Republicans are struggling to reverse the damage President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda has done with voters.
With less than 90 days until the midterm election, the Trump administration has sought to keep Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials out of the headlines, pulling back on the high-profile, flashy raids in blue cities and minimizing public clashes with community members and protesters.
But new results from The POLITICO Poll show that half of Americans, including nearly a quarter of Trump’s 2024 voters, still say the president’s mass deportation campaign is too aggressive. That’s virtually unchanged from polling numbers in January and April, amid mounting political outrage over federal agents killing two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.
Non-MAGA Trump voters are twice as likely as self-identified MAGA voters to say the president’s mass deportation campaign is too aggressive — 31 percent compared with 15 percent, according to the new poll, which was conducted Aug. 8 to Aug. 12.
The persistence of that negative voter sentiment underscores a vulnerability for Republicans heading into November, as the party grapples with its message and policy approach on an issue the GOP once dominated. Immigration was a reliable winner for Republicans, with the party rallying voters around border security and public safety. Now, they’re struggling not only to convince persuadable voters, but also hold together their own coalition as it splinters over deportations.
“Voters really did want border security, but they did not want to see abuelita taken away because she’s been here for 40 years but without documentation,” said Arizona-based GOP strategist Barrett Marson.
The poll, conducted by London-based polling firm Public First, found a notable share of Americans believe the administration has shifted how it is conducting deportations following the fatal shootings, but that has not been enough to reverse Americans’ views of the administration’s deportation strategy.
A 56 percent majority of Americans say there has been at least a small shift in the way the Trump administration has been conducting its deportation campaign. But a plurality of those respondents, 44 percent, say the shifts have made no difference in how much they trust the administration on immigration. Thirty percent say the shifts make them less willing to trust the administration on immigration.
Among the 71 percent of Trump voters who said they’ve observed at least a small shift from the administration, nearly half, 48 percent, say those shifts make “no difference” in how much they trust the administration on immigration. Nineteen percent said the shifts make them less likely to trust the administration, while 29 percent said they’d be more likely.
Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster in Washington, said that even with the lower-profile approach, the administration’s goal of increasing arrest and deportation numbers remains. That conflicts with what many voters broadly support: targeting immigrants in the country illegally who have committed crimes.
The lack of a change in voter sentiment is “not that surprising at all,” Ayres said. “It’s a lot easier just to go into an airport and find somebody who had overstayed a visa, had applied for an extension … and throw them into handcuffs and put them in a detention center. That’s the easy way to get the numbers up, and a great way to thoroughly antagonize public opinion.”
Another Republican strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the landscape, said Trump “ran on border security, and he’s following through.”
“But the visuals of wins are unfortunately overshadowed by the visuals of chaos,” the strategist said. “There’s no question that the wall to wall coverage of the chaos that follows ICE makes voters squeamish.”
The White House pointed to polling from this spring that showed that 80 percent of Americans support deporting unauthorized immigrants who have committed crimes, as well as a Department of Homeland Security press release that highlighted arrests of immigrants who had been accused of sexual assault of a child, forcible sexual abuse and drug posession.
“Americans sent President Trump back to the White House with a clear mandate to deport criminal illegal aliens. Every single day the Trump Administration is delivering on his promise to the American people to remove murderers, pedophiles, rapists, and gang members from American communities,” said White House spokesperson Lauren Bis. “Americans are grateful to the President for removing these criminals from their neighborhoods and for Making America Safe Again.”
The GOP’s stronghold on immigration as a campaign issue eroded soon after the president’s return to the White House. Soon, robust enforcement efforts led to viral images of arrests inside courthouses, at airports and on neighborhood streets. The backlash brewed for months, and peaked this year amid the killings of Alex Pretti and Renée Good in Minnesota.
The White House moved quickly to contain the political fallout, sidelining then-Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino and deploying border czar Tom Homan to ease tensions. The administration has since sought to avoid controversy on immigration ahead of the midterms, emphasized criminal arrests and changed leadership at the Department of Homeland Security. Since Markwayne Mullin took the reins in March, he has reversed contentious policies, including a plan to turn massive warehouses into detention facilities.
Still, some Republicans are particularly worried that the hardline immigration stance was hurting the party with key voting blocs, such as young voters, moderate Republicans and Latino voters. The president won 46 percent of the Latino vote in 2024, the highest share of any GOP presidential candidate in modern history, but these voters have grown increasingly concerned with Trump’s deportations policy.
Democrats, meanwhile, are highlighting the Trump administration’s aggressive tactics on the trail, betting that more voters are repulsed than grateful for the increased presence of ICE and other federal agents in their communities. Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, who won the Democratic primary for Senate last week, used her victory speech to rail against her opponent, GOP nominee Michele Tafoya.
“Michele Tafoya was all in with Trump when ICE was terrorizing our neighbors,” she said.
Republicans, for their part, are fractured over the path forward, as immigration hawks battle with wary moderates who are pushing for a targeted focus on criminals.
Not only are non-MAGA voters more likely than MAGA voters to say Trump’s mass deportations campaign is too aggressive, there’s also a stark divide in how each faction supports the goals and implementation of his immigration agenda, The POLITICO Poll found. Nearly two-thirds of MAGA Trump voters — 64 percent — say they support both the goals and implementation of his deportations campaign, compared to just 35 percent of non-MAGA Trump voters.
The president’s MAGA supporters and immigration hardliners have argued that the administration is going soft on the president’s mass deportation vow, potentially turning off the far right base at a time when the party can’t risk a lull in turnout.
The split flared up last month when Mullin temporarily paused some ICE vehicle stops — a tactic the agency was using to increase arrest statistics — after two ICE-involved shootings during vehicle stops in Texas and Maine. While some Republicans welcomed Mullin’s response, the president’s MAGA supporters portrayed it as weak.
“We are being betrayed in real time,” conservative commentator Tomi Lahren said on X at the time. “If you want Trump voters to stay home in November, keep this up Markwayne and co.”
The president, after online pushback, reversed the DHS order.
