Recently, White House “border czar” Tom Homan announced the conclusion of Operation Metro Surge, a high-profile immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota that sent thousands of federal agents into the Twin Cities — a move that opponents hailed as a victory for the “resistance.”
But the real victory was won by the Trump administration – and by extension the American people who voted President Trump into office to enforce immigration law. The operation yielded impressive results, including the arrest of more than 4,000 illegal aliens, as well as the location of more than 3,300 missing unaccompanied alien children.
Of course, this success was accomplished despite the outright hostility of local elected officials, who helped spur on widespread protests and violence against ICE agents that ultimately resulted in the deaths of two American citizens.
For many on the Left, the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti were supposed to be a political turning point. Activists and sympathetic media cast the incidents, and some of the polling afterward, as proof that the American public was finally ready to reject immigration enforcement wholesale and that the debate had shifted irrevocably against deportation and toward open-borders sentiment.
For example, the media was quick to highlight that disapproval for how “Trump has handled border security and immigration” has increased from 38 percent to 49 percent. However, the picture changes when people are asked whether voters still support deporting illegal aliens – all of them, not just those who have committed another crime in addition to entering the country illegally.
Across a variety of polling, that answer is still yes.
Despite endless negative media coverage, Democrat demagoguery, viral clips deceptively edited to portray ICE officers as merciless bullies, and an all-around coordinated narrative push framing basic immigration enforcement as akin to Nazism, national polling on the whole shows that a majority of Americans still support the Trump administration’s stance on immigration enforcement.
A Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll, cited by NBC, found that 52 percent of the public still supports deporting all illegal aliens.
Another national survey conducted by Cygnal and highlighted by the White House found that 61 percent of likely midterm voters support deporting those illegally in the United States back to their country of origin, compared to 34 percent who oppose that policy.
That is nearly a two-to-one margin, still, after months of heinously biased coverage.
But it gets even worse for the Left.
73 percent say entering the U.S. without legal permission is breaking the law.
64 percent say illegal immigration is a serious problem.
54 percent support ICE enforcing federal immigration laws to remove illegal immigrants.
58 percent oppose defunding ICE.
What’s even more telling is that these poll numbers were collected after all the media-generated controversy and wall-to-wall anti-ICE coverage that sparked mass protests in the first place.
To put it bluntly, the Left’s anti-immigration enforcement propaganda has failed in spectacular fashion. If immigration enforcement were truly “unpopular,” this would have been the moment for those numbers to fall. But they didn’t.
So why does the media continue to say that support for immigration enforcement has collapsed? The Left’s argument often depends on conflating two separate questions:
- Do Americans support mass deportations?
- Do Americans approve of every tactic used in every enforcement operation in every region of the country?
Those are not the same question, but mainstream media outlets deliberately obfuscate this reality.
Americans can and do scrutinize ICE use-of-force incidents and may demand accountability for errors as they do for law enforcement across the board. They may also have dissenting opinions about operational decisions and tactics that ICE uses.
But that does not mean Americans reject the core premise that immigration law should be enforced.
The polling continues to show something politically inconvenient for Democrats: despite the best efforts of Democrats and their media allies, Americans still believe illegal entry is breaking the law, illegal immigration is a serious problem, and mass deportation is a legitimate solution.
For years, activists and sympathetic media figures have tried to frame immigration enforcement as radical and even authoritarian. The slogan “Abolish ICE” was meant to be a rallying cry for a new majority, just as the Left attempted to do with “Defund the Police.”
But outside activist circles, that message seemingly hasn’t caught on.
There is a growing gap between elite opinion and public opinion on immigration enforcement. The loudest voices on social media and cable news panels do not represent the median voter. Americans still believe in sovereignty.
Strip away the outrage cycle and what remains is the basic premise that a nation has a right and responsibility to enforce its own laws and protect its borders. Thankfully, that principle still commands majority support.
That said, while public opinion is important, it is not everything.
A nation either enforces its immigration laws, or it does not. There is no third option. The removal of individuals who entered the country illegally, particularly those who have committed additional crimes after crossing the border, cannot be a matter of partisan preference or popular sentiment.
The most basic function of statehood is control over who may enter, who may remain, and under what conditions.
American sovereignty cannot be reduced to a focus group question. It cannot hinge on the news cycle or fluctuate with media narratives. If, at some point, the enforcement of immigration law becomes dependent on polling, then immigration law itself becomes optional, and borders become meaningless.
At that point, the debate is no longer about deportation policy. It is about whether the United States intends to remain a sovereign nation at all. And if that principle is surrendered to polling swings and activist pressure, then the country would be dissolved under the guise of immigration “reform.”
The left hoped that Operation Metro Surge would be a turning point. It was supposed to shame the country into abandoning immigration enforcement and accepting the idea that deportation itself is morally illegitimate.
Thankfully, that did not happen. Instead, it reinforced that Americans still believe in upholding the rule of law and defending American sovereignty.
Adam Johnston is a writer and Senior Contributor to The Federalist, whose work has also been featured in The Blaze, and the Daily Caller. He is also the creator of the Substack publication “Conquest Theory,” where he regularly writes about politics, history, philosophy, and technology. You can find him on X @adamkjohnston.
