With elections less than two months away, Americans have the chance to hold his chaotic, costly and deadly mass deportation agenda accountable at the ballot box
Recent polls show Americans decisively rejecting Donald Trump’s mass deportation, anti-immigrant purge as its devastating human toll mounts. Last month, Pierre Damas Bel, a college freshman with dreams of going into medicine, took his own life after the administration stripped him of legal status and shackled him. Not only is the mass purge an assault on our constitution and violence against our neighborhoods, it’s also hurting our wallets and local economies. In Florida, some Orlando restaurants have lost an estimated 40% of revenue following an exodus of immigrant staff members.
That’s the reality behind the numbers: a chaotic mass deportation agenda that’s making us poorer and less safe. And in poll after poll (see the full polling memo from America’s Voice here), the country is rejecting this lawless and dangerous purge. With midterms just weeks away, voters have the chance to hold this agenda accountable at the ballot box.
TRUMP KEEPS SINKING ON IMMIGRATION
Trump politicized immigration to win the presidency in 2016 (despite his businesses employing undocumented workers – but that’s another story). Under his second term, what was once perceived as his strongest issue keeps sinking. In one Economist/YouGov poll, 53-40% disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration – down sharply 11 points (51-40% approval) at the start of his second term. Even a poll from Fox News finds that voters now side with Democrats by a single point when asked which party would do a better job on immigration.
AMERICANS’ SUPPORT FOR ICE IS MELTING
The American public has been witnessing an emboldened ICE and is repelled, with the agency collapsing into one of the least trusted federal offices in the nation. That includes caving favorability numbers across every partisan group. In a second Economist/YouGov poll, a majority of Americans (54%) say they have little or no confidence in ICE, while only 22% express a great deal of confidence. 58% say ICE has used too much force.
MASS DEPORTATION IS HITTING AMERICANS’ WALLETS
The rapid growth in daily living expenses when it comes to everything from fresh produce to affordable housing has been fueled in part by the administration’s anti-immigrant obsessions – and working Americans are noticing. In a Morris Predictive Insights/Verasight poll, 68% agree the administration is focusing too much on deportations and not enough on fixing the economy and cost of living. By a 53-35% margin, Americans say mass deportation of immigrant workers is hurting the economy and raising costs, rather than protecting U.S. jobs. Asked about specific consequences, majorities call higher grocery prices from deported farmworkers (60%), children disappearing from classrooms (57%), and elderly people losing home care workers (55%) all “too far.”
MASS DEPORTATION DOES NOT MAKE US SAFER
Strong majorities of Americans say that the administration’s mass deportation agenda – which has prioritized ICE abductions over bringing to justice drug traffickers, domestic extremists, and child predators – is not making our communities any safer. In a PBS/NPR/Marist poll, by a 62-37% margin, Americans say ICE’s actions are making the country less safe – including half who say “much less safe.”
AMERICANS WANT COMMONSENSE, HUMANE SOLUTIONS
Legalization decisively beats deportation, with overwhelming majorities saying they continue to view immigration as a positive and believe that their undocumented neighbors deserve a chance to live and contribute here without the fear of family separation. In a Gallup poll, 73% of U.S. adults say immigration is good for the country. Majorities oppose deporting all undocumented immigrants (58%), while support for citizenship pathways remains high and stable: 81% for undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children and 75% for undocumented immigrants generally.
LATINOS VOTERS ARE SWINGING HARD AWAY FROM TRUMP
While economic concerns led some Latinos to shift to the GOP in 2024, these Americans are among the majority of voters recoiling from watching the administration’s mass deportation agenda play out in their communities and are now favoring Democrats on the generic ballot by wide margins. In a UnidosUS/BSP Research/Shaw & Co. poll, two-thirds of Latino voters disapprove of Trump’s job performance. Immigration enforcement now ranks as their second most important issue, behind only the cost of living, and ahead of jobs and the economy.
THE BOTTOM LINE: “Americans resoundingly reject the violence, chaos and lawlessness of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller’s assault on immigrants that impacts us all,” said America’s Voice Executive Director Vanessa Cárdenas. “They have built their political brand on their anti-immigrant mass deportation machine, and the American people have had a year and a half to watch it in action: masked agents terrorizing communities, families torn apart, people dying in custody and on the street. This terror hasn’t made us more safe. It hasn’t brought stability and prosperity. The stark fact is that the result of this unprecedented onslaught has instilled chaos and fear and helped wreck our economy. Poll after poll, in red states and blue, shows the country is rejecting this lawless and dangerous purge. Come November, we must hold this administration and their allies accountable.”
