Trump's mass deportations are in big trouble

Support for President Trump's immigration crackdown is unraveling quickly and reviving Democratic opposition on an issue that helped decide the last election.

Why it matters: Border chaos under former President Biden helped return Trump to power. Now, it's chaos from ICE and other Trump immigration enforcers that's turning off the public, one viral video at a time.

• Just weeks after Trump was sworn in, ICE had a +16 positive favorability rating, according to a YouGov/Economist poll.
• Majorities now disapprove of ICE raids and how the agency is handling its job. A slim majority of Americans even supports abolishing ICE altogether, according to one poll.
• If that anger carries over into the midterms, a Democratic House majority could cut off ICE funding, use subpoena powers to investigate every move by DHS and even impeach Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Zoom in: The administration has spent millions on media promoting the deportation agenda, including a series of social media campaigns fronted by Noem.

• Trump officials needed the public to trust it will do deportations without being "inhumane," as White House border czar Tom Homan said in 2024.
• But immigration agents have drawn criticism and lawsuits for arresting U.S. citizens, warrantless arrests in Chicago and Washington, D.C., and encounters where people have been chased, pinned down or contained with chokeholds.
• Then an ICE officer fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, a U.S. citizen and mother of three, last week in Minneapolis. It was the second fatal shooting by a DHS officer during Trump's second term.

The big picture: The Trump administration pushed Congress last year to fuel its immigration agenda with roughly $75 billion in new funding, much of which is still unspent, to help build new detention facilities and hire new agents.

• The administration "won't back down" on deploying ICE, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday.
• But "the Trump administration overplayed their hand," said Colin Rogero, a Biden campaign veteran who saw how immigration policy influenced the last election.

Between the lines: DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin pointed to polling showing overwhelming support for deporting undocumented immigrants with criminal records.

• The public assumed the Trump administration was "going to go after criminals, gangsters, drug dealers, folks connected to organized crime, folks who have had a history of committing crime," said Rogero, of Democratic firm Conexión.
• But roughly half of the people in ICE detention lacked a known pending criminal charge or conviction, according to ICE detention statistics from December. Roughly a quarter of detainees had a conviction.

The other side: "The only poll that really mattered was on November 5, 2024 when President Trump won the election decisively on a campaign platform of the mass deportation of the 15 to 20 million people who came here, under President Biden," said Cooper Smith, director of homeland security and immigration at the America First Policy Institute.

• AFPI recently cited a poll (before the Minneapolis shooting) that showed support for ICE's mission had majority backing with 58%.
• Under Biden, "it was a humanitarian crisis at a scale that America has never seen and it's my view that that scale requires a historic response and that's what we're seeing from President Trump," said Smith.
• White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson dismissed the polls and said Trump "campaigned on and won an election based on his promise to carry out the largest mass deportation operation in history – he's keeping his promise."

As of December, DHS said it had deported 605,000 undocumented immigrants — and claimed another 1.9 million left the U.S. on their own terms.

Between the lines: Congressional Democrats are trying to put ICE activity under a microscope with the oversight power available to them in the legislative minority.

• Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, has started a dashboard to track potential excessive use of force and other misconduct by immigration officers, which is mainly carried out by ICE but has grown to include officers from other federal agencies.
• Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) has led field hearings around the country and shadow hearings on the Hill to highlight immigration enforcement abuses on civil liberties, detention conditions and officer use of force. She will be in Minneapolis on Friday for a field hearing.

The bottom line: "You can do immigration enforcement without having chaos in the streets," said Xochitil Hinojosa, a Biden-era Justice Department official.

• "One example is Barack Obama. He was criticized heavily for immigration enforcement. Did we see ICE agents shooting people, detaining US citizens, causing chaos in our streets? No."