Trump: Deportation Push Spares Hotel and Farm Workers 'Not Even Close'

President Donald Trump said Monday night that his administration's mass deportation agenda has not applied equal pressure on hotel housekeepers, waitresses and farm workers as it has on people he described as murderers and drug dealers. "We haven't put the same pressure on waitresses and on farm workers, etc. Not even close," Trump said during a phone call with C-SPAN.

The hospitality labor force has sat at the center of the immigration enforcement debate since the deportation push began. Trump's remarks are the clearest signal yet that the White House views hotel and restaurant employees as a distinct category from what he called "the worst of the worst." Operators have watched enforcement actions pull experienced kitchen and housekeeping staff from jobs that remain hard to fill. The president now appears to concede that dynamic himself.

What did Trump actually say?

Asked whether law-abiding, taxpaying immigrants of long residence should be deported alongside migrants who committed serious offenses, Trump said: "We certainly haven't put the same push on them as we have on the murderers or the drug dealers." He framed the enforcement priority as a legacy of institutional releases. "A big problem we had is the mental institutions being dumped into our country," Trump said. "Some very dangerous people were released into our country, to put it mildly."

The C-SPAN call followed a "60 Minutes" interview aired Sunday, in which host Ross Douthat asked whether Trump would work with Democrats on immigration during the lame-duck stretch of his presidency. Republicans lost majorities in both chambers of Congress in last week's midterm elections, reshaping the legislative calculus.

"I'd love to do something on immigration," Trump replied.

Does enforcement hurt or help Republicans?

Trump offered a split verdict on the political economics of deportation. He praised his administration's border enforcement while admitting a cost. "But I get hurt because we also took people that had good jobs," Trump said.

He described two competing camps among voters. Some want all immigrants who entered the country illegally deported. Others believe longtime workers should stay, especially those in landscaping or hotels who pay taxes. Trump made the hospitality case in concrete terms: "When you go into a hotel and you have a woman that's working there as a maid, as a cleaner as a this as a that, as a waitress, a lot of good things, great jobs, and all of a sudden they're being taken out of the country, it's tough. It's a tough thing." He added that people on the far-right want deportations regardless of whether the immigrant is employed.

Is a deal coming?

Trump signaled willingness to "work a deal" covering people who have lived in the U.S. illegally for "10 and 15 years." That timeline, if it ever becomes legislation, would cover a substantial share of the hospitality workforce, where long tenures are common in housekeeping, kitchen and back-of-house roles. Whether any such deal can pass a newly divided Congress in a lame-duck session is another question entirely, and the president offered no timeline, no terms and no legislative partner.

The caveat came hours earlier. At a White House press briefing Monday, Trump said "there won't be amnesty" and that his policy "hasn't changed." A deal without amnesty, negotiated in weeks, against a hostile House majority, leaves hotel and restaurant operators with little they can plan around. The enforcement posture may have eased in rhetoric; in policy, nothing has moved.

The C-SPAN call also touched on other matters. Trump said he would be "disappointed" if Republicans vote for the impeachment of Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth. The House could take up Rep. Thomas Massie's, R-Ky., impeachment resolution as early as Tuesday. On Iran, Trump said "it depends" when asked when the war would end, saying Gulf states including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait prefer the current approach to "another hit, which would be approximately five times bigger than the first." He said Iran "would like to make a deal, and we'll find out whether or not that'll happen."

For now, hospitality employers are left reading tea leaves rather than policy. Trump's words suggest sympathy for their workforce. His briefing-room statement, delivered the same day, says the policy stands unchanged.