President Donald Trump said in an interview that aired Sunday that he was committed to continuing immigration enforcement raids across the country, saying, "I think they haven't gone far enough."
He added, in an interview with CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell on “60 Minutes,” that his mass deportation agenda, one of his central campaign promises in 2024, has been “held back by the judges, by the liberal judges, that were put in" by former Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama.
His remarks come even as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been photographed and taped at times using violent methods to detain immigrants across the country.
Asked if he is OK with ICE agents sometimes using violent tactics, Trump said, "Yeah, because you have to get the people out."
He added, "Many of them are murderers. Many of them are people that were thrown out of their countries because they were, you know, criminals."
In June, internal ICE data obtained by NBC News found that in the last three months of the Biden administration and the first five months of the Trump administration, ICE had detained only 6% of the undocumented immigrants known to ICE to have been convicted of homicide and 11% of those known to ICE to have been convicted of sexual assault.
Trump’s comments aren’t the first indication that the president favors aggressive immigration detention tactics. NBC News reported last week that the Trump administration planned to replace some regional ICE leaders with Border Patrol officials with the goal of intensifying the pace of deportations across the country. In particular, Trump administration officials welcomed Border Patrol’s aggressive tactics for immigration enforcement.
In the "60 Minutes" interview, which was taped Friday, the president addressed concerns that his deportation agenda was arresting landscapers, farmers and other laborers, not just the criminals and "the worst of the worst" undocumented immigrants that he promised to deport during his presidential campaign.
"Look, I need farmers and I need landscapers more than anybody," Trump told O'Donnell.
Asked whether he intends to deport people who do not have a criminal record, the president told O'Donnell, "We have to start off with a policy, and the policy has to be, you came into the country illegally, you're going to go out."
He added that if undocumented immigrants are deported and wish to come back to the United States, "we're going to work with you, and you're going to come back into our country legally."
