Donald Trump is doubling down on his support for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations, even as concerns grow that the agency’s raids are overly aggressive and targeting nonviolent individuals.
In a Sunday, Nov. 2, interview with 60 Minutes, the president addressed the nationwide ICE raids intended to detain undocumented immigrants. Interviewer Norah O’Donnell pointed out that “illegal crossings at the southern border are at a 55-year low” and referenced “videos of ICE tackling a young mother, tear gas being used in a Chicago residential neighborhood, and the smashing of car windows.”
“Have some of these raids gone too far?” O’Donnell asked. Trump, 79, dismissed that notion, suggesting he believes the enforcement should be even stricter.
“I think they haven’t gone far enough because we’ve been held back by the… by the judges, by the liberal judges that were put in by Biden and by Obama,” he said, before affirming that he was “okay” with ICE’s current actions.
“You have to look at the people. Many of them are murderers. Many of them are people that were thrown outta their countries because they were, you know, criminals,” Trump continued, claiming that some had been released from “mental institutions,” according to an official transcript shared by CBS News.
O’Donnell noted that Trump had promised to deport “the worst of the worst, violent criminals,” but said that “a lot of people [his] administration has arrested and deported aren’t violent criminals.” She cited examples of “landscapers, nannies, construction workers,” to which Trump replied that ICE has targeted “landscapers who are criminals.”
“I need landscapers and I need farmers more than anybody, okay,” Trump said, adding that agencies have apprehended “tremendous numbers of bad people.”
When pressed about deportations of seemingly law-abiding immigrants, Trump said, “We have to start off with a policy, and the policy has to be you came into the country illegally, you’re gonna go out. However, you’ve also seen, you’re gonna go out. We’re gonna work with you, and you’re gonna come back into our country legally.”
He suggested that “street-wise” nations are “sending bad people out and putting them into our country.”
Asked when he would consider his immigration crackdown “mission accomplished,” Trump replied, “It takes a long time.”
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“I say 25 million people were let into our country. A lotta people say it was 10 million people. But whether it was 10 or… I believe I’m much closer to the right number. Of the 25, many of them should not be here. Many of them,” he said.
In 2024, CNN reported that Trump’s estimate of illegal immigrants in the U.S. was “probably” incorrect, referencing Pew Research Center data that placed the number closer to 10.5 million in 2021.
The White House has not yet clarified Trump’s remarks.
