What Americans actually want done about ICE
Democratic proposals for reform earn supermajority support among U.S. voters
In a letter sent on Feb. 4, 2026, Democratic congressional leaders Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer laid out their 10 key demands for the current fight in Washington over funding for the Department of Homeland Security, and thus Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If these demands aren’t met, Jeffries and Schumer say, they will refuse to fund DHS outright. The agency could partially shut down in two weeks when funding runs out.
I have spent a good amount of space here recently documenting how America has reached a tipping point on immigration and that appetite for reform — including abolishing ICE outright — has risen in the past year. And polls show there is intense anger at how Donald Trump has carried out his agenda of mass deportations over the last year; net favorability of ICE has recently fallen to an all-time low, averaging -20 across pollsters. So now that Democrats have leverage, it’s worth asking the question: What reforms do Americans actually want?
The list from Democrats contains a lot of ambitious reforms, including: prohibiting ICE and other immigration agents from wearing masks or other face coverings, requiring officers to display and verbalize identification, mandating body-worn cameras with clear storage and access rules, restricting enforcement near “sensitive locations” such as schools and medical facilities, requiring judicial warrants for certain entries and arrests, and prohibiting profiling based on appearance, language, or location. The package also includes provisions to preserve state and local authority and to standardize detention conditions. The demands notably stop short of the nuclear option (abolishing ICE outright).
So that’s what congressional Democrats want. But which reforms do the American people support? Can Democrats translate any public opinion data into additional leverage? This week’s Chart of the Week is: What Americans actually want done about ICE.
I. Supermajority support for most ICE reforms
I spent a few hours yesterday gathering every major poll from the past two weeks that asked about specific ICE reforms and enforcement practices. The results are captured in the chart below.
Each bar in the chart above shows net support for various reforms in the anti-ICE/pro-Democrat direction. So, for example, the bar labeled “Admin targeting all undocumented” at +28 comes from a Navigator Research poll that found 64% of voters think the Trump administration is targeting “all undocumented immigrants” vs 36% who think policy is focused on “serious criminals.” So that’s a 28-point margin for the Democratic position (that Trump has enacted a broad policy that’s not what Americans supported in 2024).
Some notable survey results: Quinnipiac University found in their Jan. 29 - Feb. 2 poll that 92% of registered voters support requiring ICE agents to wear body cameras. Five percent of people opposed the reform, so it’s at +87 on the chart.
The same Quinnipiac poll also found 80% support an independent investigation into the ICE/federal agent shootings that killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Jan. 2026. Just 15% opposed (that’s +75).
The Pew Research Center, in a survey conducted Jan. 20-26, found 74% of Americans say it is acceptable for civilians to record ICE officers while they are conducting operations. The same survey found 72% say it is unacceptable to stop people based solely on their appearance — a direct rebuke of racial profiling during enforcement.
Additionally, Navigator Research, in a poll conducted Jan. 29 through Feb. 1, found 66% of voters prefer a “balanced approach” to immigration over strict enforcement alone. And 65% said deportations should primarily target people with criminal convictions — not anyone who happens to lack documentation.
And finally, both Quinnipiac and Pew independently found that 61% of Americans oppose ICE agents wearing masks during operations.
Between 60% and 90% of Americans support most ICE reforms in this polling. Not just a majority, a supermajority of voters say they want transparency, accountability, rules, and oversight. That even includes a lot of Republicans, and a broad majority of political independents.
Finally, YouGov had a poll on ICE reforms out this week that came to largely the same conclusions as the polls above. YouGov has support for abolishing ICE at +2 overall, 46% to 44%.
Recent events have put Democrats in a very strong position to demand serious reforms of immigration enforcement. In the polls I collected for this article, reformers emerge with a clear lead on 14/15 key questions, and are tied with Republicans on the 15th (whether it is acceptable to report to authorities you are suspicions that someone is living in America without authorization.)
And aside from the strong policy-specific polling, the vibes are also on the Democrats’ side now, with polls like Fox News finding upwards of 65% of voters think Trump and ICE have been “too aggressive” and need a more focused approach to deportations.
This data shows that major reforms of ICE and DHS are supported by the vast majority of Americans. Voting against body cameras or independent investigations means voting against 80-95% of the public. You do not want to be on the wrong side of that vote.
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Republicans only concession to Democrats’ ICE demands is to mandate body cameras, but that’s only because they know that is a pretty toothless request. Even normal police departments sometimes struggle with the cameras. There have been plenty of situations where police “forgot” to turn on the cameras or they “malfunctioned”. Does anyone think ICE would record problematic situations? Or if something was recorded, it would ever be see the light of day?
G.E.M.— You ARE a gem. This post is a clear CALL TO ACTION. Each of us needs to contact members of congress ASAP to tell them how we (& the supermajority of Americans) feel. Not a penny more to DHS unless these reforms are enacted.