Trump Says Mass Deportation Operation Hasn’t ‘Gone Far Enough’

President Donald Trump said in a new interview that he believes Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) actions targeting illegal immigrants “haven’t gone far enough” as his administration continues to launch operations across multiple major U.S. cities.

During an interview aired Sunday by CBS News’ “60 Minutes,” Trump was asked by reporter Norah O’Donnell about a video that appears to show an ICE agent pushing a woman at a courthouse as well as agents using tear gas in Chicago.

Since taking office in January, Trump has said his administration would prioritize the mass deportation of illegal immigrants, which was a 2024 campaign promise of his. The president has since issued multiple executive orders related to immigration enforcement and border security, while he has sent ICE agents and National Guard troops to multiple major U.S. cities.

“Have some of these raids gone too far?” O’Donnell asked the president during the interview.

“No. I think they haven’t gone far enough because we’ve been held back by the judges,” Trump said in response, referring to several court orders that have barred his administration from carrying out certain immigration enforcement activities.

“You have to get the people out,” Trump said, referring to illegal immigrants. “Many of them are murderers. Many of them are people that were thrown out of their countries because they were criminals. Many of them are people from jails and prisons.

“Many of them are people from, frankly, mental institutions. I feel badly about that, but they’re released from insane asylums. You know why? Because they’re killers.”

Also in the interview, Trump said that he believes the administration’s deportation mission will be finished if a significant number of roughly 25 million illegal immigrants are deported.

“Well, it takes a long time, because probably, I say, 25 million people were let into our country. A lot of people say it was 10 million people, but whether it was 10 or—I believe I’m much closer to the right number,” he told the outlet. “Of the 25 [million], many of them should not be here. Many of them.”

The president also touted his anti-crime efforts across several cities, including Washington.

“The crime numbers are way down, even though we have a lot more people in our country that really shouldn’t be here, and many of them are stone-cold hard criminals. When I look at D.C. now, you can walk down the middle of the street. You can have your daughter who’s 10 years old meet you at the park, she’s gonna be OK,” he told the outlet.

An appeals court ruled in favor of the Trump administration on Friday and stopped a judge from trying to get daily updates from a Border Patrol official on efforts targeting illegal immigrants around Chicago.

The court reversed an order from U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis, saying that her ruling placed her in the “position of an inquisitor rather than that of a neutral adjudicator” and would have turned her into a supervisor of the ICE official, Greg Bovino, a violation of the separation of powers.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.