Washington, DC — Today, America’s Voice convened elected leaders, a leading pollster, and policy experts ahead of next week’s State of the Union address to discuss the mounting harms and growing unpopularity of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda. Speakers discussed the consequences for communities, the economy, children and families, and the broader political and policy landscape on immigration heading into 2026.
Rep. Rob Menendez (NJ-08) said: “In the lead-up to November 2024, the president laid out a vision of immigration enforcement that was supposed to target violent criminals… but what we see every single day is something much worse. We see mothers, fathers, and children with no criminal records ,people who have contributed so much to our communities, being swept up and forced to live in fear. The threat is real today. The harm is real today. But we are not looking at the end of it, we are looking at the expansion of it. They are simultaneously trying to create a larger undocumented population and then funnel that population into an expanded mass detention system across this country. This is going to take the entire country standing up and saying, ‘This is not who we are as America.’”
Julie Blaha, Minnesota State Auditor, said: “There are plenty of numbers that show the impact of this surge, and how that impact goes well beyond the individual incidents people may have seen on TV — the effects are rippling through our entire economy and will be for years to come. Our local businesses were losing $10 to $20 million in sales per week in just those two months. About 1,000 immigrant-owned businesses lost a total of $46 million in a single January. Even with conservative estimates, the cost of deployment was at least $200 million, about $3 to $4 million per day, and when you include detention and other costs, you can very reasonably say we are at least at $230 million in just two months. Chaos is costly.”
Nick Gourevitch, President of Research & Insights at Global Strategy Group and pollster for Navigator Research, said: “ICE actions have been a massive news event that was experienced across the country — nearly 90 percent of people say they’ve seen videos of what’s going on with ICE in Minneapolis, including 47 percent who say they’ve seen many videos. And it’s having a real impact on opinion. Right now, ICE’s numbers are deeply negative at 36 percent favorable and 58 percent unfavorable, and 60 percent of voters say ICE has been too aggressive in its approach. There’s also a huge disconnect between what people want and what they believe is happening — about two-thirds of voters say deportations should mainly target people with criminal convictions, but they think enforcement is broadly targeting everyone.”
Wendy Cervantes, Director of Immigration and Immigrant Families at the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), said: “Between family detention camps and violent immigration raids, the Trump Administration’s anti-immigrant attacks have been particularly devastating to children. More than six million children are living in fear of losing a parent to detention and deportation—and an unknown number already have. Children are also losing access to health care, food assistance, housing, child care, and other critical support due to policies that restrict access for kids in immigrant families or cut funding to essential programs. Instead of listening to the president’s anti-immigrant hate speech in the State of the Union address, Congress must listen to the needs of our nation’s children and families. For the sake of our kids, we need ICE and CBP to be defunded, pulled out of our communities, and for family detention to be ended. If we really cared about children, we would invest in health care, child care, and other services that support them and their families, rather than funding a mass deportation operation.”
Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice, said: “We’re a few days away from the State of the Union address, where we expect to hear the same lies from Donald Trump that helped pave the way for him to win the White House again. We’ll also most likely hear a made-up version of what has been happening across our cities and states the last year. But let me be clear: Trump’s mass deportation agenda has made us poorer, weaker, and less safe. President Trump and Stephen Miller’s campaign of terror has brought destruction and chaos to our cities, where citizens and non-citizens alike are living in fear. The silver lining is the fact that Americans of all political backgrounds are recoiling from the violence and saying enough is enough. What used to be Trump’s number one issue is now becoming a political weakness.”
