President Trump is facing signs that his immigration crackdown is losing popularity with American voters as fallout grows from the fatal shooting of a Minnesota woman by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent this month.

Recent polling has found Trump’s approval on immigration at a low point and shown that even some Republican voters are critical of immigration officers’ approach.  

The poll numbers come as some high-profile figures on the right have criticized ICE in the wake of the Minneapolis shooting, underscoring the potential political liability for the party as it heads into the midterms. 

“This is the kind of political issue that can get out of control,” said Republican strategist Jason Cabel Roe. 

Immigration has long been one of the president’s strong suits, and he won his second term partly on the promise of tough border policies and mass deportations. 

But his administration’s aggressive moves have drawn sharp pushback from the left, prompted protests throughout the year and now appear to be dragging down his approval numbers. 

A new Reuters/Ipsos survey found American approval of Trump’s immigration approach at its lowest point since he returned to the White House. In an AP-NORC poll, just 38% of Americans approve of Trump’s immigration enforcement, down from a 49% high this spring. And a majority of voters in a recent CNN poll conducted by SSRS said ICE’s actions are making American cities less safe.

The polls come after ICE officer Jonathan Ross fatally shot Renee Good, 37, in Minneapolis earlier this month, marking a major flashpoint in Trump’s immigration crackdown and sparking protests across the country. 

Administration officials have argued Ross acted out of self-defense, alleging that Good was impeding federal law enforcement. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem swiftly labeled Good’s actions as “domestic terrorism.”

A 53% majority of voters in a Quinnipiac Poll said the Minnesota shooting wasn’t justified, including 92% of Democrats, 59% of independents and 10% of Republicans.

The Reuters survey found that a notable 39% of Republicans said officers should limit harm to others, even if they make fewer arrests as a result. 

“Immigration is an issue with a lot of nuance, and there’s no nuance in the Trump administration’s approach,” said GOP strategist Alex Conant. 

“Americans want to see immigrants that cause crime deported, but they’re much more tolerant of undocumented immigrants who’ve been here a long time and are contributing to the economy and otherwise not breaking laws,” he noted.

Another signal of frustration in the days since the Minneapolis shooting has come from a small handful of media figures popular on the right, even as Republicans in Washington have largely been supportive of the ICE operations.

Conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly warned that ICE “needs to deescalate.” And podcaster Joe Rogan, who boasts a right-leaning audience and backed Trump in 2024, questioned, “Are we really gonna be the Gestapo, ‘Where’s your papers?’ Is that what we’ve come to?” 

“Here’s the reality: the President campaigned on and won an election based on his promise to carry out the largest mass deportation operation in history – he’s keeping his promise and the American people are appreciative,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement to The Hill. 

The shooting incident has renewed some Democrats’ calls to abolish ICE. In an Economist/YouGov poll, a 46-percent plurality of respondents supported shuttering the agency, including 47 percent of independents and 14 percent of Republicans. 

A CNN/SSRS poll found that, among the 56% of respondents who labeled the shooting an “inappropriate” use of force, 9 in 10 said it “reflects bigger problems with the way ICE is operating.” 

“There’s been a drip, drip downward as far as approval on how [Trump] is handling immigration,” said Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy.

Malloy noted that more than 8 in 10 voters said they’d seen video footage of the Minneapolis shooting just days afterward, and that it could grow to have an even larger impact as coverage continues. 

Democratic strategist Eddie Vale said his party should seize on the issue heading into the midterms, arguing Trump “is in trouble” because of the administration’s hardline tactics.

“Whenever they get a chance to talk immigration or health care or the economy, they should [talk about it] because people are against Trump on all of it,” Vale argued.

Democratic strategist Anthony Coley said Democrats should frame the argument as anti-American. 

“What ever happened to love thy neighbor as thyself?” Coley said. “What Trump is doing on immigration isn’t about right vs. left. It’s about right vs. wrong. It’s immoral and anti-American and that’s how Democrats should talk about it.”  

Some Democrats, though, stress the party should be strategic in seizing on the controversy: A new memo from the center-left think tank Third Way cautions the party to “abolish ICE abuses — not ICE” to avoid the blowback that came with prior calls to “defund the police.” 

Some Republicans argue the winds will shift in the GOP’s favor when it comes to immigration. GOP strategist Ford O’Connell forecasted that Trump “is going to prevail on this issue” because Democrats “will go too far” with calls to curtail ICE. 

“Democrats think that this is going to be a winning issue for them, and they’re going to be wrong,” O’Connell said.

Still, Republican strategist Doug Heye said that this might be a problem for Republicans in the midterm elections because “they’ve backed themselves into a corner on this.” 

“They can oppose some administration policies — which leads [the media] to go mental with the ‘What does it say about Trump’s hold on the party’ – but they can’t challenge him on things that are core to his identity. And this is,” Heye said. 

White House border czar Tom Homan this week said the Trump administration needs “to be better at messaging what we’re doing out there” when it comes to immigration, arguing they face “a lot of false media.”  

Despite the signals of voter frustration, whether immigration and ICE actions remain a problem for the GOP in the midterms depends on what happens next, Republican strategists said. 

“It depends how the Democrats respond. I think if the Democrats become anti-ICE and anti-law enforcement, I think that that will only help Republicans. If instead Democrats use this opening to rebrand themselves as more middle-of-the-road on immigration … that could help them politically,” Conant said. 

Though Trump’s overall disapproval rating is reaching all-time highs as the immigration debate intensifies, Republicans “have plenty of time to claw some of this back” before November, said Scott Tranter, director of data science for Decision Desk HQ (DDHQ). 

“What will be interesting to me is if it affects some of the big primaries, which will have an effect on control. Like, how does this play in the Texas Senate primary in two months? … How does this play out in the Michigan open Senate race? Immigration is obviously a big issue,” Tranter said. 

The polling is a problem “in the immediate,” Roe said, but there will be “a thousand outrages” in the ten months until Election Day. 

“So it is an issue, but I imagine it’s going to get replaced by other issues. But it also depends on how things play out from here,” Roe said, crediting some of the anger over ICE to media coverage and blue state leaders not cooperating with the agency’s actions. 

Republican strategist Brian Seitchik, who worked for the Trump campaign in 2016, agreed with that sentiment. 

“This is short-term pain for long-term gain,” Seitchik said. 

Republicans running in the midterms “are simply going to have to weather the storm.” 

“There’s no magic to get around it,” Seitchik said. “All we can do is make Americans see the long-term benefit.”