President Donald Trump started his second term with one huge difference compared with his first term: Polls regularly showed majorities of Americans approving of his handling of immigration. In fact, it was his best issue, whereas it had been one of his least popular before.
Six months into his second term, it’s still among his best issues, but it’s no longer as popular. There has been a clear decline in support for Trump’s handling of immigration, with his approval rating dropping across a handful of prominent polls.
The trend mirrors the downtick in his overall approval rating as the administration has pursued an aggressive set of policies resulting in many arrests but slow progress on deportations of known undocumented immigrants convicted of major crimes, as well as controversial clashes over deportations.
While Trump still gets good marks on some specifics, including border security, many of his more aggressive specific immigration policies don’t poll well, even as he continues to press on with immigration as a signature issue.
Polls do continue to show immigration remaining among Trump’s most popular issues. But the trend is clear. While most Trump voters remain satisfied with his handling of immigration and other issues, some have told NBC News that they take issue with his approach.
“For one, I think it’s immoral,” Jorge, 21, an independent from Florida who voted for Trump last year, said in an interview following up on his responses in a previous poll.
He criticized the Trump administration for not “taking the time to separate the people who do not need to be here, which are the criminals, illegal criminals and migrants, and separating from the working people that benefit our society,” said Jorge, who declined to share his last name while discussing national politics. “It’s disappointing. … He thinks he can just take everyone.”
Inside the data
In poll after poll in his first few weeks in office, Trump’s approval rating on immigration regularly eclipsed 50%.
Fifty-six percent of registered voters approved of his handling of immigration in a late January survey as part of Morning Consult’s “Trump Tracker,” which includes his approval rating on a slew of issues. Other polls found similar results: 51% of U.S. citizen adults approved in a mid-February Economist/YouGov poll, 54% of adults approved in a late February CBS/YouGov poll, and 51% of adults approved in an early March CNN poll.
But across each of those polls, there has been a clear downward trend as more Americans are souring on Trump’s handling of that major issue. Some of the movement is within polls’ margins of error, but overall, they consistently show a measure of decline.
In CNN’s mid-July poll, just 42% of adults approved of Trump’s handling of immigration, while 45% of adults said the same in an early July Economist/YouGov poll, as did 41% in a late June Quinnipiac University poll.
While narrowly half or more still approved of Trump’s handling of the issue in the most recent Morning Consult (51%) and CBS/YouGov (50%) polls from mid-July and late June, respectively, months of surveys by both found the same trend of slightly decreased ratings on immigration.
Fox News’ poll, however, hasn’t changed much. Fox News tested Trump’s approval rating on immigration three times, finding it at 47% in April, 46% in June and 48% in July.
That having been said, the landscape remains complicated, especially from a partisan political perspective. When Fox News asked this month which party does a better job on immigration, Republicans had a 6-point lead (52%-46%).
While that’s down from the double-digit Republican advantage the poll found in 2022 and 2023, Democrats had the edge when Fox tested the question during the first three years of Trump’s first term.
What has sparked the public reaction
A possible reason Trump’s broader numbers on immigration have fallen could lie in the administration’s policies itself. Even when Trump’s numbers on the issue were higher, the harder-edged parts of his immigration policy — the ones the administration has trumpeted in recent months — have always polled worse than his overall numbers on the issue.
Then, once Trump started acting on those policies, they drove news coverage and perceptions of the administration.
The Wall Street Journal poll conducted in mid-January, before Trump returned to office, provides a clear example of the pre-inauguration warning signs on an issue that was once a strength.
Almost three-quarters of registered voters (74%) said they supported detaining and deporting only undocumented immigrants who had been convicted of crimes. It was the second-most-popular immigration proposal tested, behind creating a pathway to citizenship for “undocumented immigrants who have been in the U.S. for many years and pass a background check,” which 79% supported.
A majority of registered voters also favored increasing the level of legal immigration and the number of H1-B visas available for high-skilled workers.
The public was narrowly in favor of a plan to “detain and deport millions of undocumented immigrants” (52% in favor); noting that businesses could face worker shortages because of the plan made it slightly less popular. A majority (53%) also backed building a wall along the Mexican border.
By contrast, only 38% favored a plan to detain and deport undocumented immigrants with American citizen children, 31% favored a call to end birthright citizenship, and 26% favored deporting “undocumented immigrants even if they have lived in the U.S. for 10 or more years, pay taxes on earnings, and have no criminal record.”
Fox News found a similar thing when it polled voters’ views on illegal immigration shortly before Trump returned to office and in late July. Both times, 59% said their views hewed closest to “deport only those illegal immigrants who have been charged with crimes but allow others to remain in the U.S. and eventually qualify for citizenship.” Twenty-nine percent said they backed deporting all illegal immigrants, and 11% backed allowing all to remain in the country.
In other words, there’s broader support for general promises of deportations or plans focused on removing criminals than there is support for specifically deporting people who haven’t committed crimes outside of coming to the United States illegally or people who have American citizen children.
Other, more recent polls have mirrored those findings.
A May NPR/Ipsos poll on immigration found near-majority support (48%) for “quickly deporting alleged gang members under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798,” and pluralities also supported a border wall and allowing local law enforcement to detain immigrants without legal status.
But a near-majority, 46%, backed giving “legal status to immigrants without legal status brought to the U.S. as children,” and a majority (53%) opposed ending birthright citizenship, which Trump has tried to do by an executive order that has been challenged in court. And the public was almost evenly divided on support for the “mass deportation of everyone who is in the country without legal status.”
This week, the Wall Street Journal poll found registered voters close to evenly split on their approval of Trump’s handling of immigration — 48% approved, 51% disapproved — and with similar marks for his handling of illegal immigration specifically — 51% approved, 49% approved. But as in many other recent polls, some specific pieces of the administration’s policy poll better than others.
Sixty-two percent approve of “deporting undocumented immigrants,” while 36% oppose.
But 58% oppose deporting people “believed to be here illegally without them ever seeing a judge or getting a hearing.” And 53% say the “Trump administration is crossing the line” with its deportation efforts, while 45% say it is “doing what is necessary.”
The sentiment reflects what Latino Trump voters said last month during focus groups observed by NBC News as part of the 2025 Deciders series, produced by Syracuse University and the research firms Engagious and Sago.
Most of the swing-state voters who participated still supported Trump and his broad actions on deportations, but a handful of participants criticized the administration’s widespread deportations. They said Trump and the government should be prioritizing undocumented immigrants who committed additional crimes over those who have followed the rules since they came to the country illegally.
“He was going to deport people that were criminals and have backgrounds,” Ruby L., a focus group participant who was born in Colombia and lives in Georgia, said last month. “But I see that he’s deporting people that work hard and have been in this country. I think he should find a way to help them stay and get a citizenship or something.”
