Dan Pfeiffer says immigration isn’t the magic bullet they think it is:
Immigration is the defining issue of Donald Trump’s political life. His idiotic but evocative promise to build a wall fueled his 2016 campaign. His first term was defined by the cruelty of putting kids in cages. He won reelection largely because of anger over how Biden and Harris handled the border.
The horrifying videos of masked ICE agents terrorizing communities are now the signature images of Trump’s second term.
While revenge and graft seem to be Trump’s greatest passions, it’s his revanchist, extreme anti-immigration agenda that motivates the people around him. Stephen Miller speaks in apocalyptic terms about immigrants destroying American culture. The Department of Homeland Security is amplifying white supremacist dog whistles. The policy hacks are pulling every lever of government to expel as many legal immigrants as possible and treat anyone undocumented with maximum cruelty.
Guess what?
Trump began his term with broad support on immigration. In the 2024 exit polls, he held a nine-point advantage over Kamala Harris on the issue and won 12 percent of voters who said immigration was their top issue—by 80 points.
At the outset of his presidency, his immigration approval was in the low 50s, with disapproval in the low 40s. But as the true nature of his mass deportation agenda has become clear, his numbers have fallen. Today, Trump is more than three points underwater.
As a general rule of politics: you don’t want to be underwater on your “best issue.”
Especially when you’re underwater in double digits on all the other issues people say are most important to them.
A revealing Puck/Echelon Insights poll:
ICE Tactics Are Deeply Unpopular
- Only 34% support ICE agents wearing masks in public.
- 52% of independents oppose masked ICE agents.
Voters Don’t Trust Who ICE Is Targeting
- 47% say ICE is going after peaceful people, not criminals.
- Independents are 35 points more likely than Republicans to believe ICE is targeting non-threats.
Support Drops When Voters See How Deportations Happen
- 45% say deportations make them feel safer overall.
- But when deportations are described as “ICE raids in public spaces,” only 36% feel safer—34% say less safe.
They should feel less safe. These thugs are going after anyone they think is in their way and being an American citizen of any race is no barrier.
He says that Trump’s strategy of showing the images of his crackdown work against him and Democrats should make sure people see them. He points out the obvious, as reflected in that Gallup poll above, which I haven’t seen anyone else do, mainly because they’re terrified at the term “pro-immigration.”
Trump’s mass deportation agenda is so cruel, so extreme, and so visible that it is actually making Americans more pro-immigration.
And that means, Democrats could “restructure and reform ICE from the ground up, purge its leadership, end the cruelty baked into its enforcement practices and pass comprehensive immigration reform that secures the border and provides a path to citizenship for millions.”
I suspect that all the strategists are freaking out at the very idea since they believe that Democrats must avoid even thinking about any issue for which they (erroneously) believe the Republicans have an advantage. But truly smart pols would be looking to the future and casting off the pre-cooked assumptions about Republican dominance. This should be one of the issues they jump on.
Most Americans don’t want to live in a police state and they don’t like to see militarized thugs on their streets brutalizing people with impunity. If we manage to live through this phase, they need to realize that this is their advantage.