President Donald Trump’s polling on a signature issue has taken a 180-degree turn, says CNN’s chief data analyst.
Harry Enten said public sentiment has soured on the very immigration agenda that propelled Trump to victory in 2016 and 2024.
Pew Research polls found that 53 percent of Americans trusted Trump on immigration in November 2024, while 46 percent did not. Now, however, that image has reversed: 58 percent of Americans now say they do not trust the president on immigration, while only 41 percent continue to have faith in his hardline immigration agenda.
Enten dubbed it “a massive change in the court of public opinion.”
“So what we’re seeing with ICE is finding its way to the Trump administration at large, to Trump at large,” he said Tuesday. “No longer is this pillar of Donald Trump support something he can count on anymore. American people have, simply put, lost the trust—or Donald Trump has lost the trust of the American people on immigration.”
The polling on ICE trended along the same lines.
Enten pointed out that ICE’s favorability rating in July 2018 was one point above water among all voters and only three points underwater among independents.
But as of January, after the shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minnesota, a Marquette University Law School poll found that a staggering 60 percent of Americans now disapprove of ICE’s work.
The shift in opinion among independent voters was even more stark, with ICE’s favorability rating 42 points underwater.
“It’s a very different picture from what we saw in term number one for Donald Trump at this point,” Enten said. “And this is just a real sign that the voters and independents are seeing what’s happening on the ground and the actions of ICE are having consequences in the court of public opinion, especially among independents.”
Americans have also changed their minds on whether local governments should cooperate with ICE.
A Fox News poll conducted last month found that 53 percent of Americans believe local governments should control immigration enforcement in their communities, while 46 percent believed they should cooperate with ICE.
That’s an inversion of last year’s polling, when 51 percent favored requiring ICE cooperation, and 45 percent favored local control
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Federal immigration agents have shot and killed at least 11 people since Trump returned to office in January 2025, including American citizens Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota. Between Trump’s inauguration last year and June 2026, another 52 people died in ICE custody in the U.S., according to the Human Rights Watch.
“So ICE’s net favor rating is having big changes in terms of—and big consequences in terms of—how Americans and how voters are viewing whether or not their local government should cooperate with ICE,” Enten said.
