Once one his strongest performing issues, President Donald Trump’s immigration policy has continued to tank among voters amid his administration’s chaotic immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota, and, according to a new poll conducted after the killing of Alex Pretti, has reached stunning new lows among voters that left one election analyst rocked.
“In these elections that are won on the margins, particularly in the swing states, independents are a really critical group,” said Marc Trussler, senior elections analyst for NBC News’ Decision Desk in the outlet’s report Wednesday. “To see them shift so heavily on one of the president’s key priorities is really telling.”
Kicking off last December, the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operation in Minnesota – dubbed Operation Metro Surge – has been chaotic, violent and deadly, with videos of altercations between federal immigration enforcement officials and protesters spreading wildly on social media.
The chaos has dragged Trump’s favorability down significantly, with a private GOP poll from January revealing that a staggering 60% of independent voters rejected Trump’s immigration policy outright, a significant increase from when the president took office. And now, in the wake of two high-profile killings by federal immigration officials, those numbers have only worsened for Trump.
According to the poll, conducted by NBC News between Jan. 27 and Feb. 6, a total of 60% of Americans either somewhat or strongly disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration, a staggering increase from the 49% who disapproved recorded last June. Furthermore, 65% of voters said the United States was “on the wrong track,” a jump of five percentage points since last April.
Trump has appeared to recognize the political liability his immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota have become, sidelining his own Homeland Security secretary in dispatching his border czar, Tom Homan, to take over the operation in Kristi Noem’s stead, though according to Trussler, such moves are too little, too late.
“Those things hadn’t moved the needle that much,” Trussler said. “It is really the chaos of Minnesota that has done it.”