In his 10 years as a presidential contender Donald Trump has always benefited politically by attacking immigrants, winning support for his promises of a hardline border crackdown. Yet now that’s he’s actually doing it — and in such a cruel fashion — the president is, for the first time, getting poor marks from voters, with a YouGov poll finding that 50% of Americans disapprove of his handling of what has often been his most popular issue.
The administration’s focus on smearing Maryland man Kilmar Abrego García, whom it illegally sent to a Salvadoran mega-prison without due process, has backfired, with American adults saying 50-28 that he should be brought back. It seems like Trump has underestimated some of the basic decency of the electorate.
Americans believe in fairness and compassion and Trump has been the opposite in his unbound eagerness to round up people. When the U.S. Supreme Court repeatedly and unanimously says that due process and access to the courts is must for people facing government action, citizens agree. Arresting university students based on speech alone and defying court orders is not what the voters thought they were getting.
A defining characteristic of Trump throughout his chaotic time in political life is that he’s quite malleable on most policy positions, depending on who he last spoke to, what seems to be getting him the most adulation and what the base responds to. He launched his first campaign, 10 years ago now, by bashing immigrants as murderers and rapists and has ridden an ever-more-draconian immigration message through three White House campaigns and two victories.
We doubt that cratering poll numbers on any given issue, including immigration, will prompt a complete heel turn from a president that is also surrounded by true-believer anti-immigrant zealots like Stephen Miller, but it could well act as a signal that he can and maybe is going too far.
Let’s remember that, during the (tame by comparison) first term, the infamous child separation policy was stopped almost immediately as a direct result of mass public outcry, driven by both dedicated media coverage and political communication around it. As tuned out as the general public tends to be around current events, certain things will spark their interest, and they will balk at a federal government that aims to give itself wide power to take the liberty of and inflict cruelty on regular people.
This is also the result of the public understanding that, beyond the moral and legal injury of the administration’s violation of the rights of Abrego García and all the other people sent to CECOT and denied due process, this is an issue that impacts everyone. While we wish that everyone cared equally about the fundamental rights of citizens and noncitizens, some Americans will be most galvanized by the thought that what begins to affect the latter will spread to affect the former, and that seems obviously true here.
When Trump asserts he will detain legal residents for speech and cancel visas on a whim; pick up anyone off the street and ship them out of the country without due process — including the process that would establish whether or not they have status or are even potentially citizens — and do nothing to correct mistakes, then Americans understand that no one is safe.
