Trump deportation crackdown emerges as liability for Republicans, poll finds

Donald Trump’s deportation push is becoming a political drag on Republicans, with a new Reuters/Ipsos poll showing more Americans would punish a candidate who backs the president’s approach than reward one who does.

In the six-day survey of 4,557 U.S. adults, 52% said they would be less likely to support a candidate who favors Trump’s deportation agenda, while 42% said they would be more likely to do so. The split was even starker among independents, a group that often decides close House and Senate races: 57% said they preferred a candidate who opposes Trump’s deportation drive, compared with 32% who favored a Trump-aligned candidate on the issue.

The numbers point to a familiar but dangerous dynamic for Republicans heading into the 2026 midterms. Immigration has long been one of Trump’s strongest political themes, and it helped energize the party in 2024. But the latest polling suggests that aggressive enforcement, especially the visible raids and removals that have defined the second Trump term, may be alienating the swing voters Republicans need to hold narrow majorities in the U.S. House and Senate.

Trump’s standing on immigration has weakened alongside that shift. In the April poll, 40% approved of his performance on immigration, down from 50% in surveys taken in the weeks after his January 2025 inauguration. That decline followed an earlier Reuters/Ipsos reading in July 2025, when his approval on immigration had already fallen to 41%, then the lowest level of his second term. By late January 2026, the mood had darkened further: 58% said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement efforts to deal with unauthorized immigration had gone too far, while only 12% said they had not gone far enough.

The political risk has been reinforced by scenes that many voters have found hard to ignore. Sarah Pierce of Third Way pointed to the visible force of the crackdown, saying, “People were being pulled out of cars.” In January, Ipsos found 52% said the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by a U.S. immigration officer was an excessive use of force rather than a necessary one. For Republicans, the warning is clear: a hard-line immigration message still fires up the base, but among independents and suburban voters, the same tactics are increasingly looked at as too far.