For months, President Donald Trump had promised to ramp up deportations of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. as part of a restrictionist immigration policy.
Now, federal agencies are beginning to fulfill that promise, backed by the White House and Mr. Trump’s executive orders. On Sunday, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement began stepping up operations in Chicago together with the FBI and other agencies to “enforce U.S. immigration law and preserve public safety and national security by keeping potentially dangerous criminal aliens out of our communities,” ICE said in a statement on X. It didn’t provide details about how many people had been detained. Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove was in Chicago to help oversee the multiday operations there.
The Trump administration has said its initial priority is to find and deport immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally and have criminal records. Polls show this policy has significant support from voters across the political spectrum, many of whom also support targeting other categories of unauthorized immigrants. A rightward shift on immigration has come after a surge of asylum seekers arrived during the Biden administration, turning the issue into a political liability for Vice President Kamala Harris in November’s election.
Why We Wrote This
Public opinion on immigration has shifted right, but nuances remain. Americans strongly support deporting criminals, and many favor targeting other categories of unauthorized immigrants, while also wanting paths to legal status for law-abiding people.
A recent Ipsos/New York Times poll found that a clear majority of Americans, including 44% of Democrats, supported the deportation of individuals who entered the country illegally during the past four years. Among Hispanic respondents, support for this policy was 54%. Asked about unauthorized immigrants with criminal records, nearly 9 in 10 respondents agreed they should be deported.
“I think Trump is on the right track,” says John Burke, a Trump voter who runs a sports-card store in Chicago. “I’m sure many people are good people,” he says of those targeted for deportation. But, he adds, “There are probably many people who blend in and are connected to cartels.”
Mr. Trump’s policies will test anew a longstanding American tension between valuing immigrants and securing borders against an unmanaged influx. In the past few years, the public has grown less welcoming overall toward immigrants. But while Americans strongly support deporting criminals, many also say there should be paths to legal status for law-abiding people, many of whom have lived in the U.S. for decades. A Pew Research Center poll from November found that 43% of respondents who said they supported mass deportations also said that unauthorized residents should have legal pathways.
Apparent contradictions in public opinion are unlikely to stop President Trump from carrying out an expansive deportation agenda. But they point to nuanced views on the subject that some experts say could result in a backlash should the administration’s tactics be deemed overly harsh.
“Although in general [Americans] support the idea of deportations of the undocumented, in the specifics they may or may not support,” says Theresa Cardinal Brown, a former Department of Homeland Security official in the Bush and Obama administrations. Such specifics include making arrests in churches and mosques, and separating U.S.-born children from parents who don’t have legal status. Last Tuesday, the DHS revoked previous guidelines on avoiding arrests in “sensitive locations” such as schools, hospitals, and places of worship.
On the ground in Chicago, mixed views
In 2022, the federal government estimated the total unauthorized population to be 11 million. That’s now considered an undercount, given that millions more entered without prior visa approvals under President Joe Biden. Of the population of immigrants who currently lack legal status, the majority came before 2010, and some have spent decades in the U.S. and put down roots.
Marco Duran crossed the southern border from his native Mexico in the 1980s at the age of four. He and his parents benefited from amnesty programs under President Ronald Reagan that afforded legal status for millions of unauthorized immigrants. Today he’s a U.S. citizen, running a busy tire-repair shop in Pilsen, a diverse neighborhood in Chicago, where many last week began bracing for raids by ICE after news leaked that the city would be the first target of Mr. Trump’s deportation efforts.
As an icy wind scoured the streets, he sat bundled in a jacket and a baseball cap with ear muffs inside his office. He wore thin rubber gloves to protect his hands from the grime of tire changes; stacks of tires crowded around his desk.
Mr. Duran opposes the deportation simply because people don’t have legal residency or citizenship. It’s not good for business; his customers tell him they’re worried about being sent home. He says criminals should be targeted for removal by ICE, but that’s about it. “If they’re criminals and they have a record, I agree with it,” he says. “If it’s a person who is a working person, has a family, is a provider and is a contributing member of society, I’m not OK with it.”
Mr. Duran didn’t vote in November, saying he was unhappy with his choices. Erika Gonzalez, who manages a nearby barbershop with her husband, voted for Mr. Trump because she liked his tough immigration policy. Born in the U.S. to Mexican parents, she’s concerned about the strain put on public services in Chicago by large numbers of new migrants from Venezuela under President Biden.
Ms. Gonzalez supports the deportation of those with criminal records. But despite her vote for Mr. Trump, she says she’s not on board with mass deportations, especially not of immigrants who have built new lives over decades. They are her neighbors, and she doesn’t want them targeted.
“There are a lot of people who come to the USA to work, to have a better life. People follow the rules, pay taxes,” she says. “Some people have been here 30 years. They have their own house, they have a small business…. What’s going to happen to them?”
The economic effect of mass deportations is a major unknown for an administration that has promised greater prosperity and lower prices. “A lot of these people are in low-wage jobs, essential workers,” says William Frey, a senior fellow at Brookings Metro in Washington who studies demographic and migratory trends.
Expelling unauthorized immigrants while putting up barriers to new arrivals also has long-term implications for the country’s aging labor force. “If we have low immigration, the kind we had during the last Trump administration, we will have no growth in our labor-force-age population by 2035. So it’s an economic issue, not just a cultural issue,” says Mr. Frey.
Mr. Trump also ordered a pause this week on immigration by refugees, who are vetted and approved before entry. In the past fiscal year, more than 100,000 refugees resettled in the U.S. More than 2 million migrants who have sought asylum in the U.S. are waiting for courts to hear their cases; the average wait for a court hearing is four years.
“You want people to follow the laws”
In Mount Greenwood, a mostly white working-class district in Chicago, disdain for the Biden administration’s handling of immigration runs deep. Mr. Trump is popular with voters who want to see action on illegal immigration and reduce its demands on city services; closing the border is also seen as essential. But even here, there are reservations about mass deportation.
Vince Picciola hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president since John F. Kennedy. He works at his family’s house-cleaning business, manning the phones. “I always believe in law and order. If you don’t have law and order you don’t have a country,” he says when asked about immigration.
Yet Mr. Picciola, who came to the United States from Italy in 1955, is forgiving of unauthorized immigrants, saying it depends who they are and their standing in society. “If they‘ve been here and are well established and have a family, they should be given an opportunity to become citizens,” he says.
Jim Trolia, Jr. is a director at his family’s funeral home, where he’s worked since childhood. He’s a Trump voter who wants to see the border closed and criminal immigrants sent home. He frets about the financial burden on taxpayers from a rise in new migrants in Chicago and other cities. But he wants to see humane treatment of immigrants, especially those who have lived in the U.S. for years without legal status and could now be detained under the Trump administration.
“Morally, you don’t want to see good people uprooted,” he says. “But legally, you want people to follow the laws.”
Back in Pilsen, Ms. Gonzalez looks out at the mostly empty streets outside the barbershop. It’s not just the cold that is keeping people indoors, she says. “People are scared.”
Richard Mertens reported from Chicago. Simon Montlake and Caitlin Babcock reported from Washington.
