Trump Is Getting Negative Marks On Immigration, Polls Show

President Donald Trump is losing ground with voters on one of the key focuses of his second administration, as his approval rating on immigration took a slight hit in multiple polls this week.

As Trump continues to ramp up his sweeping immigration agenda — touting deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members and crackdowns on sanctuary cities across the country — several polls put him underwater on immigration, an issue that took center stage during his 2024 campaign.

A new Washington Post-ABC-Ipsos poll released Friday put Trump at 53 percent disapproval among Americans on immigration, with 46 percent approving. A different poll from the Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs also released Friday reported the exact same numbers — 53 percent disapproval among adults and 46 percent approval.

It’s a downward — if slight — trend for both surveys. An earlier Post-Ipsos poll in February put Trump at a 50 percent approval rate on immigration, with 48 percent disapproving, and AP/NORC polling from late March also had a close split, with 49 percent approval and 50 percent disapproval.

Trump is also underwater on immigration in the latest New York Times/Siena College poll from Friday, which reported a 51 percent disapproval among voters of his handling of immigration compared to 47 percent approval. Fox News polled Trump’s closest numbers this week, with 47 percent approval among voters on immigration — a record high in Trump’s immigration approval in Fox surveys — but still in the negative with a 48 percent disapproval rating.

A majority approved of his border security policies in the Fox News poll, but he had a net negative approval rating on his deportations of undocumented immigrants.

The White House did not immediately respond to request for comment. But the Trump administration has pushed border security and touted deportations since Trump took office, and he has repeatedly praised Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and border czar Tom Homan as they enact his mass deportation plans. Trump and his administration have argued he has a mandate from the election to enact his immigration agenda.

“We have to get them out. I was, as you know, elected on the basis that we would have very little crime in our country,” Trump told reporters Monday. “We closed up the border. The border's now the strongest border we've ever had."

As Trump approaches his first 100 days in office, a slew of polls also show his overall job approval ratings dipping — and he’s been losing favorability on the economy.

The Post-Ipsos poll dove into more specific recent actions by the administration, asking Americans about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran native who was deported to El Salvador by mistake. Their polling showed a plurality of respondents at 42 percent support his return to the U.S. The survey also revealed a majority 51 percent opposition to sending immigrants accused of being gang members to El Salvador without a court hearing.

That margin significantly widens when broken down by Democrats and Republicans, but of just the independent voters polled, a majority disagreed with the deportations without a hearing.

The deportations of alleged Tren de Aragua gang members sent to El Salvador have become a major flash point between Democrats and Republicans after hundreds of migrants that the Trump administration alleged had gang ties were sent to a Salvadoran mega-prison.

Democrats denounced Abrego Garcia’s case and others as a violation of due process rights, pointing to a Supreme Court order that demanded the Trump administration “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return.

The Trump administration and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele have both claimed they do not have the authority to bring any deported immigrants back. Several Democrats have flown to El Salvador in a show of support for Abrego Garcia, but have focused their messaging on the illegality of the deportations and the rule of law rather than tackling the trickier immigration and border security questions that dominated the previous election.

The Post/ABC/Ipsos poll surveyed 2,464 adults from April 18 to 22, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. The AP/NORC poll was conducted from April 17 through 21 on 1,260 adults, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.9 percentage points. The NYT/Siena poll was conducted from April 21 to 24 of 913 voters across the country, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points. The Fox News poll was conducted from April 18 to 21 of 1,104 registered voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.