Trump approval on immigration lowest in second term: Poll
President Trump’s approval rating on immigration has fallen to 41 percent — the lowest since his return to the White House, according to a survey released Thursday.
In a two-day poll conducted this week by Reuters/Ipsos, roughly half of the respondents said they disapproved of how the president has carried out his sweeping immigration crackdown.
The White House didn’t immediately comment for this story.
Protests against Trump’s policies, including deportation efforts and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) workplace raids, are slated to take place across the country Thursday.
According to the latest poll, attitudes have soured on the Trump administration’s handling of immigration since demonstrations broke out in Los Angeles last month following an uptick in ICE raids in California.
More than half of the people surveyed in a similar February poll said they approved of Trump’s handling of immigration — a high mark for his second term, but the number dropped as the administration has ramped up aggressive measures to arrest and deport migrants.
A separate poll from The Associated Press-NORC Research Center released Thursday mirrored the Reuters poll’s findings of a decline in support for Trump’s immigration policies.
Immigration has consistently been one of Trump’s strongest issues in polls since his return to the Oval Office in January. The White House revealed this month that ICE arrested 100,000 people in the first half of the year.
That two-day poll also found that some of the administration’s tactics could be drawing backlash.
Less than a third of respondents said they support conducting ICE arrests at workplaces. Republicans were divided on the issue, with 56 percent in favor of workplace raids, 24 percent opposed and about 20 percent unsure.
Democrats, meanwhile, overwhelmingly opposed the workplace arrests, at 82 percent.
Most respondents, 53 percent, said they disagreed with ICE conducting arrests “like military operations,” and 42 percent said they opposed ICE officers wearing masks.
A separate Harvard CAPS/Harris poll released Monday found that Trump continues to receive high marks for other tactics. About 60 percent of voters surveyed said they supported the president’s beefed up border security efforts, for example, while 75 percent supported the administration’s efforts to deport criminals who are in the country illegally.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted July 15-16 among 1,027 U.S. adults and has a margin of error of 3 percentage points.