Immigration is a high-profile issue in contemporary American politics. The issue surged to the top of the public agenda in 2024, arguably helping Republican Donald Trump, who promised to crack down on undocumented immigration, win reelection to the presidency.

Since taking office, Trump has advanced a series of hard-line immigration policies. Under Trump, arrests of undocumented immigrants have reached record highs, and are expected to grow further given the recent 300% increase in the immigration enforcement budget. Trump’s deportation push has led to a surge in detentions of undocumented immigrants without criminal records, despite the administration’s insistence that it is prioritizing the deportation of hardened criminals.

Many of Trump’s policies have raised concerns about infringements on constitutional rights and democratic norms. In a departure from past practice, Trump has authorized masked federal agents to arrest undocumented immigrants in sensitive spaces such as schools, hospitals, and churches. More troublingly, he has invoked the Enemy Aliens Act to deport undocumented immigrants without due process; attempted to end birthright citizenship in violation of the 14th Amendment; and expanded expedited removal authority - a fast removal process without a court hearing - to deport immigrants throughout the country. Trump has also deployed the National Guard to patrol the border and assist in deportations at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities, raising concerns about the use of military forces within the United States.

Although many Trump policies have been challenged in the federal courts, there is little doubt that he has transformed U.S. immigration policy during the first six months of his second term. Many worry that Trump’s immigration policies reflect a broader authoritarian turn in American politics.

How does the American public feel about these developments? Do Americans endorse policies that employ harsh tactics or infringe on immigrants’ rights? Our recent UMass Poll took a deep dive into American attitudes toward the Trump Administration’s immigration policies. We found that most Americans don’t support harsh measures that encroach on constitutional rights or threaten democratic values.

As our poll shows, most Americans support the principle that undocumented immigrants are entitled to the same basic constitutional protections as American citizens. Majorities of Americans agree that undocumented immigrants have the same rights to freedom of speech (55%), an attorney when accused of a crime (55%), a hearing before a judge before being deported (54%), and freedom from cruel and unusual punishment (63%), as American citizens. And a plurality of Americans (47%) also agrees that undocumented immigrants have the same right to freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures.

Most Americans also recoil from the idea that Trump could end birthright citizenship. Although opposition to federal power to invalidate citizenship is, unsurprisingly, strongest concerning native-born citizens (64%), a strong plurality - 49% - also opposes this idea in the case of children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants.

Finally, most Americans oppose the harshest immigration policies - like family separation (67%), deportation to prisons in foreign countries (54%), or deportation to countries the immigrants are not from (65%) - used by the Trump administration. 45% of Americans also oppose the use of the National Guard to enforce immigration law, noticeably more than the 39% who support this.

Far from being in a punitive mood toward undocumented immigrants, our poll shows that a strong majority of Americans - 63% - favors allowing immigrants who are living in the United States illegally to become citizens if they meet citizenship requirements and commit no crimes.

Of course, immigration attitudes are highly polarized based on party affiliation: Republicans and Trump voters are much more likely to doubt the constitutional rights of undocumented immigrants, and much more likely to support harsh immigration policies, than Democrats and Harris voters. Strong Republican support for tough immigration policies helps explain Trump’s advancement of these measures despite a lack of broader public enthusiasm.

But in an era of increasingly harsh — and, arguably, authoritarian — immigration enforcement, it’s important to highlight that most Americans reject such excesses. They want policies that honor the Constitution, respect the rule of law, and treat every person with basic fairness.

By Jesse Rhodes

Donald Trump handily defeated Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election, winning both the popular vote and the Electoral College. On the heels of his victory, Trump claimed he had a mandate to enact his conservative policy agenda. “[T]he beauty is that we won by so much. The mandate was massive,” Trump exulted in late December 2024. Trump’s Republican supporters agreed. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson asserted that “The American people want us to implement and deliver that America First agenda…And we have to do that while we have that energy and that excitement, beginning on the very first day of the Congress in the new year.”

Since taking office in January 2025, Trump and the Republican majorities in Congress have moved aggressively to enact conservative policy priorities. They have dramatically expanded immigration enforcement, enacted massive cuts to Medicaid and SNAP benefits, fired thousands of federal government employees, ended federal DEI policies, and attacked the financial stability and independence of colleges and universities. In the span of six months, Trump has amassed a record that makes his presidency one of the most consequential - and controversial - in decades.

Trump is arguably delivering on many of the promises he made on the campaign trail. In other words, he’s doing just what he promised Americans he would do if he were elected to office. With this record of success, Trump should enjoy considerable popular approval, right?

Wrong. According to our July 2025 UMass Poll, Trump is actually quite unpopular. Only 38 percent of Americans approve of his job performance, and 58 percent disapprove. To make matters worse, nearly half of Americans (49 percent) strongly disapprove of his performance. Trump is noticeably less popular than the average president was during the same time in their presidency.

Trump’s approval has fallen 6 percentage points since our April 2025 poll. And he is bleeding support among critical constituencies. In April 2025, Trump enjoyed approval from 48 percent of men (compared with 39 percent of women). By July 2025, only 39 percent of men expressed approval of Trump, compared with 35 percent of women. And while 31 percent of independents approved of his presidency in April 2025, that number is down 10 percentage points, to 21 percent, in July.

Trump's brutal job approval numbers - though partially attributable to partisan polarization - also shed light on the consequences of his disruptive presidency. While Trump claimed a mandate to institute dramatic changes in domestic and foreign policy, a majority of Americans now say that Trump has not handled his key issues well. In our July survey, 63 percent of Americans rate Trump’s handling of inflation negatively; 55 percent give his handling of jobs a negative grade; and 53 percent say he hasn’t handled tariffs well. Perhaps most strikingly, 54 percent of Americans rate Trump’s handling of his signature issue - immigration - negatively. Disapproval has increased in each of these areas since April, with the most substantial increase coming in the area of immigration.

So what’s going on? If Trump is trying to follow through on his campaign promises, and has succeeded to a significant degree, why do most Americans rate his presidency - and his policy performance - so negatively?

One possibility is that Trump is stumbling into the same trap that has ensnared many previous presidents - misreading an election victory as a popular endorsement of his policy agenda. As Julia Azari has noted, presidents frequently claim a popular mandate to enact their policy agenda, only to find that the public didn’t support the president’s priorities. (The reason for the gap between presidential expectations and public reactions is that most Americans don’t vote based on the presidential candidate’s promises; instead, they make their choice based on their assessment of the status quo.) Thus, Trump might be simply misreading his mandate and engaging in a classic case of presidential overreach.

Another, darker possibility is that Trump and his Republican supporters know their policy agenda is unpopular, but have decided to enact it anyway. According to this perspective, articulated by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, Trump’s Republican Party primarily represents a small and shrinking coalition of wealthy Whites and corporations. This coalition prefers a relatively unpopular agenda of tax breaks for the rich, cuts to social spending, and deregulation of industry. Although Republicans can and do eke out electoral victories by highlighting social issues, like immigration, abortion, and trans rights, that attract a broader coalition, their long-term commitment to their core constituencies leads them to enact unpopular measures. (To be fair, Democrats’ commitment to a vocal progressive base leads them to advance policies that lack popular support, too.) This depressing perspective helps explain why Trump is enthusiastic about policies - like Texas’s mid-decade redistricting - that shield elected officials from popular accountability.

Of course, much could happen between now and November 2026. However, the unpopularity of Trump’s policy agenda may produce a popular backlash at the polls next November. In the short term, expect more big protests and more raucous town halls, and potential defections by Republican members of Congress. Time will tell if public disapproval leads Trump and Republicans to enact policies that conform more closely to what the public wants.