Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says he has “always believed” in amnesty for DACA illegal immigrants he casts as high-school valedictorians, pitching a criminals-first middle ground after President Trump left the door open to a broader deal.
Gingrich made the case in a Fox Business Channel interview, answering Trump’s recent 60 Minutes comments on immigration. He framed young illegal immigrants brought here as infants and toddlers, and kept in the country under former President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, as people who should not be removed.
Breitbart News reported the former speaker’s call for what amounts to amnesty for that group, paired with a narrower focus on criminal offenders as the political “middle ground.”
Gingrich did not treat the question as new for him. He said the belief has been consistent.
"I’ve always believed, for example, that the DREAMers, the young people who came here at 6 months, a year, two years, don’t even speak any language except English, went to high school here, got to be valedictorians, that it makes no sense to force them to leave the only country they’ve ever lived in,"
He added that the problem can be fixed with distinctions, not a single blunt rule.
"There are nuances to fixing this that can be done,"
And he cast enforcement priority as the place where most of the country already agrees.
"I also think having a focus on criminals makes a lot of sense. Virtually all Americans... that if you’re a criminal, we don’t need you in our neighborhood. So there’s a middle ground."
Gingrich was responding to President Trump, who told 60 Minutes he wants action on immigration and drew his own line between serious offenders and long-present workers.
"I’d love to do something about immigration,"
Trump said, then separated removal targets from people he described as embedded in work and community life.
"Get the killers out. Get all the rough ones out. Get the drug dealers out. But let the people that are here, and in some cases here for ten and 15 years, work a deal for them."
He sketched the political split he sees across the country, removal on one side, status for “good people” on the other, including workers in landscaping and hotels, and some who pay taxes.
"Now, there is a large part of the country that think that they should be put out. And there’s a large part of the country that think that they should be allowed to stay if they’re good people working in a landscaping company, or working in a hotel, or doing something, right?"
Trump continued that a large group favors letting those people stay. Breitbart’s account presented that interview as the backdrop for Gingrich’s amnesty pitch and for talk of a possible bill with congressional Democrats that could include amnesty for some illegal immigrants.
The same report placed Gingrich’s new remarks against his 1990s record on legal immigration levels. Then-President Bill Clinton asked then-Rep. Barbara Jordan (D-TX) to lead a commission on the nation’s immigration problem.
Jordan’s commission recommended drastic reductions in legal immigration. The stated aim was to ease economic pressure on the working class and reduce downward pressure on the U.S. social safety net. The findings sat against a system already resettling more than a million legal immigrants a year, volume the commission treated as a burden on working-class and lower-middle-class Americans.
None of those legal-immigration reforms made the final package that went to Clinton’s desk. Breitbart reported that Gingrich led the charge to keep Jordan’s reductions out of that legislation.
That history matters because it is not a border-only fight. Legal admissions, work pressure on Americans already here, and amnesty for people who entered illegally and stayed under DACA are connected pieces of the same system. Gingrich’s Fox Business answer elevates DACA “valedictorians” and a criminals-first middle ground. His 1990s role blocked the legal-immigration cuts a Democratic civil-rights figure said working Americans needed.
Strip the branding and the offer is familiar. Criminal illegal immigrants become the enforcement showcase. A sympathetic slice of the DACA population, English-only, U.S.-schooled, high-achieving, becomes the face of who should stay. Trump’s own words left room for deals covering people here a decade or more in ordinary jobs.
Missing from Gingrich’s quoted remarks is a hard mechanism: who qualifies, what status they receive, what stops the next wave, and how many people outside the valedictorian example ride the same relief. He said he has “always believed” those DREAMers should not be forced out. He said nuances exist. He said criminals are the consensus target. He did not, in the remarks Breitbart highlighted, close the door on a wider amnesty bargain.
DACA itself was an Obama-era policy choice that kept covered young illegal immigrants in the United States without Congress passing a statute. Gingrich’s argument treats that population’s long presence and English-only upbringing as reasons permanent relief “makes no sense” to deny. Voters who wanted enforcement first, and lower overall admissions, have heard versions of this trade for decades.
Working-class wage pressure and strain on public benefits were exactly why Jordan’s commission pushed legal immigration down. Gingrich helped ensure those reforms never reached Clinton’s desk. He is now on cable making the softest DACA case in valedictorian language while calling criminals the unifying enforcement theme.
Amnesty sold as nuance for a few star students has a long record of becoming much more than that, and the people who pay for the policy are still the Americans who were promised control, not another carve-out.
