Washington, D.C. — Today, America’s Voice hosted a press call with leading pollsters from Equis, Third Way, and Navigator Research to walk through the year’s polling on immigration. Their findings point the same way: Americans across the political spectrum are rejecting the Trump-Miller mass deportation agenda. Speakers detailed how views have shifted over the past 18 months, why Latino voters and Trump voters are breaking away from the administration on immigration, and what Americans want instead: a secure border, enforcement focused on real threats, and legal status for immigrants who have built their lives here.
Alongside the call, America’s Voice released a new polling memo, “Weaker, Poorer, Less Safe,” showing that new polling from September and October confirms and deepens the public’s rejection of the mass deportation campaign.
“Trump ran on a promise to make America safer and bring costs down for working families. Instead, he’s built a mass deportation machine that’s tearing families and communities apart, and American families are footing the bill,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice. “For 18 months, Americans have watched this campaign unfold in their own neighborhoods: masked agents raiding workplaces, U.S. citizens handcuffed at gunpoint, families separated, people killed. And they have seen enough. Poll after poll across the political spectrum shows the public rejecting the Trump-Miller mass deportation agenda.”
“When we think back to 2024, the majority of Latino voters who supported Trump really did believe that he was going to target enforcement narrowly and focus on violent criminals. It is in the breaking of that promise that we have seen shifts away from Trump and Republicans, most notably among Latino voters,” said María Isabel Di Franco Quiñonez, Senior Research Director at Equis. “One of the top reasons cited for that movement has consistently been Trump’s immigration overreach, and it fits into a broader theme of broken promises from the campaign.”
“Voters have a much more nuanced view on immigration than our politics would suggest. The clearest finding from our research is that voters want both responsible enforcement and generosity toward immigrants. They want a controlled border, enforcement focused on criminals, and a pathway to legalization,” said Sarah Pierce, Director of Social Policy at Third Way. “The message that did by far the worst in our testing was the maximalist enforcement approach modeled on this administration’s. However unfortunate it is, this administration is proving to the American public and to our politicians that this approach to immigration enforcement doesn’t resonate with the American people.”
“Americans overwhelmingly see this administration as focused on the wrong priorities. Around 60% want more focus on inflation and the cost of living, but only 19% see President Trump and Republicans focused on that,” said Tina Tang, Director of Polling and Analytics at Navigator Research. “We are now tracking the highest level of Trump regret of his second term: one in four people who voted for him in 2024 now regret their vote. In our recent focus groups, the conduct of ICE came up organically as one of the top reasons. For many of these voters, the administration isn’t solving the problems they voted to fix, and its actions are creating new problems they never expected to face.”
Watch the full press call here.
