Trump backs away from hardline immigration policy after midterms blowout: ‘I think it was too tough’

It takes a big demonic character to admit he's wrong. Honestly, today I think he may better be described as the Charcoal Grey Lord.

Trump backs away from hardline immigration policy after midterms blowout: ‘I think it was too tough’

By Allie Griffin, NY Post

Published Nov. 8, 2026

President Trump admitted his hardline immigration policy went too far after the GOP’s sweeping losses in the midterm elections last week.

Trump said his administration’s rapid deportations turned off some Americans during a “60 Minutes” interview Sunday, following Republicans losing the Hispanic vote last Tuesday.

“I think it was too tough,” the president said of his deportation policy.

“For getting people out, 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– that created one violation, or breaking of the law, and that was that they came into the country illegally.”

Latino voters who swung to the right in 2024 reversed course in Tuesday’s elections, shifting dramatically to the left. In battleground states with large Latino populations, like Texas, Democrats won governorships and Senate seats.

Overall, Democrats won control of both the House and Senate — and Hispanic voters, who turned out for Trump in the 2024 election, played a significant role in the historic sweep.

Just one in three Hispanic voters said they cast their ballot for a Republican in their respective US House race on Tuesday, while roughly four in ten voted for Trump two years ago, according to The AP Voter Poll of over 100,000 midterm voters.

Political commentator Samantha Karlin told The Post last week that the president’s immigration crackdown may have led Latinos to vote against the GOP.

“There’s a profound difference between supporting border security and watching people who look like you, your family, and your neighbors being targeted by aggressive immigration enforcement,” she said.

Karlin added that living with the fear that you or someone you love could be detained, regardless of legal status, creates “tremendous insecurity.”

Meanwhile, when it came to closing the southern border, Trump gave himself “an A+.”

“Nobody — in the last 17 months, just came out, zero people came in through our southern border, as opposed to 25 million people — 25 million people. They came in through caravans,” he said during the CBS program.

“Nobody ever saw anything like it.”