Despite what President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance are saying, most Americans do not believe an ICE agent’s killing of a Minneapolis mom was justified. In fact, that incident has pushed even more people into the camp of calling for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to be abolished, according to new polling from The Economist and YouGov.
A whopping 91% of Americans have heard at least something about the ICE agent shooting Renee Good dead inside her car in Minneapolis, and Americans by a margin of 20 points believe the shooting was not justified (50% versus 30%).
Only 30% of Americans believe the agent’s action was justified, despite what the president and vice president have said.
Vance, who said the shooter is “protected by absolute immunity,” is viewed very favorably or somewhat favorably by only 36% of Americans. He is viewed unfavorably by 52% of Americans. His net favorability of -16 is his lowest to date as vice president.
Further, the Jan. 9-12 poll found 47% of Americans believe ICE is making the country less safe, compared to 34% who believe ICE is making America safer. That split falls hugely along partisan lines, with 87% of Democrats saying ICE is making Americans less safe and 77% of Republicans say it’s making Americans safer.
Likewise, 77% of Democrats support abolishing ICE while 79% of Republicans oppose abolishing it, the poll found.
Also, a majority (56%) of Americans believe ICE officers should not be allowed to wear masks that hide their identities when making arrests; only 32% say they should be allowed to hide their faces.
In the 11 months of his second term in office, Trump’s net approval of his handling of immigration issues has dropped from +11 to -9.
And while Trump’s immigration crackdown is a hallmark of his administration, the American public doesn’t see it as that important. The new poll found only 8% of Americans name immigration as their most important issue the administration should tackle.
Americans’ top priority remains managing inflation and consumer prices (24%) along with jobs and the economy (16%).
Commenting on this data, Peter Hamby of Puck explained more Americans have watched a video of Good’s killing than watched the last Super Bowl.
“To say explicitly what is now obvious: Americans do not like ICE. Period. In just a single year, ICE’s reputation has collapsed so dramatically, and so quickly, that it would be a punchline if not for ICE agents’ tragic, real-world behavior,” he said.
“After Trump’s inauguration, ICE had a +16 net favorability rating with Americans, according to YouGov. Now, the agency is under water with a –14-point favorability rating. That’s a 30-point swing since last January, an unheard-of political collapse.”
Hamby said these poll numbers “are an embarrassment for the Trump administration, which has long made immigration its calling card and has allocated tens of billions of dollars to ICE via the One Big Beautiful Bill.”
He concluded: “The data — and there’s a lot of it — speaks for itself: ICE is the second-least-popular federal agency, barely beating out the Internal Revenue Service, according to Pew. Meanwhile, a healthy majority of independents in most polls — around 60% — disapprove of ICE’s conduct, and last summer, majorities of Americans believed that ICE’s tactics had ‘gone too far,’ according to Marist.”
Hamby said protesters and watchdogs are inciting a form of communal shaming of ICE and the Trump administration.
“At this point, it seems rather obvious that viral videos are inflicting enormous damage on ICE’s standing with the public. Americans are bearing witness — almost in real time — to their behavior and the human anguish on the other end. Most political stories don’t come with visceral, real-world images that bring them to life for Americans who don’t closely follow the news; meanwhile, ICE’s enforcement actions are constantly playing and replaying on the small screen in everyone’s pocket.”