President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is now “backfiring” on California Republicans, according to new polling data that one political science expert said has put California GOP members in "survival mode.”
Conducted and reported on by Politico, the new polling shows that around 80% of California voters – including a majority of Republicans – indicated that they believed undocumented immigrants already in the United States should have a pathway to remain in the country.
With the White House having a daily migrant arrest quota of 3,000, California has been the hotbed for immigration raids, raids that have left some immigration officers demoralized for having to “arrest gardeners.” And now, elected Republicans in the state are starting to feel political pressure from their constituents.
“Republicans in the state are in a kind of survival mode,” said Jack Citrin, a political science professor at UC Berkeley, speaking with Politico Friday. “They’re caught between their loyalty to Trump, and there may be local pressures on them.”
Trump sailed to victory in 2024 largely in part due to his stance on immigration, but recent polling has suggested the president is losing support amid his administration’s mass deportations, which have been chaotic and sometimes violent. A CNN poll from late July found that 55% of respondents said that Trump had gone “too far” with his immigration crackdown, up ten points since February.
“I don’t dismiss for one second that the fear in our communities is real," said California Sen. Suzette Martinez Valladares, a Republican state senator, speaking with Politico in late July. "It is. I’ve had constituents on both sides articulate that it’s heartbreaking, heart-wrenching, what’s going on.”
Citrin, who also helped conduct the poll alongside Politico, said the chaotic nature of the Trump administration’s deportation policy had contributed to Republican voters’ shrinking support for the efforts.
“(There’s) an impulse of empathy and humanity, and realism about the difficulty and the unfairness of all of a sudden, out of the blue, coming from people who might have been here for 10 years, have families here, et cetera,” Citrin said.