We're about two weeks from Election Day, and on nearly every issue pollsters ask about, voters disapprove of how President Trump is handling it and trust Democrats more than Republicans. Immigration is the exception. In the polls that rate him issue by issue, it's consistently his best one, and border security is one of only two issues where Republicans still lead.
But the issue has also gone quiet. In the spring, ICE raids and the protests against them led the news, and in April I wrote an edition called "ICE Burns" about the backlash. Since then the headlines have moved on to prices and Iran. In Fox News's September poll, only 8% of voters named immigration their top issue. But pollsters haven't moved on: about two dozen immigration surveys came through Poll Vault in the past month. So what's still propping that GOP advantage up, and how much is actually left?
Two of Thirteen
Fox News (n=1,202 registered voters) asked which party voters trust on 13 issues. Democrats lead on 10, including healthcare by 22 points and inflation by 16. Republicans lead on crime (+10) and border security (+8).
Trump's own numbers follow the same pattern. Immigration is his strongest issue in AP-NORC (39% approve), Harvard CAPS / Harris (48%) and Zogby (50% approve, 46% disapprove). Even when he's still underwater on it, it's his best issue. Zogby is the only one with him net positive on immigration, but it doesn't disclose its method. For comparison, the October Fox poll has his approval on inflation at 22%.
The edge is on the border, not on immigration as a whole. Verasight (n=1,528) has Republicans ahead on border security by 11 points, but Democrats ahead on immigration 42–41, the first time Democrats have led on it in Verasight's tracking, and incredibly, that's down from R+12 in May 2025. NPR/PBS/Marist (n=1,280) has Democrats ahead on immigration 41–38, after Republicans led 42–30 in 2024. Fox's September poll had it tied, 49% Republican to 48% Democratic, with Trump's immigration approval down to 43% from 48% last summer. The strongest Republican numbers in the vault come from Third Way's seven battleground states: +13 on immigration and +30 on border security.
Republicans still win the border, but when it comes to people who are already here, most of them have landed on an answer Trump's hard line doesn't offer.
The Deal Nobody's Offering
Wave Polling and Research (n=1,000 registered voters) tested the two ends of the debate side by side. Earned citizenship wins 79–16, a net of +63. Deporting every unauthorized immigrant loses 35–58, a net of -23. That's an 86-point spread. The least popular idea in the poll is the one that sounds like a compromise: legal status without citizenship, the Dignity Act approach, at 29–50. Voters aren't interested in half measures.
What about Republicans?
Data for Progress (n=1,194 likely voters) finds majorities of Republicans backing three specific policies. A path to citizenship for immigrants who have been authorized to work here for five-plus years, paid taxes and passed security checks gets 76% overall and 65% of Republicans. A court hearing before an asylum seeker is deported gets 68%, and 51% of Republicans. Keeping a refugee program gets 67%, and 55% of Republicans.
The same poll shows where Trump's approach loses people. 61% oppose arrests at schools, churches and hospitals, and 57% oppose ending Temporary Protected Status. 60% oppose deporting people to a country that isn't their own, like the Venezuelans the administration sent to a prison in El Salvador. YouGov (n=6,552) asked about the prison version directly: 53% say the U.S. shouldn't be able to send immigrants to prisons in other countries, and 27% say it should.
Third Way read voters in seven battleground states (n=700) nine statements about immigration and asked whether they agreed with each one. The two most popular, at 80% agreement each, paired border security with a way for long-term undocumented immigrants to get legal status. The hard-line statement, which called for mass detention and nationwide raids, was the only one more voters disagreed with than agreed with: 49% to 46%. When asked which of the nine they disagreed with most, 37% picked that one, more than twice any other.
Voters also want the people doing enforcement held to rules. In the Wave poll, 80% support body cameras and visible ID for immigration agents, 77% want investigations into deaths in ICE custody, and 67% back permanent protection for people brought here as children. Third Way finds two-thirds want local police to help ICE only in violent-crime cases (45%) or never (21%). Asked about ICE's future, 40% say keep deporting people who are here illegally, 33% want major reform and 27% want it abolished.
Most Americans want the border enforced but also want long-term residents to have a way to become citizens. When Third Way offered both in one message, 80% agreed.
How you describe immigrants changes the result, and it changes it most among working-class voters. A Verasight study (n=5,770, fielded in January and February) found working-class support for a path to citizenship rose from 48% to 70% when the policy was described in terms of immigrants who had held jobs, paid taxes and stayed out of trouble.
Poll Vault tracked 24 immigration polls in the past month. See them all →
Somebody Else's Problem
People see immigration as a bigger problem nationally than where they live. Third Way points to a March 2025 national survey that found the same gap (76% vs. 45%).
On the border, enforcement is part of daily life. An ACLU of Texas / Change Research survey of El Paso and four Rio Grande Valley counties (n=1,031) found nearly two in three residents see immigration agents or state troopers every day or several times a week. About half say they, a relative or someone they know has been asked about their immigration status by CBP, ICE or police. 63% say ICE's tactics have gone too far, including residents who have family members working for federal immigration agencies. 64% want local police to focus on crime rather than immigration enforcement. (The ACLU sponsored it, so weigh it accordingly.)
Farm country is more divided. AP / SSRS / KFF surveyed 2,241 rural voters. About 4 in 10 say enforcement has gone too far, against 55% of all adults in a September AP-NORC poll. About half of rural MAGA Republicans say deportations haven't gone far enough. But about 7 in 10 rural voters say legal immigrants and seasonal farm workers are important to their local economy, and 45% say the same about undocumented workers. In Vermont (Vermont Public / Braun, n=817), 62% disapprove of how ICE is enforcing the law, and even some Trump voters there worry about the economic hit to farming and dairy.
Employers and teachers are feeling it too. In NFIB's September survey, 26% of small business owners named labor quality and availability as their top problem, up 3 points from August, and 32% had openings they couldn't fill, 8 points above the historical average. Coverage of the survey ties part of that squeeze to immigration restrictions. In a UMass survey of 1,179 Massachusetts public school educators, 70% say students' immigration status has become a problem for their students, and 23% call it a big one.
And neighbors disagree with each other. In Arizona, 65% of Hispanic voters oppose cities cooperating with ICE, while 54% of white voters support it (Arizona State University). On Long Island, likely voters oppose New York's ban on local ICE cooperation agreements 51–45, and independents oppose it 57–38 (Newsday / Siena, n=411).
Closeness to enforcement doesn't push opinion in one direction. People on the border and in Vermont are more critical of enforcement than the country as a whole. Rural voters and Long Islanders are less critical.
Six Months Later
Most of the April numbers have held, and a couple have moved.
- "Too far" is steady. In April, 50% told Public First the deportation campaign was too aggressive. Fox News's September poll (n=1,211) has 53% of registered voters saying Trump's immigration measures have gone too far, including 60% of independents.
- ICE is still underwater. April's UMass poll had ICE approval at 33%. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (n=1,000 likely voters, live phone) now has it at 38% approve, 58% disapprove. ReconMR has ICE at 43–53 in Texas. The questions differ, but all three come out negative.
- The budget fight. In April the fight was over $75 billion for ICE. The Leadership Conference finds 71% oppose paying for ICE's growth from $10 billion to $85 billion with cuts to Medicare and SNAP, 61% strongly.
- It matters less to voters than it did. In a Texas 2036 / Baselice poll (n=1,001), 25% of Texas Republicans name immigration or the border as the state's most important issue without being prompted, down from 54% in November 2024. When asked directly, 86% still say prioritizing border security would make them more likely to back a candidate. Nationally, the Leadership Conference finds the share naming border security or deportations as a top priority fell from 30% to 23% over the past year.
Where the Hard Line Holds
The restrictionist side still wins on two things: who gets to vote and who gets public benefits.
Rutgers-Eagleton finds that even in New Jersey, 71% of adults support requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote (n=1,004). Nationally, Noble Predictive Insights (n=2,527) finds 54% concerned about noncitizens voting, with a wide partisan split: 80% of Republicans, 33% of Democrats.
In California, the Manhattan Institute finds 51% of likely voters want Medi-Cal limited to people with legal status, against 31% who want it open regardless of status (n=1,000). Independents back the limit 55–24. And the enforcement base is intact: ReconMR finds 85% of Texas Republicans view ICE favorably.
It's the same split as the trust numbers at the top. Voters are strict about the border, the ballot and public programs, and generous about who gets to stay.
Shorter Stories
🌵 New Mexico ranks it second. Only 15% of New Mexico likely voters name immigration and border security as their top issue, but that's enough for second place, behind inflation. KOB 4 / SurveyUSA
📋 Black voters see ICE differently. 74% of Black voters strongly agree that ICE is being used as a political tool to reduce the number of Black and Brown people in the country, compared with 40% of all voters. Leadership Conference / Brilliant Corners
What Else We Tracked
- 62% of Vermonters Disapprove of ICE Enforcement, With Sharp Party Divide — Vermont Public / Braun Research
- Majority of Americans Oppose Deporting Immigrants to Third-Country Prisons — YouGov
- Long Islanders Narrowly Oppose State Ban on ICE Cooperation Agreements — Newsday / Siena
- 65% of Arizona Hispanic Voters Oppose ICE Cooperation; White Voters Split Opposite — Arizona State University
- Border Security Stays Popular With Texas GOP Voters But Fades as Top Unprompted Priority — Texas 2036 / Baselice & Associates
- Hate Incidents Increasingly Tied to Immigration Status, Ancestry in California — SSRS
Until next time, Alex Lundry
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