Roughly half of voters support President Donald Trump’s deportations and his handling of the border with Mexico, but a sizable majority believes that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has gone too far, according to a poll from The New York Times and Siena University.

Fifty percent of voters said that they approved of the Trump administration’s deportations of people living in the country illegally, while 47% opposed them. The president’s handling of the southern border was viewed favorably by 50% of voters.

But after a year in which Trump sent large numbers of ICE officers to conduct raids in several largely Democratic-controlled cities, prompting widespread protests and scenes of chaos on the streets, a wide majority of voters takes a dim view of the agency.

Just 36% of voters said they approved of the way ICE was handling its job, according to the poll, while 63% disapproved — including 70% of independent voters. And 61% of voters said that ICE had “gone too far” in their tactics, including nearly 1 in 5 Republicans.

The poll was conducted after the killing of Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman who was shot in Minneapolis by an ICE officer.

Overall, when voters were asked about how Trump has handled immigration, 58% said that they disapproved and 40% said they approved.

The share of voters who voiced approval for its handling of immigration has dropped slightly since the beginning of Trump’s second term, according to the Times/Siena poll. And the share of voters who said that they “strongly disapprove” of Trump’s handling rose to 48%, up from 39% last April.

More than 1 in 10 voters named immigration or immigration enforcement when asked about the most important problem facing the country today, according to the poll.

Latino voters were more likely than Black or white voters to identify immigration as the most important problem facing the country. But more Latinos said that they saw the economy as more important. Latino voters were almost evenly divided on Trump’s handling of the border between the United States and Mexico, but they overwhelmingly disapproved of ICE tactics and said the agency had gone too far.

Rogelio Salinas, 59, a corrections officer in Lake Jackson, Texas, said that while he believed the country needs strong immigration laws to ensure that migrants “do it the right way,” he has balked at the administration’s approach.

“There’s a way to go about it,” he said. “What they’re doing is just, it’s way too much, and it doesn’t need to be done.”

Salinas, who did not vote in the 2024 election and is not registered with either party, said he was particularly frustrated by videos and reports of immigration officers questioning people’s citizenship for no clear reason.

“They’re just ‘Hey, where are you from?’” he said. “So I’m scared. If I go out in town, I’m like: ‘Oh my God, I’m just glad ICE isn’t prevalent in our area.’”

Strong partisan divides remain on the issue. Overall, 84% of Republicans approve of the administration’s handling of immigration, while 95% of Democrats and 62% of independents disapprove.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Jennifer Medina and Ruth Igielnik
c. 2026 The New York Times Company