Gordon Parks High School student Airianna Chavez holds the Mexican Flag as she joins other students protesting against the fatal shooting of Renee Good on January 14 in St Paul, Minnesota. Photo / Joshua Lott, The Washington Post
Donald Trump won the United States presidency in 2024 in part by promising to end border crossings and deport criminals.
A year into his second term, as immigration agents and protesters skirmish in the streets of the Twin Cities, US public sentiment on immigration enforcement appears to be shifting sharply, according to recent polls.
Majorities of voters believe an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent was not justified in shooting a Minneapolis woman, disapprove of Ice’s work, and think the agency is making cities less safe, polls show.
Trump has been undeterred - his Administration flooded Minneapolis with more agents after the shooting, and the President threatened last week to invoke the Insurrection Act.
The clash over Ice comes as Trump and other Republicans fret that their party could lose their narrow control of the House of Representatives this northern autumn.
Ice’s aggressive operations have turned off much of the public and could create a new political liability for the GOP.
Aidan Perzana, 31, opposed the surge of Ice agents into his city last month. He bristled, he said, at the militarised styling of the agents, who drive unmarked vehicles, carry firearms and dress in fatigues, tactical vests and masks.
Perzana watched in horror out of his window as an Ice agent shot and killed Renee Good in her vehicle just outside his house.
“I wasn’t expecting it to happen right in front of me, but I’m not surprised it happened,” he said.
The shooting cemented his opposition to Ice, said Perzana, a data engineer for the state who described himself as being on the left. “It doesn’t seem to me like they’re operating sort of within the legal framework that we have set up,” he said.
A poll by CNN found 56% of adults did not consider the shooting an appropriate use of force, including 51% who said it reflected broader problems with Ice’s operations.
Similarly, a Quinnipiac University poll found 53% of registered voters believed the shooting was unjustified and 35% believed it was justified. And 57% disapproved of the way Ice was enforcing immigration laws.
In an Economist/YouGov survey, 50% of US citizens said the shooting was unjustified and 30% said it was justified. Far more respondents, 47%, said Ice made Americans less safe than the 34% who said the agency made Americans safer.
And a CBS News poll found that 61% of Americans believe Ice’s operations are too tough when stopping and detaining people.
The same poll also found that a growing number of Americans - 56% - are more likely to say that the Trump Administration is not prioritising the detention and deportation of dangerous criminals but instead is trying to deport more people than they thought it would, regardless of those people’s criminal backgrounds.
Even before the shooting, the public had a negative impression of Ice and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
“We’ve seen a slow dripping downward of confidence in Ice [and] the person running it, and then Minneapolis happens,” said Tim Malloy, a polling analyst with Quinnipiac.
Trump has stuck to his strategy.
The Administration in December launched Operation Metro Surge, sending Ice agents to the Twin Cities in response to investigations into fraud in public benefit programmes in the state.
Noem sent more agents to the state after Good’s shooting, and Trump on Friday said if state officials don’t quash protests, he will invoke the Insurrection Act to “quickly put an end to the travesty that is taking place” in Minnesota.
Today, Noem told CBS News that the operation in Minneapolis has no end date.
“We won’t stop until we are sure that all the dangerous people are picked up, brought to justice and then deported back to their home countries,” she said.
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (Democrat) told CNN that his city is “invaded, under siege”. A lot of people, he said, are “afraid to go outside” as 3000 Ice and Border Patrol agents outnumber the 600 local police officers.
“We will not counter Donald Trump’s chaos with our own brand of chaos,” Frey said of his messaging asking residents to continue peacefully protesting amid Pentagon plans to possibly deploy 1500 active-duty troops to the city. “I never thought in a million years that we would be invaded by our own federal Government.”
Minneapolis has been rocked by protests since Good was killed, including a march against immigrants, promoted by Jake Lang, who was charged with assaulting officers at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Trump pardoned Lang last year along with others accused of participating in the pro-Trump riot.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson in a statement said Ice officers are facing more assaults “because of dangerous, untrue smears from elected Democrats”.
“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,” she said.
Ice acting director Todd Lyons told Fox News that “it’s horrible the fact that people say Ice is targeting US citizens”.
“That’s not the case,” Lyons said. “We have to send more officers and agents just to protect the men and women trying to do their regular, lawful law enforcement mission.”
Videos of Good’s shooting went viral, and large majorities of voters - 82% in the Quinnipiac survey - told pollsters they had seen it.
“While you had this initial kind of debate between Republicans and Democrats over framing the issue, people saw it for themselves and made their judgments,” said Carroll Doherty, the former director of political research at the non-partisan Pew Research Centre.
“By 20 to 30 points, they either said it was not appropriate or unjustified, and so it was pretty one-sided.”
The public has supported strong border security and deporting criminals, according to polls, but immigration has become less of a concern for voters as the Trump Administration has sharply limited border crossings.
At the same time, Doherty said, there has been a “slow building backlash against some of the tactics of the immigration crackdown”.
Views on Ice are deeply polarised, with large majorities of Republicans supporting the agency and large majorities of Democrats opposing it. A similar discrepancy shows up over whether the shooting was justified.
Independent voters have sided with Democrats, tipping the overall numbers that show majorities opposing Ice and believing the use of force against Good was inappropriate.
“We’re really, really polarised on this,” said Charles Franklin, the polling director for Marquette University Law School. “That means that Ice’s approval, in one sense, won’t sink much further.”
It’s unclear whether Democrats can capitalise on the public’s disapproval of Ice in the Midterm elections. The economy, not immigration, is the most important issue, according to polls of voters.
Immigration and Ice create political conundrums for both sides, pollsters said.
Republicans support Ice and the President but are less concerned about the issue now that border crossings are down.
While Democrats can leverage opposition to Ice, they run the risk of getting pulled into debates over President Joe Biden’s unpopular handling of the border and “abolish Ice” debates that have divided the party and turned off some centrist voters.
The Economist/YouGov poll found Americans closely divided on abolishing Ice, with 46% in favour and 43% opposed.
The recent polling has emboldened a growing number of Democrats to more directly condemn Ice, point to the billions of dollars given to the agency under Trump’s sweeping tax and budget bill passed last year and call for a curb on the agency’s power.
Until the shooting in Minneapolis, leading Democrats had been hesitant to talk about immigration, even as Trump’s crackdown intensified.
Democrats in 2020 called for a more compassionate approach towards immigration in response to Trump’s first term, but many felt Democrats lost in 2024 in large part because of Biden’s failure to stem a surge of migrants at the US-Mexico border.
The party has since failed to coalesce around an alternate immigration plan, hindering its ability to push back on Trump.
Democratic leaders have largely wanted to focus on healthcare and the cost of living in their effort to win back the House and have urged their candidates and officeholders to avoid being distracted by other issues.
Party leaders have recently urged members to lean into what they view as Ice’s overreach, noting the recent shift in public sentiment.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D) has become more forceful in his condemnations of Ice over the past two weeks and called for changes, including barring agents from wearing masks, requiring them to wear body cameras and ensuring they do not have absolute legal immunity.
“Every single one of these people who we see brutalising the American people, they’re going to be held accountable, one way or the other, in accordance with the law,” Jeffries said last week.
Republican political strategists are happy to see a renewed debate over abolishing Ice.
Republicans are focusing on border security while Democrats “embrace radical policies that are electoral poison”, said a statement from Mike Marinella, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.
“The radical ‘Abolish Ice’ crusade from far-left Democrats seemed like a relic of the past, but it’s the brand-new litmus test for desperate Democrats to get approval from their radical base,” he said.
Some Republicans have acknowledged that images of Ice violently arresting people in Minneapolis may not play well with the public.
“The optics are - let’s be honest - not good,” said Representative Michael McCaul (R-Texas), when asked by ABC News about video of officers dragging a disabled woman out of her car and slamming her to the ground during an arrest.
- Mariana Alfaro, Liz Goodwin and Scott Clement contributed to this report.
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