President Trump and his loyalists in the Republican Party and greater MAGA movement insist that the administration has a strong mandate for its zero-tolerance immigration policies. Trump ran on that platform in 2024, winning decisively, and his supporters maintain that most Americans still believe immigrants should follow the rules when entering this country.

On the other side of the political divide, Democrats are convinced that the American people are much more tolerant of migrants – even those who come here without papers or permission – and that the Trump administration’s deportation strategies are not only inhumane, but unpopular.

Guess what? One wouldn’t know it from consuming our equally polarized news media, but there’s evidence that both sides are at least half right.

It’s true, as Democratic Party officials and liberal commentators would have us believe, that a critical mass of Americans are dissatisfied – many passionately so – with the harsh immigration policies emanating from Washington. In a new survey by RealClear Opinion Research, 48% of respondents said they think immigration policy is worse off than a year ago, while only 41% think it is better off. (Eleven percent think it is about the same.)

It’s hardly an endorsement of the Trump regime. That said, when asked whether they preferred the Biden administration’s immigration policies, the answer was a resounding “no.” By a margin of 43%-28% (with 29% answering “neither”), voters chose Donald Trump’s approach over Joe Biden’s. The obvious implication here is that while voters look askance at the over-zealous enforcement of immigration law that has turned Minneapolis and Chicago and a couple of other places into war zones, they were even more turned off by the previous administration’s gambit of essentially opening the southern border.

The RCP survey also found that only 27.6% of self-described independent voters believe the Republican Party is doing a “good job” handling immigration, compared to 37.2% who say the GOP is “not doing a good job.” Again, not encouraging numbers for Trump and his political party. Except that even fewer independents (19.7%) say the Democrats are doing a good job on immigration, as contrasted with 37% who say they aren’t doing a good job. So Democrats are nearly 10 percentage points underwater with the voting bloc that tends to settle all close elections. And 2026 is an election year.

Such data suggests that both sides have much to gain if they prove willing to compromise, a dynamic that manifested itself in Minnesota this week after the president sidelined Kristi Noem, his incendiary Department of Homeland Security secretary, and redeployed tough-guy Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino back to the California desert. The administration’s new face on the ground in icy Minnesota is border czar Thomas Homan, a veteran law enforcement professional and immigration officer.

“I’m not here because the federal government has carried its mission out perfectly,” Homan conceded upon his arrival in the Twin Cities. This was the first conciliatory statement out of the administration in the aftermath of the killing of two anti-ICE protestors in Minneapolis. But Homan also laid blame for the nation’s immigration wars with the Biden administration. He also insisted that the administration wasn’t capitulating over changing course.

“We are not surrendering our mission at all,” Homan said. “We are just doing it smarter.”

That would seem to be what most Americans want. The most recent RealClear Opinion Research survey of 1,200 registered U.S. voters was done before the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti, but after federal agents shot and killed Renee Good – deaths that seem to have altered the tone, and perhaps the emphasis, of the Trump administration deportation efforts.

As with almost every major political issue these days, however, the stark partisan divide makes consensus difficult. In numerous immigration-related topics, Democrats hold views that are an utter anathema to Republicans. Majorities of Democrats, for instance, say that illegal immigrants are “positive” for society (51.2%); say ICE should be abolished (51.4%); assert that ICE enforcement is making cities “less safe” (54.0%); and that the government should only deport illegal migrants “who have committed a “serious” crime (50.6%).

Party affiliation even determines what people think they’ve witnessed. Asked, for instance, about the killing of Renee Good, 86% of Democrats and 55% of independents do not think the officer’s actions were justified, while 69% of Republicans think they were.

Similar dichotomies exist when voters are queried about policy preferences. Asked whether legal immigration should be curtailed because “of the risks to the U.S.,” 51.2% of Republicans answered affirmatively compared to only 16.6% of Democrats, Likewise, voters were almost equally divided on whether federal funding should be cut off to so-called “sanctuary cities,” but this finding hides the stark partisan split: Democrats opposed this idea by a ratio of 5-1. Republicans were the reverse: 59.2% supported it, with only 12.2% opposed.

And so it goes on, question after question, findings replicated this week by the Pew Research Center in an ambitious survey of attitudes about migrants and border enforcement. Another Pew poll, this one released last autumn two weeks before Election Day, revealed “a sharp rise in partisan hostility” with large majorities of rank-and-file Republicans and Democrats viewing the opposing party as “immoral.”

The Pew poll showed that Americans see the country as more divided than at any time since the Civil War. For now, it’s Tom Homan’s responsibility – and Gov. Tim Walz and other elected Minnesota Democrats – to see that it doesn’t come to that.

Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics and executive editor of RealClearMedia Group. Reach him at ccannon@realclearpolitics.com or on X @CarlCannon.

Tom Bevan is the co-founder and president of RealClearPolitics and the co-author of "Election 2012: A Time for Choosing." Email: tom@realclearpolitics.com, Twitter: @TomBevanRCP

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