The administration intensifies its increasingly unpopular immigration policy

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Washington, DC – Below is a column by Maribel Hastings from America’s Voice en Español translated to English from Spanish. It ran in several Spanish-language media outlets earlier this week:

Despite the chaos and cruelty of ICE operations (with the assistance of the Border Patrol) on individuals, families, and entire communities, and their damage to the country’s economy, the Trump administration is not satisfied with the number of detainees and wants to intensify operations by adding more Border Patrol agents with even more extreme tactics.

It is doing so even though various polls over the past two months conclude that Trump’s immigration policy does not enjoy the approval of the American people. The deployment of the National Guard and military in U.S. cities, as well as ICE’s tactics of terror and indiscriminate detentions, are not well-regarded and have taken a toll on Trump’s approval ratings.

America’s Voice analyzed various polls conducted over the past two months and found that in eight polls, Trump’s approval rating on immigration remains low, with an average of 53% disapproval to 44% approval.

It also cites a Third Way analysis that concludes that although there remains a “trust deficit” in the way Democrats handle the immigration issue, support for Trump and Republicans on immigration has eroded. In fact, a poll by the Associated Press and the NORC Center found that Trump’s level of support among Hispanic voters has plummeted, with immigration and the economy being the central factors.

According to the poll, 73% of Hispanic voters disapprove of Trump’s performance, while 27% approve. Before starting his second term, Trump’s approval rating among Hispanic voters was 44%.

The barrage of attacks on the immigrant community and ICE raids leaves no room for discussion of solutions beyond detentions and deportations. However, Americans support a sensible solution. According to the latest release of the American Values Survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), 72% of respondents prefer the regularization of undocumented immigrants over the 24% who favor mass deportations.

But Trump, who once said that “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?,” seems to be betting that pleasing his base and his anti-immigrant team is all it takes to intensify his operations and win elections.

It should be noted that ICE operates in the interior of the country, and the Border Patrol, as its name suggests, operates at the border, and their tactics are supposed to be different, but now there seems to be no distinction. In fact, one of the most violent operations took place on September 30 on Chicago’s South Side when federal agents, including border patrol officers, descended from Black Hawk helicopters and U-Haul trucks carrying military-style rifles, reportedly searching for Venezuelan gang members from the “Tren de Aragua” in an apartment building.

Videos and images of the operation showed tenants in their underwear or even naked. In the end, the 300 agents arrested one suspect believed to belong to the Tren de Aragua, according to authorities, but even U.S. citizens, including four minors, were detained.

This is part of large-scale operations that seek to sow terror rather than produce results. The same thing happens in cities across the country, where they indiscriminately enter workplaces, courthouses, and the outskirts of schools and churches to detain anyone who “looks” undocumented, violating the rights of everyone, including citizens, to arrest two people ultimately.

It is precisely the low number of detainees that has Trump upset, hence his interest in injecting more extremism with the presence of the Border Patrol. The White House promised to detain 3,000 immigrants daily, but the figure is just over 1,170.

All in all, Trump’s strategy is not without political risks. Although his base continues to applaud his excesses on immigration, there are voters, especially independents, who are upset by ICE’s extreme tactics that also affect citizens of this country. Next year, there are midterm elections, and politicians do not rely solely on their base’s support.

Add to that the fact that the MAGA base will be one of the sectors most affected by cuts to Medicare, the elimination of subsidies to pay for Obamacare premiums, and cuts to SNAP nutritional assistance, as contemplated in the One Big Beautiful Act, and Trump and the Republicans could be playing with electoral fire.

The original Spanish version is here.