The immigration backlash
Nothing creates sympathy for immigrants like persecution
I’ve written about immigration quite a bit over the past few decades. One of my consistent themes was that most Americans want a middle way. Most of us don’t want unfettered and uncontrolled immigration, but we also don’t want a massive and intrusive effort to round up and deport peaceful illegals who are integrated into communities as productive residents. In 2024, it looked like public opinion had shifted, but now there are signs that America is moving in the opposite direction.
Amid the Trump Administration’s YUGE growth of the police state and unprecedented efforts to track down and detain illegals of all shapes, sizes, genders, and ages, the backlash that I predicted a few months ago is already growing.
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A new Gallup poll shows a dramatic shift in attitudes towards immigration in just a few months. Among the findings in the poll, the share of Americans who want less immigration has plunged from almost 90 percent to 48 percent, a record high of 79 percent (including 64 percent of Republicans) say immigration is a good thing, and the share who support a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants has surged eight points to 78 percent.
I think multiple things can be true with respect to the immigration debate. I believe that most Americans want border security, and I do think that voters in 2024 responded to at least the perception that the border was out of control under Joe Biden.
On the flip side, I also believe that Americans are fine with detaining and deporting violent criminal illegals, but I don’t think that a majority either understood or believed what MAGA meant by “mass deportations.” Americans are seeing the ugly truth about that policy now, and it seems to be shaping the backlash in public opinion, much as Trump’s policy of breaking up immigrant families sparked voter anger in his first Administration.
In the current Administration, quotas for deportations have been tripled to 3,000 arrests per day as Trump tries to detain and deport as many immigrants as possible. Predictably, this means that ICE is spending less time tracking down violent criminals and smugglers and more time picking low-hanging fruit like a high school athlete detained at a traffic stop, the breastfeeding wife of a Marine, or people who show up to hearings required to maintain their asylum status.
The Cato Institute found that 93 percent of ICE detainees in FY 2025 had no violent convictions and 65 percent had no criminal convictions at all. While this may be fine with immigration hardliners who view crossing the border illegally as an unforgivable sin, the majority of Americans has a different opinion. A Pew poll from June found that the more heavy handed the Administration’s tactics, the fewer Americans approved. The country was split on even basic strategies like hiring more federal officers or using state and local officers for immigration enforcement.
Even more troubling, there is evidence that ICE is using racial profiling to detain suspected immigrants. Tom Homan, the White House “border czar,” recently suggested on Fox News, “ICE officers and Border Patrol don’t need probable cause to walk up to somebody, briefly detain them, and question them.” He went on to specifically state that a “totality of circumstances” including “location, the occupation, their physical appearance, their actions” could be used to make a decision to stop and question a suspect.
As a result a federal judge in Southern California ruled that officers must have “reasonable suspicion that the person to be stopped is within the United States in violation of US immigration law.” Stops in that jurisdiction can no longer be made solely on the basis of factors like ethnicity, spoken language, location, or occupation.
The big question is where we go from here. In the short term, the mass roundups and deportations of immigrants (both legal and illegal) will continue. An Administration that is tightfisted when it comes to things like cancer research is throwing unprecedented amounts of money at ICE with both hands. The $170 billion is Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” for immigration and border enforcement is more than twice as large as the US Marine Corps’ entire $57.2 billion budget request.
The MAGA immigration crackdown is both tone deaf and unpopular, but it is also at odds with Trump’s economic agenda. Thanks to the crackdown, there are fewer workers in many industries that rely on immigrant labor. Construction, agriculture, and hospitality industries are hard hit. The labor shortage could contribute to rising prices along with the tariff war. Immigrants are also sending more money back to their home countries, removing dollars from the US economy.
Like Biden and the Democrats, Republicans are badly overreaching with policies that are popular with their base but unpopular with the country at large. Immigration has long been a contentious issue, but it hasn’t always been a top issue. Voters might oppose the immigration crackdown while not necessarily voting with immigration forefront in their minds. If the immigration crackdown contributes to a slowing economy, however, the likelihood of bad electoral news for Republicans increases dramatically.
The current policies of the federal government and anti-immigrant right are reminiscent of some of the worst racist episodes of American history. Most of us viewed the waves of bigotry against Irish, Catholics, Eastern Europeans, Chinese, or the detention of Japanese-Americans in World War II with revulsion when we studied them in school, yet what is happening now is little different. (The bigotry against black Americans was much worse.) Trump’s immigration policies will probably be judged harshly both by voters at the polls and future students of history.
The ultimate irony might be that the visceral reaction to the ugliness of mass deportations and detentions of good, decent, law-abiding people may be what breaks the logjam for much-needed immigration reform. After seeing and rejecting the hardline answer, enough Americans may be ready to pressure their representatives that we finally create a system that works for immigrants, businesses, and communities. The shameful choice made by voters and the government might yet become something good.
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The current ICE officers need to be put on notice that the next administration will NOT defend them in court against all the shady crap that they are doing. If their supervisors aren't going to reign them in and have them comport themselves consistent with the U.S. Constitution, it's their individual responsibility to navigate that issue themselves.
Same goes for any contractors or vendors, like the ones ICE is using to build their Florida concentration camp.
Trump is a thin-skinned orange peel with no principles. So it should surprise zero people that he only wants to “do better” than Biden (or better yet, Obama) in the simplest way possible. And since he’s a simpleton, “larger number” = “better”. So every “illegal” is treated in the same way….be it drug dealer or fruit picker.
This should (and apparently does) appall most people who can simultaneously hold more than one concept in their craws: illegal immigration should be stopped; there should be a way to deal with those already here that takes some consideration into what they have done since they got here, even if it was illegally.
Hopefully, some of these people will make their displeasure known at midterms.