The key facts
- In an interview with CBS News, Trump agreed that the deportation policy was too harsh
- According to the Migration Policy Institute, about 980,000 people were deported during the first 18 months of the second term
- Mass deportations continue: the agencies received no instructions to reduce expulsions
An admission in an interview
US President Donald Trump has acknowledged that his administration's immigration policy turned out to be excessively harsh. He voiced agreement with this assessment in an interview with CBS News, responding to a journalist's question about whether the administration had gone too far on the deportation of migrants. “I think it was too harsh. Yes”, Trump replied.
The scale of the expulsions
According to estimates by the US Migration Policy Institute, about 980,000 people were deported from the United States during the first 18 months of Trump's second presidential term. The expulsions also affected foreigners who had lived in the country for ten years or more. Before the Republicans returned to power, Trump claimed, by his own account, that 25 million people had illegally entered the US, and he promised a large-scale campaign to expel undocumented immigrants.
No practical changes yet
The president's admission has not yet been accompanied by a change of course: there is no talk of ending mass deportations. According to CBS News, after the midterm elections on November 3, US immigration agencies received no instructions to reduce the number of detentions and expulsions of foreigners. Thus, Trump's words remain an assessment of the policy rather than a confirmed decision to soften it.
Melania Trump's role
Earlier, Life.ru, citing The Wall Street Journal, reported that Trump began reconsidering his attitude toward deportations after complaints from his wife Melania: according to this information, the first lady was outraged by the expulsion from the US of people she knew personally. After that, the president, in conversations with aides, allowed that Stephen Miller, one of the main proponents of the hard-line immigration policy, may have gone too far.
