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Trump and Stephen Miller Thought Immigration Was Their Winning Issue. They Were Wrong.

The more extreme and visible their deportation agenda becomes, the more the American people are turning against it.

Dan Pfeiffer

Oct 29

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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.

Immigration has long been Trump’s political cudgel—used to beat Democrats into submission. The whole premise of high-profile ICE raids, complete with social media crews in tow, is to bait Democrats into a debate on what Trump believes is his strongest issue. He wants to position himself on the side of “law and order” and paint Democrats as defenders of criminals and drug traffickers. This is the reflexive response—delivered with maximum smugness—to any criticism of ICE’s conduct.

Cut off from reality in a media bubble of their own making, Trump and Republicans think this strategy is working. They believe the public supports masked ICE agents roaming cities and terrorizing anyone who isn’t white.

They are wrong.

Trump is losing the immigration argument—and that weakness is likely to hurt Republicans in the midterms and could have major long-term consequences for American politics.

Trump’s Immigration Approval Is Dropping

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...