How Trump’s immigration crackdown is starting to hurt him politically

thither’s growing grounds that U.S. Chair Donald ruff’s brass is losing public support for its heavy-handed tactics in both detaining undocumented immigrants and cracking down on protests against the immigration sweep.

For months, the White House has pushed a narrative that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is targeting the most violent criminals for deportation and that those protesting the push are radical leftists engaging in domestic terrorism. 

That narrative continued even after an ICE officer in Minneapolis shot and killed Renee Good, a white American mother of three. Trump and his officials blamed Good for her death and accused her of running over the federal agent despite video evidence to the contrary. 

In the wake of that incident, a string of polls suggested public support for the enforcement push was eroding. 

The administration’s knee-jerk justification of this weekend’s fatal shooting of another American citizen protesting ICE in Minneapolis, Alex Pretti, could hardly be expected to reverse that trend.  

Immigration enforcement — a campaign issue that helped propel Trump to victory in 2024 — is becoming "profoundly negative" for the president and the Republicans as a result of ICE’s tactics, says Doug Sosnik, a veteran political strategist who advised Bill Clinton during his time in the White House. 

ICE shooting in Minneapolis kills a second U.S. Citizen this month

"In the past [Trump] viewed every day that immigration was an issue, was a day that he won. I think we're at a point now where every day that immigration is an issue, he's losing," said Sosnik. 

Some of the January polls indicating notable public opposition to the immigration enforcement push include: 

Breaking down witness videos appearing to show Alex Pretti’s fatal shooting

Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, says repeated violations of constitutional rights have led to plunging public confidence in the federal immigration enforcement push. 

Olson said Americans are realizing that the incidents aren’t merely a case of particular officers making mistakes, but the result of what he calls "abusive policies" that run roughshod over rights. 

"Name an area of the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution and by now, they've probably found some way to trample it," he said. 

For the White House, the political worry is that the ICE crackdown galvanizes Democratic voters to turn out in large numbers for the midterms this fall, putting Republican control of Congress at risk, and with it, making Trump a lame duck president. 

The political fallout could come much sooner than the midterms. 

In the wake of Pretti’s shooting, Democrats in the Senate are threatening to block the latest federal funding resolution without significant reforms to ICE. That sets up the prospect of another U.S. Government shutdown in a matter of days.

Monday revealed the first signs that Trump is sensing the crackdown is hurting him poltically. 

The president announced he’s sending his border czar Tom Homan to take charge of ICE operations on the ground in Minnesota. 

The move is being widely seen as sidelining Greg Bovino, the commander of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, in many ways the most visible face of ICE’s enforcement efforts. 

"They’re recognizing what a complete disaster this operation has been," Minneapolis City Council president Elliott Payne told CNN Monday. 

Bovino is among several Trump administration officials who were quick to vilify Pretti, the ICU nurse shot to death by federal agents in Minneapolis on Saturday.

"This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement," Bovino told reporters the day of the shooting.

ICU nurse Alex Pretti shot and killed by federal agents in Minneapolis

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem accused Pretti of domestic terrorism, claimed that he brandished a gun and attacked law enforcement officers.

Trump’s key adviser on immigration policy, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, described Pretti in a social media post as “An assassin [who] tried to murder federal agents.” 

Multiple videos of the incident show no evidence that Pretti brandished the gun which he was legally permitted to carry — that was tucked into his waistband behind his back. Nor is there any evidence that he attacked federal agents before they wrestled him to the pavement, then shot and killed him. 

It remains to be seen whether Trump’s decision to send Homan to Minnesota will actually result in a shift in tactics. 

The administration does appear, at least implicitly, to be backing down from its original characterization of Pretti’s shooting by no longer blaming him for his own death. 

Instead, they’re blaming Democrats.

"This tragedy occurred as a result of a deliberate and hostile resistance by Democrat leaders in Minnesota for weeks," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told a news briefing Monday afternoon. 

Leavitt accused Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey of "spreading lies about federal law enforcement officers who are risking their lives daily to remove the worst criminal illegal aliens from our streets — murderers, rapists, pedophiles, human traffickers and gang members."

That doesn't sound like an administration that’s ready to admit that its immigration enforcement tactics are flawed. 

On Monday, Trump spoke with Walz and Frey, describing his call with the governor as "productive" and his conversation with the mayor as "very good."

Yet as recently as last week, Trump himself was slamming Minnesota Democrats for not co-operating with the immigration enforcement efforts and firmly pushing the claim that the ICE surge is taking violent criminals off the streets. 

He spent 10 minutes of a live White House briefing leafing through photos of undocumented migrants arrested by ICE in Minnesota, holding each one up for the camera, and listing off their crimes. 

"Boy these are rough characters," Trump said. "Many, many murderers."    

Yet federal statistics from mid-November showed that 69 per cent of those held in detention after being arrested by ICE had never been convicted of any criminal offence. 

ICE data obtained by the Cato Institute indicated that only five per cent of those arrested since Oct. 1, 2025 had been convicted of a violent crime. 

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