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Notes -
If you read the actual immigration policy, as set by the Congress in the actual acts it passed, you’ll observe that Trump’s actions were very much in line with what the immigration laws actually are. For example, he made some moves to enforce the public charge rule, for the exact reasons this rule was passed into the law in the first place. His problem was not so much that he was blocked by the Congress, which passed different policy, but instead by judiciary and lawfare, which instituted policies contrary to what the Congress passed into law, and the Executive actually tried to enforce.
It would seem that Congress did not agree with your fiat that the public charge rule meant what Trump said it meant, or else it would have amended the statute to say so. Congress is more than capable of being precise when it suits them and conversely of being extremely vague when they'd rather pass the buck. And Trump could very well have asked for specific language to that effect but AFAICT he didn't make a specific push for it.
What I mean to get at here isn't the object level of any particular provision, but more broadly that the government is a huge ship and the best way to make policy change is to get both Congress and the President steering in the same direction at the same time.
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