Political tide is turning on Trump’s immigration policies
- Kate Troll
- Aug 22
- 3 min read
But ICE remains a threat to all immigrants
By Kate Troll
After seeing many videos of masked, armed ICE agents harassing and pulling peaceful, law-abiding community folk off the streets, while at the same time making slow progress on deporting undocumented criminals, Americans are beginning to sour on Trump’s immigration policies.
Three weeks ago, NBC News, reporting on several polls, noted, “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.” In this same story, a young Trump voter from Florida 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. I think it's immoral.”
This shift in support is also noted in an Aug. 12 poll by Pew Research Center. According to Pew Research, 54% of Americans now lack confidence in Trump to make good decisions on immigration policy.
As relatives, neighbors and co-workers get swept away into detention without due process, Trump’s pledge "to only go after criminals" becomes ever more clear that he intentionally misled American voters.
Take, for example, what happened in rural Kennett, Missouri, a town that voted overwhelmingly for Trump. Residents there never imagined that Carol, their favorite reliable waitress for 20 years, would be swept up when reporting for a renewal of her immigration status. “I voted for Donald Trump, and so did practically everyone here,” said Vanessa Cowart, a church friend of Carol. “But no one voted to deport moms. We were all under the impression we were just getting rid of the gangs, the people who came here in droves.”
While it’s heartening to see this shift in public support for Trump’s action on immigration, the Big, Bad Ugly Bill that recently passed Congress will keep the threat of ICE’s immoral and illegal (no due process) actions very much alive. After all, Congress tripled ICE’s budget with $45 billion for more detention centers and $30 billion for hiring up to 10,000 additional agents.
Even though, as far as I know, no arrests were made when ICE agents reportedly appeared in Juneau in July, they will likely come again. I point this out because Juneau is a caring community, supportive of documented immigrants. And like elsewhere, the immigrants here are not criminals.
For the last three years I’ve been closely involved with sponsoring and supporting refugees from Ukraine, Haiti and Venezuela. I know that through their successful employment, their children’s engagement in school and in their ability to be caring neighbors that Juneau is the beneficiary of their presence in our community.
What started as a concern about criminals illegally entering the county has morphed into an authoritarian president vilifying virtually all immigrants as "criminal illegal aliens," turning the border into a "war zone" with the cartels, and using false "emergencies" to create the largest law enforcement agency in the U..S, one that apparently believes it can operate untethered by the U.S. Constitution. Even documented immigrants in places like Juneau, more than 3,000 miles away from the Mexican border, are at risk of being deported by masked men.
Though public opinion is swinging in opposition to these actions by the Trump Administration, we must remain active and alert to this threat. And we must keep registering our disagreement on how Trump handles immigration.
• Kate Troll, a longtime Alaskan, has more than 25 years of experience in coastal management, fisheries and energy policy and is a former executive director for United Fishermen of Alaska and the Alaska Conservation Voters. She’s been elected to local office twice, written two books and resides in Juneau.
