Topline
A four-year trend that saw Americans expressing increasingly negative views about immigration seems to be reversing, a new Gallup poll shows, as a record-high percentage of people see immigration as a positive—and disapprove of President Donald Trump’s handling of the issue.
Federal agents block people protesting an ICE immigration raid at a licensed cannabis farm on July … More
Key Facts
Results of a June Gallup poll released Friday show that 79% of surveyed adults see immigration as a good thing for the country and a record-low 17% see it as a bad thing, a seeming reversal of a 2021-2024 trend that saw an increasing number of Americans viewing immigration as harmful.
The jump in positive perception of immigration mostly comes from Republicans and, to a lesser extent, independents, Gallup reports, and Democrats’ belief that immigration is beneficial to the country has reached a record-high 91%.
More Americans are now in favor of offering undocumented immigrants pathways to citizenship (support is up to 78% from 70% last year) while fewer support stringent measures to deter or reverse illegal immigration like increasing the number of border patrol agents (support declined 17 points in the last year) and expanding the border wall (support dropped eight points to 45%).
While Gallup’s analysis says the reversal in negative perception seems to be the result of “the Trump administration’s swift and visible response” to a surge in illegal border crossings during the Biden administration.
But the poll also shows that a majority of Americans do not approve of how Trump is handling the issue, with 35% of Americans saying they approve and 62% saying they disapprove, with 45% of those respondents saying they “strongly disapprove.”
The survey found views on Trump’s immigration policies are steeply partisan, with an 85% approval rating from Republicans, compared with 28% of independents and just 2% of Democrats.
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Key Background
Trump campaigned on a platform that promised tighter immigration policies and the largest mass deportation operation in American history to kick millions of undocumented immigrants out of the country. He suggested new policies would target people with criminal reports and who’ve been given final deportation orders. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has increasingly arrested and detained immigrants with no criminal history since he took office. Trump promised during his campaign he would restrict asylum eligibility, revoke Temporary Protected Status designations from some immigrants and amp up security and enforcement at the southern border. So far, his administration has terminated the legal protections for roughly 60,000 people from Nicaragua, Honduras and Nepal, deployed thousands of service members to apprehend people illegally crossing the border and implemented new restrictions on asylum seekers based on several factors, including criminal history and travel through other countries, among other policy changes. He has also reinstated the “Remain in Mexico” migrant protection protocols, which force asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases are processed in the U.S., and moved to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants, a plan blocked by a federal judge on Thursday.
Big Number
1 million. That’s how many immigrants Trump has said he wants to report each year.
Surprising Fact
The national daily arrest rate of immigrants has doubled in 38 states in 2025 compared to 2024, according to the New York Times.
Furthter Reading
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2025/07/11/62-of-americans-disapprove-of-trumps-immigration-policies-new-survey-shows/