“When you go into a hotel and you have a woman that’s worked there as — you know, as a maid, as a cleaner…great jobs, and all of a sudden, they’re being taken outta the country, it’s tough,” Trump said. “It’s a tough thing.”
Trump’s remarks were made on the same day he promoted Stephen Miller, a hard-liner in favor of sharply restricting immigration, to the White House chief of staff post. Democratic leaders quickly bashed the promotion, with one calling for Miller to be fired.
The president, though, has issued mixed signals on immigration since the interview aired. He later affirmed his support for an immigration policy that doesn’t confer legal status on people residing in the U.S. without authorization. “We have a very strong deportation policy. There’s no amnesty,” he said at a Nov. 9 press conference. “We keep that, but we focus on the worst of the worst.”
‘Too tough’
In the “60 Minutes” interview, Trump credited his hard-line immigration policy for bolstering support, but admitted it also dissuaded some voters from backing the Republicans in the midterms.
“I think it both helped and hurt. I think I got an A+ for closing up the border. I get very high marks for getting the bad ones out,” he said. “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 also cracked the door open to a deal for unauthorized immigrants, particularly for those who have been paying federal income and payroll taxes, as a large share already do.
“There’s a large part of the country that think they should be allowed to stay if they’re good people working in a landscaping company, or working in a hotel or doing something,” Trump said. “And in some cases, paying taxes.”
Pressure to soften a hard-line deportation policy
At various points, the White House has been lobbied by trade associations and business groups to tamp down its mass deportation policy. In late October, the Washington Post reported that over 40 farm and agricultural industry groups sent a letter to the president and congressional leaders warning that immigration raids were at risk of inflating grocery prices.
