If you can bear to hear it, there are still more than 1,300 days remaining in the Trump administration. That’s an interminably long time given all the havoc the president has been able to wreak since January alone; the chaos and cruelty of the term so far also happen to have used up his political capital remarkably quickly. The New York Timesaverageof polls, which found him at 52% approval on inauguration day, had him at 51% disapproval on Wednesday. That collapse is less a problem for Trump specifically – assuming, perhaps optimistically, that he won’t appear on a ballot again – than it is for the Republican party, which will have to answer for the mess he’s made in next year’s midterms and beyond. And one of the challenges they seem likely to face is a changed public opinion landscape on immigration – a strength that Trump’s barbarism, just as in his first term, seems to be turning into a liability.
While it remains his strongest issue, polls have shown the public’s confidence in Trump on immigration declining steadily since January –averagessuggestthe public is newly and evenly split on his handling of it and some polls taken around the 100-day mark even foundanoutrightmajorityof Americans disapproving. It’s no mystery why. The shock-and-awe campaign the administration is waging against immigrants legal and not has produced a steady stream of headlines that sound awful to all but Stephen Miller and the nativist fanatics driving Trump’s agenda. Thedeportationof a four-year-old citizen suffering from a rare form of cancer. The end of temporary protected status for9,000 Afghan refugeeseven as the administration welcomesAfrikanerssupposedly fleeing “white genocide”, a myth most voters who don’t frequent white supremacist forums are probably unfamiliar with. The use of the immigration enforcement apparatus to pursue and persecute critics of Israel’s war in Gaza. Even as voters succumbed to a panic over the migrant surge under Biden, moves like this under Trump and a public backlash to them were inevitable.
What should be especially dismaying to the president’s supporters – and especially heartening to the rest of us – is the administration’s absolute failure to win over the public on the Kilmar Ábrego García case. That battle was probably lost as soon as it wasconcededthat he was deported by mistake, but it’s notable that none of the efforts to muddy the waters and obfuscate the main issues at hand with lies and character assassination have worked. The escalatory rhetoric – Ábrego García is not an innocent man but a member of MS-13, not merely a member of MS-13 but one of “the top MS-13 members”, not merely one of “the top MS-13 members” but aterrorist– has been almost comic. The complaints thatthe mediahas been stretching the facts of the case have been pathetic. “Based on the sensationalism of many of the people in this room,” the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, fumed last month, “you would think we deported a candidate for father of the year”.
The administration was surely pleased when the domestic violence claims made by Ábrego García’s wife several years ago, which she dismisses now, began picking up traction in the press. And it is just as surely disappointed thata majorityof Americans believe Ábrego García should be returned to America anyway – which suggests that the principles at stake in the case matter more and matter to more people than cynics might assume. Wholly irrespective of who Ábrego García is or what he might have done – and there remains no solid evidence at all that he belongs to MS-13 – he is entitled to due process under the law and fair treatment by our government. The fact that many Americans remain committed to this ideal here – despite the president’s best efforts to render Ábrego García unsympathetic, despite all that’s been done to frame undocumented immigration as an invasion and a society-breaking crisis – is one of the brightest glimmers of light against the pall Donald Trump and the right have cast over this country.
Bright as it is, there are Democrats who are determined not to see it. Infamously inAxioslast month, one anonymous House member – some nameless, brainless invertebrate, croaking from the bottom of a boot – warned the party against defending immigrants like Ábrego García or the makeup artist Andry Hernández Romero, also deported as a gang member for having tattoos. Trump, they said, was “setting a trap for the Democrats, and like usual we’re falling for it […] we’re going to go take the bait for one hairdresser”. In an appearance on Fox News Radio, the Democratic congressman Henry Cuellararguedthat Ábrego García, in particular, was “not the right case” for Democrats to take up. “This is not the right issue to talk about due process,” he said. “This is not the right person to be saying that we need to bring him back to the United States.”
Fortunately, most Americans disagree. And there is an opportunity here, for those with the good sense and courage to take it, to use the public’s dismay at the Ábrego García case and the realities of Trump’s immigration agenda to sell it on an alternative vision for our immigration policy and an alternative set of culprits for the problems immigrants have proven easy scapegoats for.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents supposedly on the prowl for the thugs and thieves who’ve ruined communities and degraded our public infrastructure would be better off kicking down the doors of Congress thansmashing the windowsof asylum seekers. And, of course, if preserving law and order means that criminals who are sucking our public resources dry and who pose a danger to women ought to be dealt with harshly, we should insist on bringing the convict, grifter, and accused rapist in the White House to justice. The chief priority of his administration is terrorizing people for committing the crime of coming to this country and working harder for it than he ever has. His agenda here is corrosive to our values. It is degrading to our society. It materially profits no one. In important ways, it hurts us all.
More and more Americans are wising up to this. Fewer and fewer are willing to stand for it.
Osita Nwanevu is a Guardian US columnist