Roughly half of voters support President Trump’s deportations and his handling of the border with Mexico, but a sizable majority believes that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has gone too far, according to a poll from The New York Times and Siena University.
Fifty percent of voters said that they approved of the Trump administration’s deportations of people living in the country illegally, while 47 percent opposed them. The president’s handling of the southern border was viewed favorably by 50 percent of voters.
But after a year in which Mr. Trump sent large numbers of ICE officers to conduct raids in several largely Democratic-controlled cities, prompting widespread protests and scenes of chaos on the streets, a wide majority of voters takes a dim view of the agency.
Just 36 percent of voters said they approved of the way ICE was handling its job, according to the poll, while 63 percent disapproved — including 70 percent of independent voters. And 61 percent of voters said that ICE had “gone too far” in their tactics, including nearly one in five Republicans.
The poll was conducted after the killing of Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman who was shot in Minneapolis by an ICE officer.
Overall, when voters were asked about how Mr. Trump has handled immigration, 58 percent said that they disapproved and 40 percent said that they approved.
The share of voters who voiced approval for its handling of immigration has dropped slightly since the beginning of Mr. Trump’s second term, according to the Times/Siena poll. And the share of voters who said that they “strongly disapprove” of Mr. Trump’s handling rose to 48 percent, up from 39 percent last April.
More than one in 10 voters named immigration or immigration enforcement when asked about the most important problem facing the country today, according to the poll.
Latino voters were more likely than Black or white voters to identify immigration as the most important problem facing the country. But more Latinos said that they saw the economy as more important. Latino voters were almost evenly divided on Mr. Trump’s handling of the border between the United States and Mexico, but they overwhelmingly disapproved of ICE tactics and said that the agency had gone too far.
Rogelio Salinas, a 59-year-old corrections officer in Lake Jackson, Texas, said that while he believed the country needs strong immigration law to ensure that migrants “do it the right way,” he has balked at the administration’s approach.
“There’s a way to go about it,” he said. “What they’re doing is just, it’s way too much, and it doesn’t need to be done.”
Mr. Salinas, who did not vote in the 2024 election, and is not registered with either party, said that he was particularly frustrated by videos and reports of immigration officers questioning people’s citizenship for no clear reason.
“They’re just ‘Hey, where are you from?’” he said. “So I’m scared. If I go out in town, I’m like: ‘Oh my God, I’m just glad ICE isn’t prevalent in our area.’ ”
Strong partisan divides remain on the issue. Overall, 84 percent of Republicans approve of the administration’s handling of immigration, while 95 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents disapprove.
Camille Baker contributed reporting.
Jennifer Medina is a Los Angeles-based political reporter for The Times, focused on political attitudes and demographic change.
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