The WSJ Poll, the “One Big Beautiful Bill”, and the Media Narrative

A key trope being peddled in much of the media is that Donald Trump’s “mass deportation” plan is turning off American voters.  But how accurate is that claim?  For context, look at the latest Wall Street Journal poll and the immigration spending provisions in H.R. 1, the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA).  

The OBBBA. As the National Immigration Forum (NIF) explains, the OBBBA “transforms America’s immigration system through significantly increased funding for both border security and interior immigration enforcement, including dramatically expanded detention and deportation operations.”

“Significantly increased funding” may be an understatement in this context, given that the act includes $70 billion over four years for border security needs and $75 billion over that same period for ICE interior enforcement.

On the border, that includes more than $46 billion for infrastructure (including but not limited to fencing and other barriers); $5 billion to improve CBP facilities; more than $4 billion for new Border Patrol agents and staff; $6 billion-plus for new technology (primarily at the ports); and $12 billion to pay back states and localities for their border efforts.  

Turning to the interior, the OBBBA ponies up: nearly $30 billion “for ICE enforcement and deportation activities, including personnel expansion, transportation and removal operations, and specialized enforcement activities”, as well as to expand the 287(g) program; $3.5 billion to fund state and local immigration-enforcement partnership grants to be paid through DOJ; and—most significantly, “$45 billion for detention capacity including family detention facilities”. 

All these activities were underfunded or impeded during the Biden administration, which is why DHS is digging itself out of a hole in ramping up its enforcement efforts now.

On the infrastructure front, note that President Biden put a “pause” on border wall and associated construction on his first day in office (to the acclaim of the then-president of Mexico), and then only slowly released funding in dribs and drabs when the border became a political liability. 

Border Patrol agents left in droves as the Biden migrant surge swelled, and when the DHS Office of Inspector General (DHS OIG) surveyed CBP personnel in advance of a May 2023 report on DHS employees’ “health and morale”, they claimed “Border Patrol stations and ports of entry are severely understaffed and running with a ‘skeleton crew’ to ensure migrants are processed and port lanes remain open”. 

As for facilities, I toured the Border Patrol Checkpoint on State Route 94 (a winding two-lane road popular with smugglers) in Jamul when I was at the California border in March, and it was a shambles, with the main sign leaning up against a fence and rot everywhere.

I pitied the agents who had to work there and told them as much; they were just used to it.

And there is no doubt that certain Southwest border states deserve recompense for their expenditures during the Biden years to backfill Border Patrol.  

Texas alone spent $11 billion on its Biden-era border-security initiative, “Operation Lone Star”, and having seen the state’s efforts up close, I can assure you that if hundreds of Texas state troopers had not been deployed for months at a time along the Rio Grande, there wouldn’t have been much border left on election day. 

That said, Border Patrol agents were in clover compared to their colleagues at ICE. 

The Biden administration started out by first placing a 100-day hold on most deportations (quickly blocked by a federal judge because it was so extreme) before imposing onerous restrictions on ICE investigations, arrests, detentions, prosecutions, and deportations of any but the most heinous of alien criminals.

In December 2024, I detailed those Biden policies and the impact they had on criminal alien arrests and removals (in particular), but consider that the Houston ICE Field Office alone recently nabbed 214 illegal aliens charged with or convicted of sex offenses involving minors, and that many (if not most) were known to ICE and removable under Biden, but remained on the streets.

In June, NBC News downplayed ICE’s enforcement efforts, complaining that of “a total of 185,042 people arrested and booked into ICE facilities” between October 1 and May 31, the agency had only: 

arrested 752 people convicted of homicide and 1,693 people convicted of sexual assault, meaning that at the absolute most, the Trump administration has detained only 6% of the undocumented immigrants known to ICE to have been convicted of homicide and 11% of those known to ICE to have been convicted of sexual assault. 

That’s a homicide rate of more than 406 per 100,000 — 70.5 times the U.S. national average of 5.76 per hundred thousand, and nearly 10 times the rate in Memphis, Tenn. (America’s current murder capital).       

Given that, I’m not sure NBC News proved its point, but curiously I don’t remember the outlet calling on the prior administration to remove all 13,099 aliens convicted of homicide on ICE’s non-detained docket before the election — though those aliens prove the agency is digging itself out of a man-made hole now.  

Detention. ICE must house those arrested aliens somewhere before they are removed, which brings me to the $45 billion dollar alien detention boost in the OBBBA.

As I noted in March 2022, the Biden administration asked Congress to cut ICE detention beds by roughly a quarter (to 25,000 beds from 34,000 beds then funded) in its FY 2023 budget request.

Congress didn’t go along, nor should it have given that Border Patrol agents apprehended a record 2.2 million illegal migrants in FY 2022.  
Biden ended family detention in December 2021, and unaccompanied alien minors are not amenable to ICE detention, but that 2.2 million figure included more than 636,000 single adults who were processed under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) in lieu of expulsion under Title 42.

The INA mandated that all of those 636,000 adult migrants be detained, but the Biden budget request meant there would be just one bed for every 25.44 illegal entrant, not counting for the handful of hardcore criminals ICE was detaining at the time.  

Biden plainly wanted to starve ICE instead of asking Congress to amend the INA to his tastes, but Congress instead kept detention funding static at 34,000 daily beds, where it remained until this year.

Criticisms. Thanks to the OBBBA, ICE can now expand its detention resources to meet these challenges, but there are plenty of critics in politics and the media who complain the agency is detaining too many aliens now. 

Consider the following, from that NBC News report: 

The administration has recently given mixed messages about whom it is targeting, bouncing between saying it is going after violent criminal immigrants and widening its scope to anyone who is in the country illegally.

But the administration’s efforts to detain immigrants who are not criminals have begun to raise concerns with [Rep. Tony] Gonzales [R-Tex.], as well as some of his Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill.     

Or this, from California Democratic Sen. Tony Padilla, who alleged Trump: 

claims to be prioritizing those violent, dangerous criminals. . .. The numbers suggest otherwise: the vast majority of people that have been detained, and even those deported, have no serious criminal conviction history. If it was only going after dangerous criminals, there would be no debate, no discussion. I agree with that. But the fact of the matter is, the vast majority of those being detained are the same people who were deemed essential workers at the end of the first Trump Administration at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s a cruel, cruel irony.

Or the following tweet from Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D): 

I’m demanding immediate answers from ICE about the arrest of a Milford High School student yesterday, where he is and how his due process is being protected. 
 

The Trump Administration continues to create fear in our communities, and it’s making us all less safe. pic.twitter.com/8L0bxI7L8V

— Governor Maura Healey (@MassGovernor) June 1, 2025

DHS responded to the governor’s tweet with one of its own: 

ICE officers engaged in a targeted immigration enforcement operation of a known public safety threat and illegal alien, Joao Paulo Gomes-Pereira. Local authorities notified ICE that this illegal alien has a habit of reckless driving at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour… https://t.co/ujNS3NyBvs

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) June 2, 2025

Democratic elected officials have begun using ICE detention facilities to make statements opposing ICE enforcement, most recently in Maryland, where they were turned away.  

One of the congressmen in that party, Rep. Johnny Olzsewski (D-Md.) tweeted thereafter: 

My Maryland colleagues and I were DENIED ENTRY to the Baltimore ICE detention center—despite following all legal requirements.

Congress has a legal right to inspect ICE facilities. Amid reports of inhumane conditions, this refusal is alarming.

We won’t stop fighting for… pic.twitter.com/HTM5Hf5XyB

— Rep. Johnny Olszewski (@RepJohnnyO) July 28, 2025

Which drew the following response from DHS: 

Congressman, if you need a photo op with the violent criminal illegal aliens you are protecting—schedule a TOUR.

As for visits to detention facilities, requests should be made with sufficient time to prevent interference with the President’s Article II authority to oversee… https://t.co/2ImpRKTi0I

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) July 28, 2025

On July 26, DC magazine Politico ran an article headlined “ICE Risks Overplaying Its Hand. We’ve Seen It Happen Before”.

It argued:

Think what you will of the administration’s immigration agenda, but there is little denying that mass deportations on the scale that Trump and [White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen] Miller envision will necessarily require brute displays of force that may shock the public conscience, even among people who theoretically support the broader goals.

Interestingly, that article was topped by an illustration “showing a group of four Black men — possibly freedmen — ambushed by a posse of six armed white men in a cornfield”, described by Politico as “a condemnation of the Fugitive Slave Act from 1850”.  

Perhaps “shocking the public conscience” was the reason for its inclusion.  

The Wall Street Journal Poll. Against this backdrop, consider the results of the latest Wall Street Journal poll.  It was conducted by Impact Research and Fabrizio Lee, which surveyed 1,500 registered voters between July 16 and 20.   

Question 27 asked: “Do you think President Trump’s efforts to deport illegal immigrants have gone too far, not far enough, or are they about right?”  

In response, 51 percent of those surveyed stated that Trump is going “too far”, 23 percent “not far enough”, and 24 percent said Trump’s deportation efforts were “about right”.

In question 29, respondents were asked whether the Trump administration was “doing what is necessary to deport as many illegal immigrants as possible to deter people from coming here illegally and getting people to self-deport” or instead was “crossing the line by deporting people without proof they are here illegally, ignoring the courts when they tell them to stop, and denying people a hearing”.  

In response, 53 percent chose “crossing the line”, 45 percent said the administration was “doing what is necessary”, and 2 percent either didn’t know or refused to answer.  

Those responses would appear to offer some limited support for Politico’s assessment, but note that in both instances, nearly half of those polled supported the president’s deportation policies.  

The same is true among the responses to question 16c, in which 48 percent of those polled supported the job Trump is doing with respect to immigration (39 percent “strongly”) while 51 percent disapproved (42 percent strongly).  

In question 16d, however, respondents were asked whether they approved or disapproved of the job that Trump is doing with respect to “illegal immigration”, and the responses flipped: 51 percent approved (41 percent strongly); and 49 percent disapproved (40 percent strongly).

Respectfully, Trump isn’t doing much with respect to legal immigration that his predecessors didn’t do (or that the law requires), so perhaps a portion of the American electorate believes that ICE is arresting legal aliens, as well.

The most telling answers, however, are in response to questions 19c and 19d.

The former asks, “between the Democrats in Congress and the Republicans in Congress, who in your opinion is BEST ABLE to handle immigration”?

In response, 45 percent of those polled picked the GOP conference, just 28 percent said Democrats, 8 percent trusted “both equally”, and 17 percent responded, “Neither”.  

In other words, by a 17-point margin, voters trust congressional Republicans more than Democrats to deal with immigration in general.  

Question 19d asks a slightly different question, however: “between the Democrats in Congress and the Republicans in Congress, who in your opinion is BEST ABLE to handle illegal immigration”?

Nearly half, 48 percent, of respondents said congressional Republicans were best able to handle the issue, compared to less than a quarter, 24 percent, who trusted congressional Democrats (8 percent said “both equally”, but this time, 19 percent said “neither”).  

That’s a 24-point margin in favor of congressional GOP handling of illegal immigration, larger than Republicans’ 10-point edge over Democrats on inflation, their 12-point advantage on the economy, or their 7-point differential on tariffs.  

In other words, “immigration” — legal and otherwise — is the congressional GOP conference’s best issue.  

Note that this poll was conducted less than three weeks after the House and Senate passed the OBBBA without a Democratic vote in either chamber (Republican Sens. Susan Collins (Me.), Rand Paul (Ky.), and Thom Tillis (N.C.) voted against, as did GOP Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.) and Thomas Massie (Ky.)). 

As explained above, that bill provides $75 billion combined for immigration enforcement, and notably $45 billion for ICE detention.  If what that agency is doing under Trump truly “shocks the conscience” of U.S. voters, the electorate would be turning on the congressional Republicans funding it.  

But, as the Journal poll shows, voters aren’t doing that at all; if anything part of the reason why the GOP has a 10-point edge on the Democratic party in terms of total favorability in that poll (43 percent favorable view of the Republican party compared to 33 percent favorable view for Democrats) likely has to do with what Trump is doing to enforce the immigration laws.

Immigration is a sometimes emotional topic, but despite what appears an effort by Trump critics (both elected officials and in the media) to portray ICE in the most unpleasant of terms, American voters still prefer the immigration laws to be enforced —  especially after seeing the alternative over the last four years.