Following a tumultuous month of immigration control under the second Trump administration, polls depict a dip in the president’s approval rating — but many Iowa voters are still on board with his border policy. 

According to an AP-NORC poll released Feb. 12, about 60 percent of Americans think President Donald Trump has overreached in his deployment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, agents to U.S. cities. 

The statistics come less than a month after the deadly shootings of protesters Alex Pretti and Renee Good by ICE agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The numbers demonstrate a sharp increase from the 37 percent of Americans who viewed ICE unfavorably during Trump’s first term in 2018. 

Immigration control was a winning issue for Trump’s campaign. In Iowa, 60 percent of residents said securing the U.S. southern border was critical in a September 2024 Des Moines Register poll. 

According to Pew Research, 82 percent of Trump supporters said immigration was a “very important” issue to their vote in the 2024 presidential election.

University of Iowa professor Tim Hagle attributed the decrease in favorability to declining opinions of no-party voters, who are less likely to pay attention to policy but likely saw footage of the confrontations on the streets of Minneapolis. 

Hagle said Trump’s Republican base still heavily favors deportations and border control, but he’s seen moderate and strong Trump supporters grow weary of ICE’s contentious presence in Minnesota. 

“There are going to be hardcore supporters of Trump who say this is justified given the pushback [ICE] is getting from protesters,” Hagle said. “Some of the people that were maybe not as strongly in favor of Trump but picked him over Harris, maybe saying, ‘I don’t know about this’ or ‘We’re not as keen on this.’”

According to a New York Times/Siena Poll, 81 percent of Trump voters approved of how ICE has handled its job as of Jan. 12.

Iowa voters say Trump is following through on campaign promises 

Mary Lindstrom, chair of Iowa Young Republicans and Eastern Iowa Young Republicans, said border security topped her list of issues when she voted for Trump in the 2024 election because of the amount of overdose deaths from illegal drugs brought over the border. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control, 79,384 drug overdose deaths occurred nationwide in 2024.

She said Trump has rightfully prioritized cracking down on illegal immigration in the first year of his second term and has effectively strengthened the border more quickly than she anticipated.

According to Pew Research Center, U.S. Border Patrol encounters with migrants dropped to 237,538 in fiscal year 2025 — the lowest level in more than 50 years. In fiscal year 2024, there were more than 1.5 million encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border. 

Lindstrom doesn’t think the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis will impact Republican performance come election season. She said many conservatives voted for Trump because of his immigration enforcement, and that he is following through on those campaign promises. 

“The loss of life is heartbreaking,” Lindstrom said. “It’s shattering. But I don’t think it’s going to deter Republicans.” 

Bernie Hayes, chair of the Linn County Republican Party, said immigration was among his top issues when he voted for Trump in the 2024 election — along with anti-abortion values and fiscal policy. Hayes said Trump’s policies were the most likely to secure the border, which he said is necessary because there is a legal path to citizenship for immigrants entering the country. 

“We’ve had people with ulterior motives come across and want to do us harm, and people that just absolutely don’t care,” Hayes said. “They rape and pillage and do whatever, and then they get released from whatever jail they’ve been held in and go do it again.”

According to research by the American Immigration Council, there is no statistically significant correlation between crime rates and the immigration share of the population in any U.S. state. The council found that U.S.-born individuals are statistically more likely to commit crimes than immigrants — including undocumented immigrants. 

Hayes said Trump is living up to his expectations in terms of deportations and immigration control so far. He said a drop in approval rating following the immigration crackdown in Minnesota is temporary. Hayes said he, and most Trump voters he knows, are still on board with the president’s approach, despite the contentious nature of recent
immigration control.

Following the two-month-long surge in ICE agents in Minneapolis, the administration announced it would end the deployment on Feb. 12. 

Hayes said he supports the decision and called it a “restrategization” as opposed to a capitulation to protesters. He said the pivot was a good move by the administration because of the organized pushback from protesters, which he said created the atmosphere that ultimately resulted in loss of life. 

“It’s sad those events occurred,” Hayes said. “But when you delve into them, and you look behind the curtain, you see some of the things that ICE agents have had to deal with, it’s a wonder, sadly, that there haven’t been more.”

Voters support policy plans, not approach by Trump administration 

Kasey Ludlow, a third-year UI student, said immigration was not one of his top priorities when he voted for Trump in the 2024 election. But, he said, Trump has followed through on his campaign promises to crack down on illegal immigration in his second term, though he said the approach has been more aggressive than predicted. 

Ludlow considers himself to have more moderate positions than much of Trump’s base and said while he doesn’t fully support the president’s approach to immigration policy, he still thinks the administration has a better handle on it than former President Joe Biden did or former Vice President Kamala Harris would have.

He thinks students have noticed and reflected on the aggressive nature of Trump’s immigration enforcement. 

“Is that how an enforcement agency should operate?” Ludlow asked. “I don’t know. Is it necessary? I don’t know, but those are questions that should be raised, and I think have been raised among conservatives.”

Ludlow said local leaders in Minneapolis, such as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz or Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, failed to step up and unite the city in their response to ICE. 

“Frey should have called for people to calm down,” he said. “Instead, I felt like he wanted people to stand up and fight ICE, which is the wrong sentiment in such a stressful and fragile situation.”

Hagle said the response to ICE from local public officials may have contributed to a temporary decrease in public opinion or decline in Trump’s approval rating. 

He said the leaders made the situation more volatile instead of calming the city. 

“It doesn’t help when you have Democrats coming out and portraying it as murder in the streets,” Hagle said. “That helps to gin up the protests against the ICE and Border Patrol agents that had to protect themselves because of the aggressive protests that were occurring.”