How Popular Is Trump’s Immigration Agenda in Practice?

On July 17, Axios proclaimed “Trump’s immigration approval ratings sink to new lows”, suggesting the then-candidate’s popular border and deportation proposals on the 2024 campaign trail haven’t proved as politically successful in practice. If that and similar analyses are true, why does the latest poll from Harvard/Harris show that 75 percent of U.S. voters support “deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have committed crimes”? As sportscaster Warner Wolf used to say, “Let’s roll the tape.”

A Survey of the Headlines

It’s not just Axios promoting this theme.

Take a look at the following headlines: El Pais, August 1, “Latest polls show Trump’s popularity eroding due to the aggressiveness of his immigration policy”; NBC News, July 30, “How Trump’s poll numbers on immigration have shifted as he has enacted his agenda”; Brookings, July 29, “Americans are changing their minds about Trump’s immigration policies”; MSNBC, July 27, “Trump’s losing support fast on what used to be his most winning issues. Trump ran on immigration and the economy. Polls show most Americans don’t like how either are going.”

If true, this would not be the first time that proposals that sounded good in the abstract turned out not to be so popular in the concrete. There’s a saying on Capitol Hill: “Win a vote, pass a law. Lose a vote, make an issue”.

But is this an accurate portrayal of voters’ attitudes?

“Injustice Porn”

My erstwhile colleague Todd Bensman coined the term “injustice porn” at the outset of Trump II to describe: “‘news’ coverage and commentary that emphasizes hyperbolic, emotionally triggering government abuse allegations or migrant sobbing to generate headlines, spin up public outrage, and force government counteraction — before they can be proven false when no one cares much later.”

He used to be a reporter so he would know, and boy was he prescient.

Consider just the following tweet, from a reporter with the local NBC News affiliate in Washington, D.C.:

Gripping stuff, and besides the guy’s “not a criminal” and just wants what we all want: to “be here” and to “be with his family”.

Except, Fox News later reported, he was a Mexican national arrested in neighboring Fairfax County, Va., in January 2024 for one of the most egregious of crimes (“aggravated sexual assault of a child under 13”), which suggests he may not be the sort of a guy any of us wants near our family.

It later turned out the Fairfax County Commonwealth’s attorney never prosecuted the arrestee on those charges, for reasons the first reporter tweeted out on August 21:

That’s a common impediment in prosecuting child sex offenses, but regardless, the arrestee was a twice-deported alien who’s apparently on his way back home to Mexico.

Then there’s an August 17 article in Politico about “a group of masked law enforcement officers” who “arrested a moped driver” in Northwest D.C. The outlet continues:

Onlookers stood near a coffee shop and the entrance to a luxury condo building, recording the altercation on their phones; WaPo reporter Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff was among them. Shouts from the crowd that the officers — whose vests read simply “police” — identify the agency with which they were affiliated were dismissed. “Do I have to answer to you?” one officer barked back, his question rhetorical. “You’ve gotta answer to somebody,” yelled a pedestrian.

That cop got owned! Booyah!

The officers then “took the moped driver into an unmarked SUV and spirited him off, destination unknown”, but in a final indignity “the weekend brunch service” at the swanky nearby “Le Diplomate continued without interruption”.

Respectfully, I understand why outsiders hate D.C., but in any event, there was more to this story than unmolested salmon carpaccio and gougères. As DHS spokesman Tricia McLaughlin quickly tweeted:

Speaking of McLaughlin, here’s a tweet she issued just the day before:

“How the Media Influence Americans’ Support for Police”

I could go on with similar half-cocked and half-baked narratives vilifying ICE officers and arrests around the country, but you’ve likely seen them — they are legion. But are they having an impact?

According to an August 25 analysis, “How the Media Influence Americans’ Support for Police”, by Scott Mourtgos in City Journal, “how the news media frames incidents of force” in police incidents has shifted public opinion away from support for law enforcement.

Mourtgos explains that he “surveyed a nationally representative group of nearly 2,500 adults” and randomly showed them “four newspaper headlines about police use of force with one of five themes: protest-and-reform, race, national politics, official statements, or unrelated ‘control’”.

Thereafter:

Participants were … asked whether they approved of police use of force in three situations: to prevent an escape, to subdue an attacker, or, more broadly, whether they could imagine any circumstance in which they would approve of a policeman striking an adult male citizen.

…

The results were clear. Respondents who read protest-and-reform or race-themed headlines were about 7 percentage points less likely than those in the control group to approve of legally reasonable force. National politics headlines produced a smaller, less certain drop.

That shift was consistent for respondents from across the political spectrum, and ominously for McLaughlin and her office, Mourtgos added: “Official statement headlines (those from police or government-agency press releases) had little measurable effect.”

“What happens on the street matters”, Mourtgos concluded, “but so does how these events are portrayed. Over time, the media may reduce public support for legal uses of force — to the detriment of police officers and the communities they are sworn to protect.”

The Latest Harvard/Harris Poll

With that background, consider the results of the latest poll conducted by the Harris Poll and Harris X for the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard University, which surveyed 2,025 registered voters between August 20 and 21.

In that poll, half (50 percent) of respondents approved of the job President Trump is doing with respect to immigration — tied with “returning America to its values” as his second most popular issue.

His most popular issue? “Fighting crime in America’s cities”, one point higher at 51 percent. The Logan Circle brunch crowd may question whether “fighting crime” should even be a priority (particularly if arrests ever interfere with their enjoyment of their “Steaks Tartare du Parc”), but a majority of voters see it differently.

Those results are good for Trump, because aside from “inflation/affordability” (48 percent) and “restoring basic American values of merit and competence” (11 percent), “immigration” was the most important issue to respondents in the Harvard/Harris poll personally, at 10 percent.

Of course, immigration can mean different things to different people, from open borders to a complete crackdown.

My guess is that it’s more the latter than the former, and here’s why.

Harvard/Harris asked respondents whether they approved or disapproved of 15 different policies, ranging from eliminating fraud and waste in government to tariffs on China, Mexico, and India.

The second most popular policy on that list — just behind “lowering prescription drug prices for Medicare recipients and low-income patients” (a no-brainer, if possible) — is “deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have committed crimes”, favored by 75 percent of voters polled, including 63 percent of Democrats and 72 percent of Independents.

In other words, three-quarters of voters favor the arrests that media outlets highlight in their feature and “human interest” pieces.

In other words, three-quarters of voters favor the arrests that media outlets highlight in their feature and “human interest” pieces.

And the fourth most popular policy, trailing eliminating waste and abuse (73 percent approval), was “closing the border with added security and policies that discourage illegal crossings”.

That proposal met with approval from two-thirds (67 percent) of voters polled, including nearly half (49 percent) of Democrats and 65 percent of Independents.

Those two policies, criminal deportations and border security, are the main pillars of Trump’s immigration agenda, and are overwhelmingly popular.

Absent such consistent “ready-fire-aim” media reports on ICE street arrests of illegal immigrants, Trump’s approval rating on immigration would almost definitely be higher than the 50 percent claimed by Harvard/Harris. But those reports continue, with later clarifications as a footnote, assuming they appear at all.

The key takeaway from the Harvard/Harris poll is that American voters want a secure border and for ICE to remove criminal aliens — regardless of what they are reading in their papers, watching on their TVs, and seeing on X (Twitter).