A new poll shows the backlash to Trump's immigration cruelty has begun

Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has been on an anti-immigrant tear. With billions of dollars in new funding for his mass deportation goals recently approved, the tools are there to escalate his crackdown even further. But a new poll from Gallup shows just how badly his heavy-handed policies have soured with Americans.

I wrote last month about Trump’s weakening numbers on immigration. While it was still his “strongest issue” in June’s NBC News poll, it was still not an overwhelming seal of approval from the electorate. Other surveys conducted during and after the protests in Los Angeles and the harsh federal response showed those numbers slacking further as the spotlight shone on Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s widening scope.

If those polls were a tremor, the survey that Gallup released Friday has the potential to be a political earthquake. In the face of a constant barrage of dark rhetoric from the White House, Americans showed themselves across multiple questions to be more open and accepting of immigration than they have been in years.

For the past 50 years, Gallup has measured Americans’ preferred rate of immigration based on three options: “should immigration be kept at its present level, increased or decreased?”

Last year, 55% of Americans said that immigration rates should be decreased. Now, that number has dropped down to 30%, the same as it was in 2021, when those rates began to climb. Another 38% of Americans think it should be kept at the same level, up from 26% last year, and 26% think it should be increased — a 10-point jump from the same time in 2024.

The shift seen among Republicans and independents is particularly noteworthy, as Gallup analyst Lydia Saad wrote:

At the same time, a record-high 79% of Americans now say that immigration is good for the country, compared to a record-low 17% who say otherwise. Accordingly, we’re also seeing a broader shift in support away from enforcement policies against undocumented immigrants and toward a pathway to citizenship for them. This poll showed 78% of all people surveyed supporting the latter, an 8-point jump. But crucially, there’s now a majority of support among self-identified Republicans (59%!) for a pathway to citizenship.

On the one hand, these numbers taken in tandem could be a sign that Americans consider Trump’s immigration policies to be effective — to a point. While there’s often a gap between perceived rates of immigration and actual border crossings, there has been a substantial plummet in border encounters reported since January. Some administrations might see this desire to freeze things at their current lower rates as a victory and choose to maintain the new status quo. The imminent threat of overreach that these polls portend would also likely give most presidential administrations pause.

But this administration is just gearing up, as the architect of Trump’s immigration policies, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, encourages a further uptick in the number of ICE arrests and deportations. As a true ideologue, he is unlikely to be deterred by these or other poll numbers in his quest to expel millions of immigrants — but his boss is a bit more sensitive to the swings of the electorate.

Trump originally latched on to anti-immigration sentiments in part because of the response it drew from his nascent MAGA base. Concerns among the restaurant and agriculture industries prompted him to hit the brakes on some unpopular raids, before reversing himself. The growing backlash that the Gallup poll suggests might be the nudge that Trump needs to put the untethered Miller back onto his leash.