President Donald Trump, whose mass deportation mandate upended the lives of many families and stripped thousands of deportation protections and work permits, now says he may have gone too far with his strict immigration enforcement policies and ultimately hurt himself in the midterms.

“I think it might be too tough. Yeah,” he said in a "60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday. “And a lot of people would say that it’s great, but a lot of people think it’s too tough.”

Following a midterm election that left Democrats in control of the House and Senate in Washington, D.C., Trump said he is willing to negotiate on immigration. He said that certain segments of the country view strict enforcement as essential for securing the United States’ southern border, but others object to the deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and allied police to immigrant communities.

During the interview, Trump, who displayed an unusually somber demeanor, said that within his administration there was a group of advocates on the “pretty far right” who wanted all immigrants removed from the country. He also said there were others who were “modified” on the issue and wanted him to just “get the killers out. Get the rapists out. Get all the rough ones out.”

He said that under a deal with Democrats, it would be possible to create a pathway for workers such as hotel waitresses and landscapers who have been in the country for decades without any criminal record.

“When you go into a hotel, and you say, ‘Let me see your pass,’ and you have a woman that’s worked 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,” he said. “It’s a tough thing.”

At a Trump rally last month in Fort Myers, Florida, Cape Coral resident Lina Epena, a Cuban American Republican who immigrated to the United States 35 years ago, said people who recently came to the country through the southern border “are different.”

“They have no love for the country. They have no loyalty,” she said.

She does, however, believe that something should be done for people who have lived in the country for decades.

“Well, I believe that something could be done to help them. People that have come ... especially those that have been here for years,” she said.

Trump’s post-election decision to replace chief of staff Susie Wiles with immigration hardliner Stephen Miller might suggest that he has no plans to moderate. But Miami Republican U.S. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, who is awaiting the results of a Monday morning recount in Florida’s 27th Congressional District, congratulated Trump in a social media post Sunday for the remarks that struck a softer tone on immigration enforcement.

She told Trump, “Well done, Mr. President!” and said that what he described in the interview is what she had been proposing in her Dignity Act.

Salazar, who criticized Trump in a campaign ad, saying his immigration policies had left the Hispanic voters who elected him feeling betrayed, has for years pushed a bill that would offer immigrants without legal status who have lived and worked in the United States a pathway to citizenship. To qualify, undocumented immigrants must have a clean legal record, pay a $7,000 fine, give up social benefits, and pay the government 1% of their salary for seven years.

In her social media after the CBS News interview, Salazar said what Trump described was “the core of the Dignity legislation.” She said Trump could surpass Ronald Reagan’s legacy in delivering immigration reform.

“Mr. President, I have said it repeatedly. YOU can bring Republicans and Democrats together to finally fix our broken immigration system,” she wrote on social media.

In places like Doral, Florida, immigration was top of mind for many voters, who pushed back against their elected leaders’ cooperation with immigration officials through 287(g), a program that allows local and state governments to carry out certain immigration tasks.

Under the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida has become one of the leading states with such agreements and also one of the states with the highest number of immigrants arrested by local law enforcement. More than 17,000 arrests have been made under Florida’s 287(g) agreements, most by the Florida Highway Patrol, according to the state’s immigration dashboard.

DeSantis and his attorney general, James Uthmeier, also transformed the Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport into the nation’s first state-operated immigration detention center, known as Alligator Alcatraz. After spending more than $1 billion and facing complaints from detainees and their families about inhumane conditions — including cages the size of phone booths — DeSantis declared that the site had fulfilled its promise.

Trump, in the “60 Minutes” interview, said he gets a grade of “A+ for closing” the southern border. But he said he does fall short in some areas.

“I get very high marks for getting the bad ones out,” he said. “But I get hurt because we also took people that had good jobs, that created one violation or breaking of the law, (and) that was that they came into the country illegally.”

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