WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said in an interview that aired Sunday his mass deportation campaign, which helped propel his return to the Oval Office, had gone too far and potentially led to Republicans losing the U.S. House and Senate in the midterm elections.

“I think it might be too tough, yeah,” Trump said in the interview with Ross Douthat of “60 Minutes”. “And a lot of people would say that it’s great. But a lot of people think it’s too tough.” 

He added that he thinks his immigration crackdown “both helped and hurt” him in the midterm elections.

“When you go into a hotel and you say, ‘Let me see your pass,’ and you have a woman that’s worked there as a, you know, as a maid, as a cleaner, as a this, as a that, as a waitress, a lotta good things, great job, and all of a sudden, they’re being taken out of the country, it’s tough,” Trump said. “It’s a tough thing.”

The president’s description of his mass deportation campaign was in stark contrast with his decision to elevate Stephen Miller, the main architect of his immigration crackdown, to White House chief of staff — the first major shakeup since the midterm elections. 

Trump added that he is willing to work with Democrats on legislation to provide legal status for immigrants who work in certain sectors, such as hospitality. The Trump administration has carried out one of the largest de-legalization efforts in recent history, stripping more than 1 million immigrants of their humanitarian and temporary legal statuses. 

Trump said that he believes Democrats would be interested in addressing long-term immigrants in the country, but he did not specify which lawmakers were interested in a deal. 

“I think that’s something that’s actually doable,” Trump said of working with Democrats on immigration policy. 

Miller backlash

It’s unclear how any dealmaking with Democrats will proceed with Miller, who was behind efforts to strip millions of legal immigrants of their Temporary Protected Status as well as the effort to redefine the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, leading White House staff.  

Trade associations representing businesses in hospitality, agriculture and construction have said the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has harmed their businesses and the broader economy. They also slammed the president’s decision to promote Miller.

“One of the main reasons why the Republicans lost the midterm elections was in big part because of Stephen Miller’s cruelty on immigration policies,” Benny Melendez, vice chair of the South Texas Builders Association, said in a statement. “I don’t understand why Trump would appoint him as Chief of Staff for the White House. It seems like they now want to lose the White House in the 2028 election.”

WASHINGTON — The chair of the campaign arm for U.S. House Democrats said during a Friday press conference that this week’s midterm elections resulted in an overwhelming blue wave because of Latinos. 

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Suzan DelBene said majorities won in the House and the Senate by Democrats couldn’t have happened without Latino voters. She said Democrats were only able to win competitive seats in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Pennsylvania and Texas because of the Latino vote.

While dozens of races are still too close to call, Democrats have won 253 seats, which is far past the 218 seats needed to control the majority in the lower chamber. Republicans have won 161 so far, according to The Associated Press.

DelBene, a Washington state Democrat, said the president and his party broke their 2024 campaign promises when it came to lowering inflation and carrying out a mass deportation campaign of “the worst of the worst.”

“They delivered the most anti-Latino agenda, defined by sky-high costs and out-of-control ICE operations,” she said, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. 

DelBene said Democrats flipped 27 districts that President Donald Trump won in 2024 by double digits. 

She added that nearly all of her party’s Latino candidates won, with 54 Latinos who will be part of the 120th Congress in January, a historic number.

Latinos who showed up during the midterm elections are “fed up” with inflation, high gas prices and the unpopular war in Iran, said Democratic Rep.-elect Johnny Garcia, who flipped a newly drawn Texas congressional district meant to favor a Republican candidate.

“I knew I had to channel what the frustration was like here on the ground,” Garcia said.

 “Look, folks in this district, they just want to be able to go to HEB to buy their groceries, they want to be able to pay their utility bills with the wages they bring home,” he said.

The Pew Research Center in October released a report that found that the economy was a top issue for Latinos.

Elevation of Stephen Miller decried

In the middle of the press conference, Trump separately announced that he would tap the architect of his mass deportation campaign, Stephen Miller, to serve as the White House chief of staff, and replace Trump’s longtime aide, Susie Wiles. She’s the highest-ranking official from the White House to leave after Tuesday’s election results. 

Elevating Miller to that role signals that the president is doubling down on his aggressive immigration crackdown that has generated an immense backlash across the country. 

Maria Teresa Kumar, who leads Voto Latino, said the decision to place Miller as White House chief of staff shows that “once again the Republicans are not reading the room.”

Voto Latino is a nonprofit organization that aims to get young Latino and Hispanic people to register to vote and get politically involved.

Kumar said the aggressive immigration crackdown by the Trump administration spurred young Latino voters, many of whom were voting for the first time, to head to the polls.  

“The fact that the president is putting Stephen Miller in that seat just speaks that he’s not learned his lesson,” she said.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump announced Friday he will elevate Stephen Miller to White House chief of staff, the first shake-up of his administration officials since Democrats trounced Republicans in the midterms.

Former Chief of Staff Susie Wiles will move to the “Trump Political Operation,” the president announced in an afternoon post on his Truth Social platform.

Trump said Miller, a key figure behind the administration’s aggressive mass deportation campaign, is “one of my most trusted advisors.” 

The president told reporters outside the White House that he wants Miller to “just run things well.”

“Stephen’s been with me from the beginning. He gets it, very good politically, and he’s a very good manager. He’ll do a great job,” he said.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries slammed the move, writing on X Friday that Miller “is a dangerous xenophobe and reckless extremist who has American blood on his hands.”

“His presence in government should be eradicated like a malignant tumor. Fire him today,” Jeffries, who is poised to become House speaker in January, wrote on X.

Blue wave

The move comes after voters rebuked Trump Tuesday, giving Democrats sizable majorities in both the House and Senate this coming Congress. In a backlash to Trump, Hispanics who voted for the president in 2024 shunned him in the midterms.

Every voter demographic sharply swung toward Democrats, but Latinos shifted sharply, by 21 points, according to an analysis by NPR, and a separate analysis by The Associated Press.

Miller has been a proponent of the Trump administration’s campaign against birthright citizenship, which it lost in a major case at the U.S. Supreme Court.

In an interview with Fox News host Will Cain in December 2025, Miller described birthright citizenship as “the greatest scam in history.”

“With a lot of these immigrant groups, not only is the first generation unsuccessful. Again, Somalia is a clear example here,” he said. “You see persistent issues in every subsequent generation. So you see consistent high rates of welfare use, consistent high rates of criminal activity, consistent failures to assimilate.”

The claim that immigrants commit more crimes than other demographics in the United States is unfounded, according to several studies of national crime statistics compiled by the Migration Policy Institute. The institute found that immigrants in the U.S. commit crimes at lower rates than the U.S.-born population.

The New York Times, reporting those comments by Miller, said that studies have documented the upward mobility of immigrant children and that experts questioned his underlying arguments.

The liberal-leaning Brookings Institution has reported that “immigrants are a fiscal boon to the U.S.” and that “Empirical evidence indicates that immigrants have historically contributed more in tax revenue than they receive in public benefits, creating a substantial fiscal surplus for the U.S. government over time.”

During that same interview, Miller blamed immigrants in the United States for low test scores and healthcare costs, among other issues.

2026 deadly surge

Miller also advocated for the surge of immigration agents into mostly Democrat-led American cities throughout 2026, and did not back down after extreme instances of violence. 

In January after federal agents fatally shot Alex Pretti in Minnesota, Miller reposted a video of the killing posted by the Democratic National Committee on X with the comments: “A would-be assassin tried to murder federal law enforcement and the official Democrat account sides with the terrorists.”

Miller steered immigration policies during Trump’s first term.

He has been a fixture of Trump’s political apparatus for a decade, and played a role in Trump’s successful presidential campaign beginning in 2015.