Few policies have defined Trump’s second presidency more than immigration. After campaigning on a hard-line deportation platform, the Republican leader began his term by signing an executive order to expand the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The Republican-led Congress followed the President’s lead, providing an additional $75 billion in funding for the agency in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed in July of 2025. Buoyed by Trump and congressional actions, ICE has significantly expanded its detention system and doubled its staff, prompting an unprecedented rise in arrests by the agency.
But the surge in ICE activity has been fraught with controversy. As the agency began to implement its detention strategies, many accused it of unlawfully detaining and deporting individuals. These accusations prompted nationwide protests, and tempers on both sides flared. The situation came to a head in January of 2026, when two civilians, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, were shot and killed by ICE agents in Minneapolis. ICE activity has since slowed, and Trump fired Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, who oversaw ICE’s expansion. Still, with detainments at historic levels, immigration remains at the center of American political discourse.
Fresh off the heels of these developments, the Harvard Public Opinion Project (HPOP) sought to analyze youth sentiments around ICE in its most recent edition of the Harvard Youth Poll, released today. In the study, HPOP asked young Americans, ages 18-29, if they believe that immigration enforcement activities by ICE make the communities in which they operate safer. They also probed closer to home, asking how ICE activity in one’s community would affect one’s “personal sense of safety.”
The results were a condemnation of the agency. Only 18% of young Americans polled believed that ICE makes communities safer, with 44% saying it makes communities less safe and 13% saying it has little impact. The nearly 2.5-to-1 ratio of people who say ICE makes communities less safe to those who say it makes communities safer hints at the widespread unpopularity of Trump’s immigration policy, a dynamic evident during the demonstrations earlier this year.
A deeper analysis of the data offers even greater nuance. Young Hispanic Americans were only three points more likely than the average American to report that they would feel unsafe if ICE were operating in their community. Other factors, including the area where respondents lived (urban, rural, or suburban), education status, and one’s household’s financial situation also played little role in determining one’s opinion on the agency, though those doing “very well off financially” were more likely to put “don’t know” than their less well-off counterparts. These results indicate that typical identity markers play a smaller role in shaping one’s opinions on immigration enforcement than conventional wisdom might predict.
However, one demographic factor appears central to determining one’s opinion on ICE: political party. While 77% of Democrats believed that ICE makes communities less safe, just 12% of Republicans answered the same way. These views extended into respondents’ evaluations of their own local environments, where 76% of Democrats and 16% of Republicans said ICE would make them feel less safe if the agency were regularly conducting immigration operations in their community. Independents, meanwhile, fell somewhere in between. Forty-five percent responded that ICE makes communities less safe, 11% said that it makes communities safer, and the rest responded either that they “don’t know” or that ICE has no impact at all on their sense of safety.
The partisan divide is jarring and can be used to explain other demographic differences in the data. For example, though respondents from rural communities were about 14-17 percentage points less likely to feel less safe than their urban and suburban counterparts (37% compared to 54% and 51%, respectively), this gap disappears when we control for political party. Though urban Republicans are slightly more likely to say they feel less safe (26%), rural Republicans (14%) nearly mirror suburban Republicans (15%). Among Democrats, the difference disappears amongst all three categories, with rural Democrats about as likely to say they would feel less safe (78%) as their urban (76%) and suburban (80%) counterparts.
As such, alongside indicating ICE’s unpopularity, the data indicates that the issue of immigration enforcement is deeply partisan. Over ethnicity, wealth, or background, it is one’s party allegiance that determines one’s stance on immigration, a microcosm of the broader political polarization that defines our time.
The connection between party and ICE sentiments amongst young Americans provides valuable insight into policymaking as the 2026 midterms approach. For Democrats, the takeaway is clear. Given ICE’s unpopularity among young people inside and outside of the Democratic Party, candidates ought to center their platform around immigration policy reform, emphasizing the potential safety benefits of their changes.
The lesson is not so transparent, however, for Republicans. While young Republicans were more supportive of ICE than their Democratic peers, their stance on the matter was not nearly as firm. Only 47% of young Republicans say that ICE makes communities safer, with 39% saying either that ICE does not have much impact on safety or that they “don’t know.” This gray area hints at broader uncertainty within the Republican Party. As Republicans’ stance on immigration weakens, so too does support for President Trump, whose approval has bottomed out over the last few months.
Even in an age of deep party tribalism, GOP leaders may be losing their grip on the party’s immigration platform. With control of Congress at stake, Republican leaders cannot afford to divide their supporters. Marred by controversy and polling poorly, Trump’s hard-line platform may need softening, or else it may risk placing the party’s power in jeopardy.
