The demonstrators cross the city center of Chicago on June 12, during the second day of demonstrations against the raids of immigration and customs (ICE) and the immigration policies of President Trump. Bearing signs reading “Abolish ice” and “more deportations”, thousands of people gather in solidarity with immigrant communities, singing justice and end to family separations.
Jacek Boczarski / Anadolu via Getty Images
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Jacek Boczarski / Anadolu via Getty Images
The political messaging on immigration goes far beyond the expulsion of people without legal status.
There is a big difference, for example, by pleading for a stronger border security and by starting hardened criminals of the country, in relation to the expulsion of cooks and construction workers – and to send national guards and even marines in response to demonstrations (when local officials did not ask for it).
Trump’s expulsion policies have turned to workplaces, while immigration and customs application are trying to reach the goal of the White House of 3,000 deportations per day. But that presents a potential political problem for Trump.
The aggressive approach to deportations is to give Democrats a unifying message in opposition to Trump. But the party is always faced with long -term problems when it comes to presenting a vision of immigration policy that would give Americans trust them by rendering them instead of the Republicans.
What does the survey of public opinion say?
The survey on specific aspects of immigration policy is sparse and somewhat conflicting.
In general, people support President Trump’s immigration plans more than his economic plans. And several surveys have clearly shown in the past year that people trust Republicans more than Democrats to manage immigration.
But surveys this week have shown different results, especially in light of Trump’s response to demonstrations:
–A CBS surveyLed before the demonstrations in Los Angeles, found that 54% approve its expulsion policies.
-A Quinnipiac surveyOn the other hand, led at the time of the Los Angeles demonstrations in opposition to the raids of immigration and customs in the workplace, from June 5 to 9, showed 56% of disapprove of the treatment of deportations by the president.
–Reuters / Ipsos found that 50% of people disapproved of Trump’s response to demonstrations so far, while 35% have approved. Forty-eight percent thought Trump should deploy the military to give order to violent protests, 41% did not do so. By margin of 49% to 40%, they also declared that he had gone too far with arrests of immigrants.
–AP / NORC found that 46% approve the management of immigration by Trump, greater than its global approval rating in the survey.
During its first mandate, the survey indicated a higher level of disapproval for Trump Immigration Management. Specific policies, such as the separation of families, were very unpopular.
But immigration certainly helped Trump in the presidential election in 2024, largely because the mood of the country has changed.
In 2017, only 35% said they thought immigration should decrease, Gallup found. But that jumped 20 points in 2024. It was the highest since October 2001.
It was also a different political moment – only one month after the September 11 attacks. But it was also the last time The southern border meetings were so high As in the last two years of the presidency of Biden.
Republican decline
The figures can be cut in several different ways, but it is a fairly good basic rule to look at the members of the congress in competitive districts to see how they react.
One of them is the republican representative David Valadao de California. He said in a Publish That although he condemns “violence and vandalism” seen in Los Angeles, he was “concerned” of the way in which the Trump administration has expanded his expulsion efforts.
He said that he “urged (the administration) to prioritize the abolition of known criminals on working people who have lived peacefully in the (central) valley for years”.
This has been taken up by other Latin Republican leaders, including representative Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, who is president of the conference republican conference in the congress.
“We all have to focus on condemned and criminal illegal foreigners”, ” Gonzales said on CNN Tuesday. “If we concentrate there and we do not go after the cow’s milk which is in time at 103 degrees – going to this type, and we go after the condemned criminal, I think we are on the right track.”
But there are many people in the White House who do not agree with this, including Stephen Miller. The presidential advisor is an architect of many Trump cultural war policies, including immigration, but also the position of the administration on transgender rights and diversity initiatives.
In January, the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told journalists if people were crossing the border illegally, they are intrinsically criminal.
“(I) f you are an individual, a foreign national, who illegally enters the United States of America, you are, by definition, a criminal”, she saidadding that while Trump believes the to focus should be on “criminal drug traffickers, rapists, murderers, individuals who have committed odious acts”, this “does not mean that other illegal criminals who have entered the borders of our country are out of table”.
After the raids of the interrupted workplace and the decline that followed from certain Hispanic members of the GOP, Trump seemed to be referring to the reception.
“Our great farmers and inhabitants of the hotel and leisure companies have said that our very aggressive immigration policy has very good long -standing workers, these jobs being almost impossible to replace,” said Trump on Thursday Its social media platform.
Trump – who employed immigrants for years in his hotels and golf courses, many of whom were in the country illegallyAccording to a 2019 survey of THE Washington Post,, made similar comments at a press conference later during the day.
“Our farmers are badly injured – you know – they have very good workers, they have been working for them for 20 years,” he said. “They are not citizens, but they turned out to be, you know, great. And we will have to do something on this subject. We cannot take farmers and take all their people and send them back, because they may not have what they are supposed to have, maybe not.”
Who was greeted by people like Valadao, who poster“Agricultural workers are the backbone of the AG industry, and I am happy to see President Trump understand the urgency of this issue.”
But there I have not yet been quarters of concrete in the way the ice leads deportations. The change of tone, however, shows – at least from the point of view of public relations – that the policy of this can be delicate. Although there is general support for the decrease in immigration after an increase in border passages, this does not mean that people want immigrants to be treated inhuman.
Democratic response
For Democrats, there are also challenges, but some are starting to feel that they merge around an immigration message, at least one in opposition to Trump.
“Voters’ lesson or signal is not to abandon immigrants,” said Joel Payne, a democratic strategist. “But what voters want is a clear and convincing policy on how you manage the country’s borders.”
Saikat Chakrabarti, a former chief of staff to the representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Dn.y., arises for the congress in San Francisco against the former president of the Nancy Pelosi Chamber. In general, he thinks that Democrats do not fight hard enough, especially in economics. But on immigration at the moment, he said he thought that the party and people like the governor of California Gavin Newsom have taken the good tone.
“I do not think that anyone in the country sees a mother being caught in a line of school collection by masked agents in not marked vans and thinks:” Ah, yes, that’s why I voted. This is what I want, it’s human “” said Chakrabarti. “I do not think it counts if you are progressive, moderate or republican. I think it’s just a basic common sense where we want the country to be.”
Of course, this does not mean that democrats through the spectrum have settled on a unified vision to know how to face immigration in the future if they were in charge.
“Democrats have not yet understood how to tell an affirmative and convincing story about immigration,” said Ramzi Kassem, who has worked on the Blanche House of Biden and teaches the right to the University of the City of New York. “And I think it was the fall of the Democratic Party on this issue.
“The fact that there is essentially a narrative emptiness on the question of immigration, and it is particularly dangerous, where the political opposition here – the republicans – has a fairly coherent and extremely negative message and a story to tell about immigration – and they continue to mark these themes at home every chance.”