“Trump Immigration Backlash” – Americans Recoil from Watching What Mass Deportation Looks Like in Trump’s America

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Washington, DC —Americans are recoiling after experiencing the first months of the Trump administration’s mass detention and deportation assault across the country. Americans are witnessing the targeting of long-standing, law-abiding members of our communities, seeing families torn apart, and watching how due process rights and common sense enforcement priorities are trampled in the process (see our “Trump’s America” map for a state-by-state snapshot of stories and examples). As a result, and as America’s Voice detailed in our recent memo synthesizing immigration polling and related political implications, It’s little wonder that Trump’s approval ratings on immigration are declining and he has ceded his previous advantages on the issue.

In our latest installment of the America’s Voice, “This is What Mass Deportation Looks Like” series, we highlight some examples of the deportation cruelty and chaos in action and the growing backlash around Trump’s anti-immigration agenda, including the new Nick Miroff story in The Atlantic, “The Terrible Optics of ICE Enforcement Are Fueling a Trump Immigration Backlash.”

According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:

“Mass deportation is grim, unsettling and un-American when seen up close.. Long-settled moms, students, and hard-working community members are being ripped from their families in scenes that better resemble authoritarian government crackdowns than it does the America we all call home. As we watch these stories unfold, many are recoiling and are recognizing there’s a better way than Trump’s chaos and cruelty.”

Below find key excerpts from recent coverage of egregious examples of overreach and related backlash brewing:

In The Atlantic, Nick Miroff writes, “The Terrible Optics of ICE Enforcement Are Fueling a Trump Immigration Backlash:

“Immigration enforcement in service of President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation campaign has been the aesthetic opposite of a Cops episode. In social-media clips and grainy security-camera footage, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers appear in dark clothing, some wearing masks or neck gaiters that make them look like bandits. The people they target may be walking down the street, sitting in a car, or otherwise going about their lives. Few are engaged in obvious criminal behavior.

…Many Americans have recoiled at these scenes, comparing officers’ tactics to those of authoritarian regimes. Yet the arrests in the videos do not show conduct outside the bounds of typical ICE protocol. This is what immigration enforcement looks like. It’s messy and emotional, and requires officers to arrest people for an offense that many Americans do not view as a crime.

…Which points to a bigger problem with Trump’s mass-deportation campaign, the signature domestic-policy promise of his second term. Whenever public attention on immigration shifts from the border to U.S. streets, support for aggressive enforcement tends to erode. It happened during Trump’s first term. It’s happening even faster now.

Immigration was one of Trump’s best-polling issues when he took office in January, and his rating on the issue continues to rank higher than his overall job approval. But in the past two months, Trump’s immigration approval rating has seen a double-digit downturn…”

• NBC News, “Massachusetts police hold girl’s face to the ground as ICE arrests her mother, video shows,” noting: “The four police officers then bring the girl to the ground, with at least one grabbing her legs and forcing her to lose her balance, the video shows. Two women, one of whom is holding a newborn baby, then can be seen trying to help the girl. The teenage girl is screaming throughout the entirety of the incident, the video shows.”

• New York Magazine: “A Mother Took Her Sons to an ICE Check-In. She Never Saw Them Again. No criminal records. Pursuing green cards. Under Trump, it doesn’t matter,” noting: “She didn’t see why they should be targeted now, given neither had a criminal history — not even a school disciplinary record.”
• MSNBC columnist Michael A. Cohen wrote, “A 19-year-old college student had a minor traffic violation — now she faces deportation,” noting, “On Monday morning, Ximena Arias-Cristobal, a 19-year-old college student from Georgia, made an illegal turn on a red light. Now, through no fault of her own, she is facing the possibility of deportation — and in the Trump administration’s frenzy to rid the country of every undocumented immigrant, America is at risk of losing yet another young person chasing the American dream.”

Additional Resources

• Read America’s Voice polling memo 100 Days Roundup: New Memo on the Current Polling and Politics of Immigration