Trump knows he's losing on immigration -- and he doesn't know how to turn things around

Here’s a clear sign President Donald Trump knows his approach to immigration is losing in the court of public opinion. White House deputy chief of staff James Blair “privately urged House Republicans on Tuesday to stop emphasizing ‘mass deportations’ and instead focus their messaging on removing violent criminals,” Axios reported this week, citing sources in the room.

But this proposed “fix” is almost certainly a lost cause.

There is plenty of data showing Trump’s immigration agenda is not popular. According to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in January, about 6 in 10 Americans said Trump has “gone too far” in sending federal immigration agents into U.S. cities, and about the same share disapproved of Trump’s overall handling of immigration. Approval of Trump’s overall handling of immigration has plunged about 10 percentage points from his first month in office, according to AP-NORC data. This pattern of decline in support for Trump’s immigration program has surfaced across many other surveys, and probably explains a good chunk of the decline in Trump’s overall approval ratings.

There are also warning signs that Trump’s coalition could fray over immigration: A Politico poll conducted in January found that 1 in 5 voters who supported Trump in 2024 think his mass deportation campaign is too aggressive.

What’s interesting is that this emerging political reality seems to be registering for Trump. As he announced that he was withdrawing immigration agents from Minneapolis in February, Trump spoke publicly of the need to use a “softer touch” on immigration enforcement. Arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have fallen to their lowest level since September in what appears to be an ICE effort to go about its mass deportation project somewhat less conspicuously.

Yet such efforts to tweak the branding — including counseling Republicans to play up the deportations of “violent criminals” rather than immigrants more broadly — are doomed.

https://www.ms.now/opinion/trump-immigration-mass-deportations-republicans

Ya done fucked up, son.