Donald Trump won the U.S. presidency in no small part thanks to his promise to enforce immigration restrictions that the Biden administration largely ignored. Election year polls found more voters preferred Trump over then-president Joe Biden on the issue and even favored his proposals for mass deportations. But the reality of tough border policies is a harsh reality check; since the current administration took office, Americans have cooled on its policies and warmed to immigration.
That’s not to say the country is embracing Biden’s nudge-and-wink approach to border crossings. Instead, people seem to want a middle ground combining enforcement with a touch of humanity.
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The former president took office with big plans to roll back Trump’s tough first-term immigration policies. That didn’t go well for him as border crossings skyrocketed, alarming the public. In February 2024, Bloomberg polling found a rising percentage of voters calling immigration the “single most important issue'” contributing to lagging numbers for Biden across the swing states he eventually lost.
By April, Harris polling recorded majority (51 percent) support for mass deportations. Thirty percent of Democrats and 46 percent of Republicans wanted to end constitutionally protected birthright citizenship.
Two weeks ago, in a very belated election post-mortem, The New York Times conceded that “as public concern over border security grew, partly in response to Mr. Biden’s own actions, his administration proved catastrophically slow to change course” and ultimately lost voters to his rival.
But that was then. Public attention is now occupied not by images of crowds surging across the border and crimes committed by undocumented immigrants, but by stories of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and often rough tactics. While federal officials have arrested some serious criminals—though the vast majority of those taken into custody have no criminal convictions and only about 5 percent have violent convictions—Americans hear far more stories about worksite raids that scoop up peaceful, hard-working laborers.
Rounding up gangbangers is popular. Separating families is not.
This week, The Marshall Project journalism nonprofit reported that “the Trump administration’s revival of family detention has swept thousands of children into ICE custody. At least 3,800 children under age 18, including 20 infants, have been booked since Trump took office.”
The public isn’t seeing what it expected and that’s affecting people’s opinions.
“As the Trump administration escalates its immigration enforcement efforts, 53% of Americans say it is doing ‘too much’ when it comes to deporting immigrants who are living in the United States illegally,” the Pew Research Center revealed this week. “That share is up from 44% in March.”
As you’d expect, there are sizable differences in views between supporters of the two major political parties. Eighty-six percent of Democrats and independents who lean toward that party oppose the Trump administration’s immigration policies, compared to 20 percent of Republicans and Republican leaners. But opposition is rising in both groups.
Importantly, “47% of Hispanic Republicans say the administration is doing too much, up from 28% in March.” That’s a large part of the electorate that drifted in the GOP’s direction in the last election and could just as easily move away.
This isn’t a sudden shift. By July, Gallup found that support for mass deportations had plunged “with 38% now favoring this as the administration is attempting it, down from 47% last year when it was a Trump campaign promise.” The firm also reported that “support for allowing undocumented immigrants to become U.S. citizens has risen to 78%, up from 70% last year.”
In the same survey, “a record-high 79% of U.S. adults say immigration is a good thing for the country.”
That month, 52 percent of respondents called Trump’s approach to immigration policy “too harsh” in The Economist/YouGov polling.
That is, the Trump administration quickly lost the American people with its approach to border enforcement and hasn’t gained them back. Voters didn’t like Biden immigration policies and opted for something different—as a candidate, the current president was very open about what he planned to do—but they don’t like harsh enforcement any better than they cared for near-total lack of enforcement.
So, what do people want when it comes to immigration?
Obviously, Americans like a welcoming policy towards immigrants—so long as they follow the rules. That can be a problem, given that the legal path to settling in this country is almost impossible to navigate. A 2023 Cato Institute report by David J. Bier noted that “fewer than 1 percent of people who want to move permanently to the United States can do so legally” and that “immigration is now prohibited in a similar way to alcohol during Prohibition.”
Unfortunately, most people don’t realize that only a very fortunate few can find a legal path to entry.
Americans also agree with the president’s occasional promise to deport “the worst of the worst.” In the recent Pew poll, 97 percent of U.S. adults favor deporting those who are in the country illegally and have committed violent crimes. Fifty-two percent of respondents support deporting undocumented immigrants who commit nonviolent crimes.
That’s a policy with a solid base of support. But, as mentioned above, according to the most recent data crunched by Cato’s Bier, only about 5 percent of those detained had a violent criminal conviction. “Nearly three in four (73 percent) had no criminal conviction.”
Americans want border enforcement. But they’re not overall hostile to immigration—they favor increased legal immigration. They want ICE to target human predators who crossed the border illegally, not workers and their families.
So, there is an opening for a middle ground on border enforcement between Biden’s dereliction of duty and Trump’s iron fist. Arresting and deporting dangerous criminals while creating a credible legal path to immigration could win favor with the American people.
