President Donald Trump may soon be at a crossroads on the issue where he has arguably been most successful in his second term: immigration.
Since Trump has taken office, the illegal border crossings that were so out of control under former President Joe Biden have slowed to a trickle. Encounters and apprehensions have hit lows. The federal government has effectively stopped releasing apprehended illegal immigrants into the United States. Congress just passed a major increase in immigration enforcement funding without amnesty, which Trump signed into law on July 4.
Trump may be a victim of his own success. A new Gallup poll found that the percentage of Americans who want immigration reduced has dropped from 55% last year to just 30% now. That’s basically back to where it was before the Biden border crisis, though it is worth noting that even now, just 26% want immigration levels increased while 38% want them to remain the same.
“With illegal immigration levels down dramatically and refugee programs suspended, the desire for less immigration has fallen among all party groups, but it is most pronounced among Republicans, down 40 percentage points over the past year to 48%,” Gallup’s Lydia Saad writes of the poll’s findings. “Among independents, this sentiment is down 21 points to 30%, and among Democrats, down 12 points to 16%.”
This suggests that the hardening of public opinion against mass immigration that took place when the border was in shambles under Biden may be softening as net immigration drops overall under Trump. The media has focused heavily on sympathetic (and perhaps some not-so-sympathetic) people being deported by Trump’s deputies. Progressives have been radicalized against those carrying out the immigration enforcement.
Trump is slightly underwater on immigration in the RealClearPolitics polling average, a change from earlier in his second term.
Vice President JD Vance called it in an interview with Tucker Carlson in September 2024, before the election.
“This is going to be prophetic. Right now, according to public opinion polling, 65% of Americans, give or take, support mass deportations, meaning 25 million people here, you’ve got to send some of them back to where they came from,” he said. “That’s a common-sense issue. Two-thirds of Americans, give or take, support it. In 18 months, there will be media stories, and there will be public opinion polls to back it up, that actually Americans do not support mass deportations, that Donald Trump is doing all of these terrible things, and he has to stop.”
But Vance preemptively poured cold water on the numbers behind the shift in public opinion he predicted.
“The same people who put those public opinion polls together are the same people who say, for example, that Donald Trump was going to lose Wisconsin by 17 points,” he told Carlson. As it happened, Trump lost Wisconsin by 0.63 points in 2020 and then won it by 0.86 last year.
What Vance predicted would happen in 18 months may have occurred in less than six.
Trump may have anticipated this. While the highly publicized deportations haven’t quite occurred in numbers that are up to the White House’s expectations, he has signaled more than once that relief is on the way for some sectors of the economy where illegal immigrants are disproportionately employed.
“We’re working on legislation right now where farmers, look, they know better,” Trump said on July 3. “They work with them for years. You had cases that where, not here, but just even over the years where people have worked for a farm for 14, 15 years, and they get thrown out pretty viciously. And we can’t do it.”
“Now, serious radical right people, who I also happen to like a lot, they may not be quite as happy, but they’ll understand, won’t they?” he added. “Do you think so?”
That is one question. On Iran, arming Ukraine, and the Jeffrey Epstein files, Trump has certainly taken some risks with his base lately. How will they respond to a relaxation of deportations, much less an amnesty?
In addition to law-and-order and national security concerns, the Trump team has pushed immigration controls as a way to keep the labor market tight enough to exert upward pressure on working-class wages. But Trump has personally appeared sensitive to the pressure this puts on some employers as well.
“No amnesty under any circumstances, mass deportations continue, but in a strategic and intentional way, as we move our workforce towards more automation and towards a 100% American workforce,” Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a news conference last week. Rollins is viewed in MAGA circles as someone to watch out for on amnesty and immigration leniency.
“At the end of the day, the promise to America to ensure that we have a 100% American workforce stands, but we must be strategic in how we are implementing the mass deportations so as not to compromise our food supply,” she said.
Under former Presidents Biden, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush, amnesty proposals were seldom described as such. “Comprehensive immigration reform,” among other euphemisms, was the preferred nomenclature.
“Already, everybody is saying that amnesty is dead, a total nonstarter, won’t happen,” conservative activist Charlie Kirk posted on X on July 8. “That’s good. But the fight is far from over.”
MAGA BASE STICKS WITH TRUMP AS ACTIVISTS AND INFLUENCERS GET ANTSY
Trump was elected to fulfill certain promises on immigration. He has made great strides. He doesn’t have to worry about 2028, though perhaps Vance does, and the midterm elections are coming up next year.
How Trump weathers the first signs of immigration-enforcement fatigue in his second term will be the next major test.