(Bloomberg Opinion) — For more than a decade, President Donald Trump has been scapegoating immigrants, decrying them as criminals and vermin and vowing to deport them by the millions.
The American people, by and large, aren’t buying it, nor should they.
A new Pew Charitable Trust poll shows that 65% of Americans support having undocumented immigrants stay legally if certain requirements are met. About half of those say a green card should be possible, and the rest say a path to citizenship should be available. The poll also showed that majorities oppose suspending most asylum applications, curtailing the Temporary Protected Status program, and conducting workplace raids — all actions the Trump administration has taken.
The reality is that Trump is out of step with Americans on this issue. After years of pounding away at immigrants, he has failed to persuade Americans that they are an invading force threatening their jobs and safety. When asked whether there should be a national effort to deport undocumented immigrants, only 31% of Americans replied yes.
Naureen Shah, who leads the American Civil Liberties Union’s immigration policy work, told me that “people are questioning the disconnect between Trump’s rhetoric on public safety and what’s happening on the ground.”
“You’re seeing ordinary communities subjected to these violent, scary ICE operations,” she said. “This is not what people signed up for and it’s starting to show up in poll numbers.” ACLU polling shows 56% of Americans oppose deploying troops to quell protests, as Trump has done in Los Angeles.
And although Americans want strong border security, they have little taste for an indiscriminate approach that sweeps up legal immigrants and citizens alike.
Under border czar Tom Homan, enforcement in the early months of Trump’s second term focused heavily on immigrants with criminal records and pre-existing deportation orders. Homan, who had performed a similar duty for the Obama administration, knew that while the numbers would not be huge, the impact would meet with public support.
Trump was openly dissatisfied with the results. There just aren’t enough criminals to come anywhere close to the numbers Trump wants. For that, you need to go after everyday workers — the line cooks, construction workers, farmhands and landscapers that fill myriad jobs across the country.
By late May, Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration policies, dressed down ICE’s top field directors. One official told the Washington Examiner that “Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested. ‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?’” the official said. Instead of the 660 arrests they’d been averaging daily, the new goal was 3,000.
The broader, far more brutal enforcement that followed has exposed to Americans the ugly reality of mass deportations. They don’t like what they see: A recent Fox News poll shows that 53% now disapprove of Trump’s immigration policies.
Miller’s approach just doesn’t work in an age of social media, which now is flooded daily with up-close videos of what on-the-street enforcement looks like. One recent video shows the middle-aged father of three Marines arrested at his landscaping job and beaten about the head and neck by masked agents. One of his sons, Marine veteran Alejandro Barranco, said his father, Narciso Barranco, 56, had lived in California since the ‘90s without legal status, but also without any criminal record. “He always taught us to respect, to love our country, to always give back,” the younger Barranco said, adding that he feels “betrayed.”
Polls also have some tough realities for Democratic leaders. The number of voters who support a border wall has been ticking up, the Pew survey found. Trump introduced the notion of a border wall (that Mexico would pay for) in his first campaign and has continued to extol it. Now, 56% of Americans favor it — a 10 percentage point increase from 2019.
Polls are not the same as votes and should not dictate public policy, but they can reveal some elements of a long-needed overhaul of immigration practices. That would require both sides to look past their talking points.
Trump, having succeeded at dramatically lowering border crossings, should shift his focus back to criminal removals. It would also serve him well — particularly among his modest but growing support among Hispanic voters — to create a limited path to legal status for those who have worked in the US and stayed on the right side of the law.
Democrats should acknowledge the legitimate strains imposed on border states and ports of entry during the Biden years, the public’s growing desire for a wall, and the need to find effective ways of dealing with visa overstays, which are responsible for a significant share of those here illegally.
Decades of failure to hammer out a functional immigration policy have led to where we are today: masked agents snatching anyone suspected of being here illegally, National Guard soldiers putting down protests, fields empty of workers, and raids that can leave lasting wounds in a community left wondering who will be taken next. That’s bad enough; our elected leaders shouldn’t wait to see what’s next.
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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Patricia Lopez is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. She is a former member of the editorial board at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where she also worked as a senior political editor and reporter.
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