A critical bloc of voters has taken a look at the harsh tactics deployed by federal agents in cities far from the U.S.-Mexico border and said: That’s not what I had in mind.
These voters, many of them Republicans, were in favor of President Donald’s Trump campaign pledge to “carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” with a focus on deporting criminals. And today, most still favor strong immigration enforcement. But they feel the Trump administration is focusing its immigration resources on the wrong targets, and on the wrong border.
Public and private polls had already showed plummeting support for the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement tactics — which have included deploying federal agents to major cities, as well as the detainment of children and American citizens — when federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, Saturday. Pretti’s death marked the second such killing in Minneapolis of a citizen who was not a target of a deportation order this month.
“Securing the border and removing people who are a threat or have a criminal record is common sense and popular. What voters are now seeing goes far beyond that mandate, and as a result, the public opinion pendulum is swinging back,” said Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster whose firm has done deep-dive research on immigration.
In other words, Americans voted in 2024 to stop the daily flow of thousands of undocumented migrants crossing the Mexican border, but the majority did not cast their ballots in support of masked agents storming neighborhoods, and detaining people — including citizens — who lack a clear connection to violent criminals.
The Trump administration’s initial messaging around Pretti’s death — which cast Pretti as an aggressor, a narrative refuted by video analysis by The Washington Post and other news organizations — appears to have added to frustration.
The New York Post’s conservative editorial board published a piece on Sunday written directly to Trump that began saying it was “time to de-escalate in Minneapolis, Mr. President.”
The editorial blasted Homeland Secretary Kristi L. Noem’s rushed declarations blaming Pretti for threatening the agents and noted that violent encounters with federal immigration officials were draining support for the broader border security effort.
“However noble the mission is to rid the country of the ‘worst of the worst,’ the broad support for it is now ebbing fast,” the New York Post wrote. “Mr. President, the American people didn’t vote for these scenes, and you can’t continue to order them to not believe their lying eyes.”
Indeed, as Soltis Anderson’s firm, Echelon Strategies, found,the tactics deployed by ICE agents, Customs and Border Patrol officers and others are so unpopular that they threaten to poison the political well for Trump and Republicans on an issue once seen as among the strongest for the GOP.
Echelon’s findings are in line from polls conducted over the last six weeks by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Fox News.
Asked how Trump has handled “the border between the U.S. and Mexico,” 50 percent of registered voters approved of the president’s action while 46 percent disapproved, according to the Times. And among those with “strongly” held views on immigration, those supporting Trump outnumbered those strongly disapproving.
But only 41 percent of voters approve of Trump’s handling of immigration overall, while 57 percent disapprove. The deficit between voters who support Trump’s handling of the southern border and how he’s managing immigration could be due to how poorly voters view ICE: Just 36 percent approve compared with 63 percent who disapprove. Only 24 percent strongly approve of ICE’s performance, compared with 55 percent who strongly disapprove.
The Journal had a similar finding: 53 percent of registered voters approve of Trump’s handling of border security, which is identical to the level of support he had on the issue back in April. But only 48 percent approve of his overall handling of immigration — and among those with the strongest views, the opponents outnumber the supporters.
These polls were conducted before Saturday’s killing of Pretti, 37, who died during a struggle with eight federal agentsas he was protesting their actions in Minneapolis. Outrage to that shooting has been so strong that it has appeared even in apolitical spaces.
Border agents were involved in Pretti’s shooting. They were about 300 miles from the border with Canada, and about 1,500 miles away from the border with Mexico — the one that most voters support having tough protection of.
Two weeks before Pretti’s death, a different group of federal agents killed Renée Good, also 37, in Minneapolis when she attempted to drive away from them after a verbal altercation. Neither Good nor Pretti were the targets of immigration enforcement.
The political revolt sparked by Trump’s immigration policy, and seemingly intensified by the shootings, is particularly troubling for a Republican Party facing political headwinds as its president has faltered on other issues, particularly the economy.
Republicans’ position on immigration and border security has long been politically strong, and many in the GOP have been hoping this issue would protect them heading into the 2026 midterm elections in November. Now, concern over crumbling support has left some Republicans unwilling to defend those shootings.
“No matter where you stand on immigration enforcement, the shootings show that what the country has been doing is not working,” Rep. Michael Lawler (R-New York), one of the most politically vulnerable Republicans, wrote in a New York Times oped with a headline calling on the GOP to “Wake Up After Minneapolis.”
Democrats are aware of this tipping point moment and are trying to avoid falling into past political mistakes of adopting slogans like “defund the police” or “abolish ICE” that, taken literally, are deeply unpopular.
Instead, their leaders want to keep the focus on how these federal agents are acting outside normal parameters.
“You can’t pepper spray American citizens. You can’t abuse and beat up American citizens. You can’t break in the homes of American citizens without a warrant,” Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (Mississippi), the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, told The Washington Post’s Marianna Sotomayor. “You can’t create a new standard. I mean, we are a nation of laws. We’re not some tinhorn dictatorship. But that’s how ICE is conducting its affairs, and that’s why you see this pushback.”
Last week, in a focus group of 14 swing voters from the critical battleground of Pennsylvania, almost half of the participants said that ICE had “gone too far” in the shooting of Good.
The focus group, led by Richard Thau of Engagious, a research firm studying voters who switched from Joe Biden in 2020 to Trump in 2024, had several voters dismayed with ICE.
Their descriptions ran from describing the “violence” as a “little too much” to those who questioned the “credentials” of the agents, who they said have bad training and “seem unprofessional.”
“These officers should be trained that you should never be shooting to kill,” said Grace P., a 60-year-old Republican woman.
Swing voters like Grace will determine which side wins in November, and that’s why Republicans like Lawler have started speaking out.
There’s a careful dance politically endangered Republicans must do, however. While they need to win swing voters, they also need to hold onto GOP voters. And so, they often craft their critiques not of Trump, but of his subordinates, whom they blame for failing him.
That’s why so many have focused on Noem, who has not enjoyed much support among Senate Republicans after a long stonewall over demands for her to testify before the Judiciary Committee.
In his op-ed, Lawler singled out the leaders of the Homeland Security Department and agencies under it such as ICE and CBP for testimony before House committees about their actions.
In a sign of separating himself from the overall GOP brand, Lawler also called for bipartisan legislation that would open a path to legal status for millions of undocumented immigrants who have no criminal record.
That was a mainstream Republican position 10 to 15 years ago, but Trump’s influence has drowned out that view.
In a congressional district that favored Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024, however, Lawler knows that his only chance at winning reelection is to thread the needle with voters who want both a tough border and a more compassionate ICE approach.
“We must be a nation of laws but also one that offers dignity and compassion to those seeking to pursue their American Dream,” he wrote.
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