President Donald Trump made a big concession Sunday: His deportation policies went too far for the American public.

His new chief of staff better be on board.

“It was too tough,” the prez admitted of his campaign to boot illegal immigrants; his minions went after people who “had good jobs,” folks whose only violation was that “they came into the country illegally.”

No kidding; we warned in January that those tactics were “backfiring.”

“Overly aggressive ICE enforcement . . . has taken a heavy toll” on Trump and his party, we noted in February.

We repeatedly urged the White House to pivot to a more “moderate” approach on enforcement and applauded such effective strategies as offering incentives for self-deportations.

Yes, sanctuary states make any enforcement fraught, especially when they let radicals provoke battles with ICE agents.

But Trump and his team had vowed to go after only “the worst of the worst” illegal-immigrant thugs; the prez intermittently sought to rein in the excesses and even suggested leniency for those in key industries dependent on immigrant workers — agriculture, health care, hospitality, landscaping.

But others on his team demanded those ugly Home Depot parking-lot raids, set sky-high quotas for monthly deportations and failed to prevent other Homeland Security follies culminating in the Minneapolis mess.

The stand-down since then, letting Border Czar Tom Homan focus on quiet-but-effective work, was too low-key, too late.

Closing the border was a huge Trump success, but swing voters’ worries on immigration refocused on the deportation excesses.

Latinos, who’d been trending the GOP’s way, shifted back: Only 33% backed a Republican for the House this year, down from above 40% in 2024.

“There’s a profound difference between supporting border security and watching people who look like you, your family and your neighbors being targeted by aggressive immigration enforcement,” observes political commentator Samantha Karlin.

If Republicans are to recover from last week’s disaster, Team Trump needs to show greater flexibility here.

Yet the prez just chose Stephen Miller, a fierce deportation hardliner, as chief of staff: Can he loyally get on the boss’ new page, and stay there?

Trump’s admission is a positive sign, and (who knows?) might lead to a bipartisan deal on immigration reform — if Democrats can drop their own maximalist demands, such as amnesty for all and reopened borders.

The voters clearly reject both extremes; they’d love compromise that restores sanity to the horribly dysfunctional US immigration system.

At the very least, going forward they’ll reward the party that’s clearly aiming for the low-key stability they crave.