Stephen Miller is Making Trump Even More Unpopular (Analysis)
Mass deportations is no where near as popular as the president seems to think they are.
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump’s second-term promise of “the largest mass deportation program in history” was meant to be a cornerstone of his presidency. Its execution has become a kind of slow-motion political train wreck.
MIGRANT INSIDER is sponsored by
Yet, in the insulated bubble of the White House, it remains unclear whether the president is even aware that the public approval for Stephen Miller’s mass deportation policies is plummeting, or that his federal immigration force is fast becoming one of the country’s most reviled institutions.
Cabinet secretaries and senior officials, many of whom seem to live in a state of quiet dread of Miller—an absurdly powerful aide with a lifelong obsession with purging migrants, particularly Latinos—are reportedly afraid to be the ones to deliver the bad news. The silence is deafening.
Meanwhile, the numbers continue to tell a story of an initiative that is backfiring spectacularly. Trump’s overall approval has cratered to a second-term low of 40% in a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll, with his handling of immigration in a dismal 35% approval/62% disapproval, according to Gallup. This decline is directly tied to the jarring optics of masked agents snatching non-criminal workers and students.
MIGRANT INSIDER is sponsored by
The public’s shift in sentiment is profound. A staggering 53% of Americans now call the deportation process “not fair,” and 52% disapprove of Trump’s handling of the issue. This is a sharp reversal from February, when a CBS/YouGov poll showed 59% of people supporting mass deportations, a number that has now fallen to a near-even split of 49% approval and 51% disapproval by July.
The backlash is hitting where it hurts the most, alienating independents and even some Republicans. Among Hispanics, a group the president courted with some success in 2024, approval has tanked to 33% from 50% at his inauguration.
The economic and social costs are also becoming impossible to ignore. With labor shortages looming from the deportation of millions of essential workers, 50% of Americans now believe the president is focusing “too much” on deportations over more pressing economic issues.
Protests, once dismissed as mere political theater, are gaining traction, with 45% of the public now approving of anti-ICE actions. In this environment, where videos of federal agents storming schools are labeled “fascist” on social media, the Department of Homeland Security itself has seen its favorability plummet. It now ranks below the IRS in public trust, with 37% of Americans now backing its abolition.
The truth of this situation, it seems, has yet to penetrate the walls of the Oval Office. In the absence of a willing messenger, a presidency that promised to be defined by strength on immigration may, in fact, be undone by it. The mass deportations were sold as a mandate, but the latest polling reveals a presidency in free fall. The American public, it turns out, is not buying the cruelty. They are, with every passing poll, deporting the hype.
If you’ve made it this far, you care. Help me keep pressing the powerful for answers and exposing what they’d rather you never see—subscribe or donate to keep Migrant Insider going.
Stephen Miller has serious goals to destroy as much as he possibly can accomplish all Democratic norms: Miller follows closely all things of Hitlers regime with added criteria of Victor Orban. He uses over & over again the Mein kamp ' Big Lie' as a tool of very damaging propaganda. Miller has no interest in humanity only cruelty. Bigotry and fear. Miller is a nazi from top to bottom.
tinyurl.com/y3j5x593