday he believes his immigration policies both "helped and hurt" him in the midterm elections, telling CBS' 60 Minutes he believed his mass deportation policy was "too tough."
In the sit-down interview which aired Sunday night, Trump said he felt he had gotten "an A+" on the southern border, which has seen a dramatic decline in illegal crossings since his return to the White House, but that deportation efforts had affected election results.
"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 created one violation for breaking the law: they came into the country illegally," Trump said. "There is a large part of the country that think they should be put out and there's a large part of the country that they should be allowed to stay—if they are good people, working in a landscaping company or working in a hotel, or doing something, right? And in some cases, paying taxes."
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Host Ross Douthat asked Trump if he therefore believed his deportation policy went too far.
"I think it was too tough," Trump said. "I think it might be too tough, yeh. A lot of people would say that it's great, but a lot of people think it's too tough. I think, ultimately, that hurt me."
The president said he felt it would be achievable to offer a different pathway to that group of immigrants, when asked by Douthat if he a deal could be worked out with Democrats.
Trump returned to the White House promising to crackdown on illegal immigration, including carrying out mass deportations covering millions of people in the U.S. without legal status.
While U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested and deported immigrants with criminal convictions or charges, a percentage of those detained by the agency have no criminal record.
The Trump administration's immigration policies have seen pushback from Democrats, as well as Americans living in communities which have seen sweeping federal operations, including Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis. Protests have taken place across the country, at times leading to violent and fatal clashes with agents.
This is a breaking news story. Updates to follow.
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