GOP walks tightrope on immigration ahead of midterms

Republicans are struggling with how to thread the needle on immigration ahead of what is expected to be a bruising midterm season in which many voters have soured on the Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement.

But the party has spent two years championing policies that resulted from President Trump running on “securing” the border, including a pledge to carry out the largest mass deportation operation in history.

Two back-to-back statements from Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.) illustrate the problem.

In an interview with Politico on Tuesday, the lawmaker said immigration officers have been “dragging people away that have lived on your street corner for 15 years.”

“I don’t know that we need to be doing that stuff,” he told the outlet.

“To get better, the first thing you got to do is admit you’re doing something wrong,” he added, nodding to the need to “step back.”

But the next day, he walked the comments back.

“Let me be crystal clear: I support President Trump’s immigration strategy, full stop,” he wrote on the social platform X.

“Frankly, it’s the hardest job that I’ve had,” Trump said during a Hispanic Heritage Month event at the White House on Wednesday. “They’ll say you’re too tough or you’re too soft. Get tougher, get softer. No matter what you do, it’s always tough.”

The president’s comments come as a Thursday AP-NORC poll found Trump had a 39 percent approval rating on immigration, while recent Politico polling found divides in how the GOP rated Trump on the issue. Thirty-one percent of those polled who did not identify as MAGA said Trump’s deportation campaign is too aggressive .

Republicans are also struggling with the Hispanic voting bloc , which boosted Trump and the GOP in 2024. Signs of disapproval among Hispanic and Latino voters are particularly noticeable in Texas and Florida, as the GOP looks to keep control of Congress in November.

Twenty percent of Hispanic voters in Florida who supported Trump in 2024 said they would not repeat their vote, according to a UnidosUS survey from this spring. Meanwhile, a September Cook Political Report and TelevisaUnivision poll found that 18 percent of Texan Latinos who voted for Trump said they no longer back him.

Several conservative voices have grumbled about impacts.

Paul LePage, a former Republican governor of Maine who is now running for Congress, has bragged about being “Donald Trump before Donald Trump became popular.” But he revealed recently that his son’s father-in-law, who he has said was living in the U.S. legally, was “being deported because he came from a country that’s not liked by certain people in Washington. That’s not right.”

LePage, however, has largely refused to answer additional questions after his comments garnered headlines, saying earlier this week it was a “personal matter.”

In Florida, Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R) saw that her district, which has one of the largest foreign-born populations of any in the country, was so disenchanted with Trump’s immigration policies that she campaigned on it.

“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” Salazar said in a September ad. In the ad, she stands in front of the White House, addressing Trump.

She faced some pushback for her comments, including from constituents and Trump himself, who criticized the congresswoman in a dozen social media posts after the ad aired. Border czar Tom Homan also dismissed Salazar’s take.

“Give me an example where we went too far. That’s a pretty bold statement to make,” Homan told CBS News in a recent interview.

Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall (R), also a vocal proponent of Trump’s immigration policies, offered tepid criticism after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers conducted enforcement operations in his home state, saying they did not sufficiently coordinate with police.

“Law enforcement officers were not given advance notice or the level of cooperation we would expect from ICE’s enforcement and removal operations. As a result, there have been mass disruptions to local communities and businesses,” he said in a statement late last month.

ICE has made changes to shift the optics around their immigration enforcement, moving away from aggressive raids that were advertised in advance on social media.

But many of the tactics remain the same. ICE officers are operating in unmarked cars and donning plainclothes — details that have prompted some migrants to flee amid confusion.

Arrests, however, are still ticking up and are increasingly likely to be carried out against those who have no criminal record and who even have immigration petitions in processing.

ICE arrested about 50,000 migrants in both July and August — record-breaking figures.

Meanwhile, internal Justice Department data obtained by The Hill shows cases handled by the Office of Immigration Litigation have soared, with cases jumping from roughly 7,700 to nearly 9,500 since the start of Trump’s second term. Many of those are habeas petitions from the nearly 70,000 people currently held in immigration detention.

Other Republican senators said they’re hearing less from constituents about ICE now that the operations are quieter.

“Generally speaking, people want to see folks that commit violent crimes and, you know, removed from that aren’t supposed to be here, under deportation, be … taken out of the country,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.). “There’s been scrutiny on methods, and certain incidences have had some very sad results, obviously, with a couple deaths.”

“I feel like it’s calmed down in terms of what ICE is doing, and they’ve upped their training.”

Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) said he had also heard fewer concerns about ICE, although the Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association joined trade groups in Kansas and Texas in a letter last week describing the disruption recent raids have had on the industry.

Lankford said the complaints that come to him are “fewer than I used to hear about that.”

“But yes, I mean, we’ve always heard that.”

Democrats, however, believe Republicans will suffer on Election Day given the unpopularity of Trump’s immigration enforcement and deportations after several fatal shootings this year.

“They’re no longer going after ‘the worst of the worst’ — they are acting like the worst of the worst,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said during a recent hearing on Trump immigration efforts.

“Trump’s poll numbers have sunk like a stone, and the majority of Americans have rejected their authoritarian police-state tactics.”

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (Wash.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, said the Trump administration’s focus on meeting arrest quotas has backfired.

“They are continuing this strategy quietly now because it was unpopular when it was loud,” she told The Hill last month after the release of record-setting arrest figures.

“But they’re going to find out in November that it’s unpopular when it’s quiet as well.”