Trump's immigration agenda is not popular

Polling shows most Americans oppose the details of enforcement and the president’s most extreme tactics

To start this post, I am going to ask you a key question about immigration policy. But first, I need to establish a few facts based on recent news:

On Monday, April 14, 2025, Donald Trump met with the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, in the Oval Office. There, they jointly refused to facilitate the return of a legal resident of Maryland named Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was illegally sent by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to a prison in El Salvador despite being protected by a U.S. court order from being deported to the country. ICE sent him there anyway and later admitted wrongdoing, and the Supreme Court has said Trump should help get Garcia back. Trump defied SCOTUS in the Oval.

Before the meeting, Trump told Bukele he would also like to ship U.S. citizens to the same prison Abrego where is now being held. The prison, called Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT), is really more like a camp of multiple airplane-hanger-like shelters lit by artificial light 24 hours a day and where solitary confinement is a common practice. Inmates get 30 minutes outside thee cells each day. The summary removal of U.S. citizens to a foreign jail without due process of law is likely illegal — to say nothing about the cruel and unusual conditions.

Previously, Trump had reportedly paid Bukele $6 million to house Venezuelan immigrants who ICE allege to be members of a gang called Tren de Aragua. Some of those sent to the CECOT prison, without a court hearing, were also sent in violation of U.S. court orders.

Now, here's the question: How popular do you think this all is? The question may sound trivial in the face of civil rights violations across the country — and, indeed, a full-blown constitutional crisis if Trump continues to defy the courts and not bring Garcia home.

But it is important to get the answer to this question right, for two reasons: First, because public opinion properly quantified holds an innate power in a democracy, and Trump clearly cares about his popularity; and second, because the media has largely covered Trump as carrying out a popular immigration agenda, and that framing is useful to the White House in defending its agenda.

The reality, though, is that what Trump is doing is not popular, once you dive into the specifics. This little nuance about immigration polling is so significant — the gap between broad and narrow opinion on the issue so large — that it has the power to shape the future of political conflict over immigration policy in America.

I. Trump is popular on "handling immigration," but not specifics

Read enough polls and you will come across some form of the following question:

"Would you say you approve, disapprove, or are you not sure about how President Donald Trump is handling the following issue?"