U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has existed under four different presidents — George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden — but during Trump's second presidency, public support for the agency is reaching historic lows.
A Quinnipiac poll released on January 15 found that only 35 percent of registered voters believe the fatal shooting of unarmed 37-year-old motorist Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross was justified. Among independents, that number falls to 28 percent.
As Associated Press (AP) poll released after Good's death shows support for Trump's immigration policies down to 38 percent. And an Economist/YouGov poll released two days earlier found that 46 percent of Americans now favor abolishing ICE — not reforming ICE, but abolishing the agency altogether.
According to Axios reporters Alex Isenstadt and Marc Caputo, some of President Trump's allies are privately expressing fears that his immigration policies could hurt Republicans in the 2026 midterms.
"President Trump's team recently reviewed private GOP polling that showed support for his immigration policies falling," Isenstadt and Caputo report in an article published on January 16. "The results, reflected in public surveys, bolstered internal concern about the administration's confrontational enforcement tactics. Now, as the chaotic scenes from Minnesota play out around the clock on TV and social media, Axios has learned that some Trump advisers quietly are talking about 'recalibrating' the White House's approach — though it's unclear what changes Trump would embrace, if any."
The Axios journalists add, "Why it matters: The worries in part of Trump's brain trust are the first signs of internal second-guessing of his controversial ICE enforcement tactics."
That "private polling," according to Isenstadt and Caputo, "suggested a rupturing of the coalition of independent, moderate and minority voters who were key parts of Trump's victory in 2024."
"The private polling suggested a rupturing of the coalition of independent, moderate and minority voters who were key parts of Trump's victory in 2024," the Axios reporters explain. "Such voters will play a big role in determining whether Republicans keep their slim House majority in November's midterms. If Republicans lose the House, Trump will head into his final two years in office as a lame duck who, he acknowledges, could face a third impeachment."
A Trump adviser, interviewed on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that images coming out of Minneapolis don't look good.
The adviser told Axios, "I wouldn't say he's concerned about the policy. He wants deportations. He wants mass deportations. What he doesn't want is what people are seeing. He doesn't like the way it looks. It looks bad, so he's expressed some discomfort at that…. (There's) the right way to do this. And this doesn't look like the right way to a lot of people."
Read the full Axios article at this link.
