By Avery Hill
Editor
During the 2024 campaign for president, then candidate Donald Trump ran mainly on two things: the economy and immigration. While his discourse surrounding immigration focused primarily on securing the southern border—which, under the previous administration, had seen record illegal crossings—Trump simultaneously promised to head a deportation operation unseen in American history.
“The day I take the oath of office, the migrant invasion ends and the restoration of our country begins. On Day 1, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history. I will rescue every city and town that has been invaded and conquered,” Trump said during a November rally in Kinston, N.C.
There was a reason Trump leaned so heavily into such fervent rhetoric surrounding immigration, and that was simply because it was popular.
That is not to say Trump, apart from public sentiment, had no ideological motivation to take the policy positions he did—but rather to say the American public, traditionally uneasy about such verbose language surrounding immigrants, appeared altogether comfortable with Trump’s unambiguous targeting of America’s illegal population.
The proposal of removing people who were living off the government dime and sending them back to their home countries seemed to be not just widely accepted but a winning issue among the electorate. This is backed by a September 2024 Scripps News/Ipsos poll revealing that 54% of American voters backed not just secure borders but Trump’s plan to initiate the largest deportation effort ever seen. Similarly, an October 2024 Marquette Law School poll found that 58% of registered voters backed deporting illegal immigrants back to their home countries.
Now, a little more than a year later, support for Trump’s immigration crackdown has seemingly flipped. A January 2026 CNN poll found that 52% of voters said Trump’s deportation efforts had gone too far. Even more dismal, another January AP-NORC poll taken this year found that 61% of U.S. adults disapproved of the way Trump is handling immigration.
Why the relatively substantial drop in support for Trump’s immigration tactics? Some of the decline can be attributed to a general softening in Trump’s overall job approval, sitting at a paltry but steady 42%, according to RealClearPolitics poll average. But job approval alone only paints part of the picture. So who—or what—is responsible for the rest?
ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), the primary enforcement arm carrying out Trump’s deportation agenda, has seemingly taken a large chunk of the blame when it comes to the drop in approval among the American public for the White House’s approach to immigration. A 2025 November YouGov poll reported that 53% of Americans disapproved of how ICE is handling its job.
This broader public backlash against ICE’s methods—reflected in declining approval ratings—was further intensified after a Jan. 7 video released on social media showed ICE agent Jonathan Ross shooting and killing 37-year-old Minnesotan Renee Good. The incident captured from multiple angles shows Good was shot after striking Ross with her vehicle as she pulled away from the curb.
The video drew instant controversy, with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz condemning the Minneapolis shooting as “preventable.”
“We have someone dead in their car for no reason whatsoever,” Walz said at a news conference held shortly after the shooting.
Public perception of ICE flattened as YouGov and The Economist released a January poll surveying American adults showing that after the shooting of Good, 46% of respondents supported abolishing ICE as a whole, while only 43% opposed the idea. The same poll found that in June 2025, only 27% of Americans supported abolishing ICE.
After a year of the Trump administration fulfilling campaign promises, public sentiment has shifted—dramatically. Americans, in theory, seem to want the perceived fruits of deportations, but when law enforcement enters their communities and begins the process of removing local undocumented populations, they recoil.
This shift points to an endemic fact, a fact that many in the political class dares not think too loudly: many participants in America’s electoral system have little foresight regarding basic social and economic realities. Hardly anyone would disagree that America is a country where slogans and catchphrases, rather than substantive policy discussions, dominate the political airwaves. Americans often offer hearty support for ideas proposed by politicians without truly understanding the practical outcomes of those proposals.
The disruption and impact of deporting even a fraction of America’s 14 million illegal population will extend far beyond what many who voted for Trump in 2024 could ever imagine. There will be long-term emotional and personal turmoil, as families will, by necessity, be separated. There will be short-term economic woes as undocumented employees are severed from longtime jobs, leaving employers scrambling to find replacements.
The poor decisions of not just the Biden administration and its four-year refusal to acknowledge the crisis at the Southern border, but the choices of many administrations before it, have led America to a point where, for the good of national security and the economy, her undocumented populations must be sent home.
There is nothing glamorous about deportations. They are unsettling, often brutal missions that tear loved ones apart. These are the heartbreaking consequences that befall a nation that has mismanaged its immigration for decades. But a country that cannot guarantee the security of its border and the sanctity of its citizenship is not a country worth fighting for.
Wingate Triangle 