Immigration should be a winning issue for Trump, so why is he losing public support? | Opinion
Immigration enforcement should have been a political slam dunk for President Donald Trump, but, as recent voter-approval polling indicates, more Americans believe he’s fumbling the issue.
That’s despite Trump winning the 2024 elections at least in part because of his tough immigration stance and former President Joe Biden’s mishandling of the border crisis. And border crossings are down under Trump.
As the president marked his 100th day in office this week, several polls about his handling of top issues have been released. The numbers vary slightly from pollster to pollster but the overall picture is not good for the White House. Trump’s overall approval rating is in under water and he’s lost support — including among Hispanics, a crucial voting bloc — since taking office in January. Critics of the polls say they are skewed against Trump, but even if that’s true, the trend isn’t good.
Trump also seems to be losing support for his handling of the economy, another issue on which he used to enjoy broad support. In a poll conducted by the conservative Fox News from April 18-21, for example, 56% disapproved his economic performance versus 38% who approved it.
Immigration is still the issue where Trump has some of his strongest polling numbers, and some polls show he has approval from most Americans on the topic, but even those numbers are starting to spell trouble. In a CNN survey, support for his immigration approach fell 6 points from March, with 53% still expressing confidence in his ability to deal with it. A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found a little over half of those surveyed disapproved of his handling of the issue.
Trump’s diminishing support might not be because Americans don’t want tougher immigration or border enforcement.
The problem might to be with the chaotic and often cruel way Trump is dealing with migrants.
Most Americans oppose how Trump is handling deportations, according to Fox News. A majority oppose the administration revoking visas from foreigners who protested the war in Gaza, according to an NBC News Stay Tuned poll. While most registered voters support deporting undocumented migrants, almost two-thirds oppose deporting them if they have lived in the U.S. for more than 10 years, paid taxes and had no criminal records, a Wall Street Journal survey found.
The takeaway from all these numbers? It looks as though Trump has gone too far on immigration.
The deportation of a Maryland man to an El Salvador prison, which the Trump administration has admitted was a mistake, and the lack of due process in the deportations of many others have marked Trump’s first 100 days in office.
While it’s a no-brainer that people with proven ties to gangs should be deported, it’s unknown whether hundreds of men sent to the Salvadoran prison actually belonged to Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, as federal officials say they do, or if they were targeted because of their tattoos. The men were not given a chance to challenge their deportations. Trump has evoked the 1798 wartime Alien Enemies Act, which gives the president sweeping authority to imprison and deport foreigners.
Trump may still be able to justify those swift deportations to the public, but it’s a lot harder to explain why he’s trying to take legal status away from hundreds of thousands of Haitians and Venezuelans who have Temporary Protected Status, given to them because their countries are in political and humanitarian turmoil. Or why he’s deporting Cubans — such as the Tampa woman detained at her immigration appointment — back to a regime that the Trump administration itself has re-classified as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Americans may back the deportation of criminals or faceless undocumented migrants. But when details of each case emerge, it’s often harder to justify why some of them did not deserve a chance to make their case to stay in the U.S. That Cuban woman, Heidy Sánchez, had a stable job, no known criminal record, a husband who’s a naturalized U.S. citizen and a 1-year-old daughter. She was trying to obtain her green card.
Such stories shouldn’t come as a surprise given Trump’s comments during his 2024 campaign about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country.” But it appears that, if the polls are correct, his actions are president have gone too far.
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This story was originally published April 30, 2025 at 2:17 PM.