Trump Amnesty Deal? The White House Says the Word Was Never Said, After the President Floats a Deal for Long-Term Immigrants on 60 Minutes
In his first sit-down interview since the midterm elections, President Trump said he is open to legal status for immigrants who have been in the country for years and are working good jobs — and his own White House spent Monday insisting that what he described is not amnesty.
President Trump has opened the door to an immigration deal with Democrats, and his own White House spent Monday arguing over what to call it. In an interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Ross Douthat — taped Friday morning and aired Sunday night, his first sit-down since the midterm elections — the president said he is open to granting legal status to some immigrants in the country illegally, people who have been here for many years and are, in the Daily Caller's account of the interview, "working good jobs." He also acknowledged that his mass deportation efforts may have been too sweeping.
The pushback was immediate and came from inside the building. A White House official rejected the amnesty characterization outright in response to the Daily Caller: "The President never said the word amnesty. There has never been a President stronger on immigration enforcement than President Trump." The official added that more than 3 million people have left the United States under the president's policies and that "the Administration will never allow for mass amnesty." The White House's Rapid Response 47 account posted on X on Monday: "Wrong. The word 'amnesty' was never even said in this entire exchange."
Republican strategist Ryan Girdusky answered that post with the line that framed the conservative argument: "This is like when a kid puts his finger an inch to your face and says I'm not touching you. He's describing amnesty." The Federation for American Immigration Reform defines amnesty as the granting of legal status to any individual who is in the country illegally — the definition on which the whole argument now turns. Vice President JD Vance had already warned, in a long post on November 4, that establishment Republicans would push amnesty in the coming months and that anyone pushing it is "lying to you"; Vance said he is open to changing enforcement, for instance by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor.
Not every Republican was pushing back. Florida Rep. Maria Salazar, sponsor of the bipartisan Dignity Act, praised the president's remarks on Monday, writing that what he described on 60 Minutes "is what the Dignity Act is all about" — removing violent criminals while letting "good people working in a landscaping company, or working in a hotel" remain, and working a deal for people who have been here 10 or 15 years. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, speaking to reporters at National Harbor, Maryland, on Monday, said he is open to bipartisan immigration reform that could provide permanent legal status to some undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children — while insisting, "Amnesty is never going to be a solution."
The argument lands in Houston on ground this city has already staked out. On November 6, Mayor John Whitmire signed Executive Order EO 1-74 limiting when Houston police may contact ICE — only when a person is already going to jail on criminal charges or a warrant and there is a positive NCIC match for an ICE administrative warrant — a local answer to the same enforcement question now being debated at the White House, where the president's new chief of staff, Stephen Miller, the architect of the administration's immigration agenda, started work Monday. Whether a deal takes shape waits on Congress, where the incoming Democratic majority takes over in January and where the president, on election night, had already said immigration was an issue both parties should be able to address together.
