Immigration is Donald Trump’s signature issue. It propelled him from Trump Tower to the Oval Office in 2016 and, along with the economy, again in 2024. But a question looms over his recent actions in Los Angeles: Will they cement his support as a can-do president on immigration? Or will he lose supporters due to overreach?
A cautionary tale lies in President Trump’s first term, when his “zero-tolerance” policy on illegal border crossings resulted in migrant children being separated from their parents. A public outcry arose over “kids in cages” and helped lead Democrats to victory in the 2018 midterms – then to Joe Biden’s win two years later. And yet, a big reason for Mr. Biden’s downfall and Mr. Trump’s comeback was a surge in illegal migration.
“There’s a split here,” says David Byler, chief of research at Noble Predictive Insights, a market research and polling firm based in Arizona, a swing state that helped elect Mr. Biden, and then reversed course and went for Mr. Trump last year. When the issue is border security, Mr. Trump does well, says Mr. Byler. When the focus is on the inhumane treatment of migrants, especially of people already here, he does worse. “That’s a split that you really need to keep your eye on.”
Why We Wrote This
Donald Trump’s political success revolves in part around his tough stance on immigration. His response to protests in Los Angeles will test whether he maintains public support.
At least in the short term, the Los Angeles situation plays to the president’s strengths of national security and immigration enforcement, says Mike Madrid, a California-based Republican consultant.
“The images coming out of Los Angeles are helpful for him,” says Mr. Madrid, who is also an expert on the Latino vote. “It ties very neatly the ideas about law and order, about an invasion, about people’s loyalties to foreign countries over the United States of America, about violence and safety.”
After isolated anti-immigration enforcement protests and violence last week, President Trump ordered up the National Guard without first consulting California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and then proceeded to deploy the guard to the Los Angeles area against his objections. The governor is challenging the deployment of the guard and about 700 Marines in court. A hearing is set for Thursday.
Meanwhile, peaceful protests have grown and spread to other U.S. cities, while instigators and opportunists have looted, graffitied, and attacked law enforcement. On Tuesday, Mayor Karen Bass announced an indefinite dusk-to-dawn curfew in a square mile of downtown. The Los Angeles police, with reinforcements from regional law enforcement and the California Highway Patrol, have arrested hundreds of people. Many were for unlawful assembly or curfew violation.
It’s too early to tell whether, in the long run, Mr. Trump is overplaying his hand in Los Angeles or with immigration generally, says Mr. Madrid. But immigration has become the president’s strong suit and his last remaining issue, where he’s got a majority of support, he says.
Exploiting Democrats’ bungles
It’s a weak issue for Democrats, who are also at a disadvantage without a leader in their midst – though Governor Newsom is seizing that role as attention focuses on him and his state. Democrats show a “real lack of understanding” about the saliency of the president’s core arguments, says Mr. Madrid, while “Most Americans still believe he’s heading in the right direction, doing the right thing on this.”
In a CBS News/YouGov poll conducted June 4-6, some 54% of Americans said they approved of President Trump’s deportation policy, and 50% approved of how he’s handling immigration. In a March poll by Pew, 66% of adults said arrests of immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally should be allowed at protests and rallies.
Since taking office, the president has, among other things, ended “catch and release,” in which unauthorized migrants apprehended at the border are released into the community to await immigration hearings; ended a humanitarian parole program for immigrants from distressed countries; deployed the military along the southern border; encouraged “self-deportation”; and introduced a new travel ban that bars nationals from 12 countries.
“He’s doing something that a lot of politicians do not do. He’s keeping his promise,” says Ron Flores, a Republican who is active in local political and education issues in Santa Ana, a heavily Hispanic community not far from Los Angeles. “This is one of the reasons why he won.” Santa Ana has also seen anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) protests that escalated into violence.
Mr. Flores says Latinos who voted for Mr. Trump are “tired” of Democratic tolerance of illegal immigration – from the flow of migrants under President Biden, to Mr. Newsom’s expansion of Medicaid in California to provide health insurance coverage to unauthorized migrants. That’s something the governor’s having to dial back, given a state budget deficit.
Sometimes, says Mr. Flores, he’s concerned about the humanity aspect of immigration enforcement, and that the president might be overplaying his hand. The Santa Ana local runs a food bank that feeds 1,000 people a month, no questions asked. Many of his clients are in the country without authorization. And yet, someone has to make the tough decisions on enforcement, he points out.
“Families are going to be separated, and that’s not new,” he says. “Trump is doing something that needs to get done. That’s why millions of people voted for him.”
Fewer border crossings, fewer deportations
Since Mr. Trump took office, illegal border crossings have dropped to a level much lower than under the previous administration. According to Customs and Border Protection data, Border Patrol encounters, a proxy for illegal crossings, were down 94% in February, March, and April along the southern border compared with the same period last year.
However, actual ICE deportations appear to be fewer under President Trump than under his predecessor so far. Approximately 40,500 immigrants were deported by ICE in February, March, and April of this year, according to NBC News, compared with 68,138 ICE removals for the same months last year under President Biden, according to ICE. However, the Department of Homeland Security has yet to publish comprehensive monthly immigration enforcement statistics, which include deportations, since Mr. Trump’s inauguration.
With the administration falling behind its reported goal of 1 million deportations this year, officials last week demanded that federal agents arrest 3,000 people a day, which would amount to more than a million a year. Immigrant advocates and many Democratic politicians strenuously object to sweeps, such as those that have happened in recent weeks at Home Depot, workplaces, and courts where migrants go to keep court appointments.
“People are terrified,” Mayor Bass said about the sweeps.
Democratic pollster Celinda Lake believes the president is at a “crossroads” on several issues, including immigration, with which, she says, he went too far, too fast. “Immigration is what holds his coalition together,” she says. “But the way he’s doing it, he’s alienating a lot of women, a lot of Latinos, and you’re seeing some backlash there.”
Indeed, cracks are starting to show. A YouGov poll on Tuesday revealed that a plurality of adults – 45% – disapprove of the president deploying National Guard soldiers to the Los Angeles area in response to protests over the federal government’s immigration enforcement. A similar amount – 47% – feels the same about the deployment of Marines, though a large chunk, around 18%, is “unsure” about both cases.
A national Quinnipiac poll looks more definitive. Taken June 5-9, the poll of registered voters showed 54% disapprove of the president’s handling of immigration, 43% approve, and only 3% are not sure. The results are similar on the subject of deportations.
Challenges of military escalation and immigration reform
The risk for President Trump, says Ms. Lake, is the “militarization” of immigration – and his presidency – as he prepares to celebrate his birthday and the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army with a military parade in Washington on Saturday.
“There’s a through line here from LA to the military parade,” she says. America doesn’t escalate things by sending in the military, she says. It doesn’t celebrate milestones with tanks – it brings out the high school bands. “This is just not how we respond to things.”
“What Democrats have to make this about is … the inappropriate use of the military against civilians,” she says. And they need to offer alternatives – an orderly border process and a road map to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants already in the U.S.
But immigration reform has been made “harder, if not impossible” because of Mr. Trump’s words and actions, says Maria Echaveste, a former senior White House official under President Bill Clinton and an expert in immigration and Latin America.
The politics around immigration have become more polarized since her days in the White House, says Ms. Echaveste, now at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law. And yet, given demographic shifts and other issues, the U.S. has a great need for immigrant workers.
“The reality is, substantively, we have to update our immigration laws,” she says.
Staff writer Caitlin Babcock contributed reporting from Washington.
