Politics
JUST IN: CNN Poll Vindicates Trump On Illegal Immigration Amid Riots
President Donald Trump believes he is on the right side of public opinion when it comes to illegal immigration and the Los Angeles riots. Now, he is backed up by polling that appears to indicate he is correct.
Since Saturday, riots have unfolded across L.A. in response to a U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement raid that nabbed 150 suspected illegal immigrants as part of the administration’s stepped-up enforcement measures. The operation provoked widespread protests across the city that have since spread to demonstrations across the country.
Through it all, Trump’s immigration agenda remains popular, especially among immigrant Americans, a new CNN poll shows.
Foreign-born voters “have gone tremendously to the right” on immigration in 2024 and 2025 compared to 2020, CNN’s Harry Enten explained. Back then, Democrats held a 32-point advantage among non-native voters.
“Jump forward to 2024 and 2025, look at that shift — a 40-point shift to the right among immigrant voters! Republicans now lead on this issue by 8 points over Democrats on this issue. More so than any other group that I could find,” he continued. “The group of voters who became more hawkish on immigration were in fact immigrants themselves, immigrants who were registered to vote in this country.”
WATCH:
The findings by CNN concur with those produced just a day earlier by CBS News, which found that a majority of Americans feel that the president’s deportation agenda is prioritizing dangerous criminals. A healthy 54% of respondents say they stand behind Trump’s immigration policies, while 46% disapprove.
On balance, 42% believe the president’s immigration agenda is making the U.S. safer, while 30% disagreed.
The CBS poll was completed shortly before the start of Saturday’s riots in L.A., which have resulted in at least one death and scores of businesses destroyed. In response, Trump has deployed thousands of National Guard soldiers and Marines to restore order to the city.
Gov. Newsom has accused Trump of inflaming the situation on the ground, while the president has fired back, calling the 2028 aspirant “incompetent” over his handling of the rioting’s early days. The two are locked in a lawsuit over the federalization of 4,000 National Guard soldiers, which is expected to be taken up by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The poll results come amid a broader surge in anti-illegal immigration efforts by the Trump administration. Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has tasked ICE officials with increasing their arrests to 3,000 per day while Trump’s travel ban on more countries goes into effect.
“If we didn’t do the job, that place would be burning down,” Trump told reporters Monday, speaking about California. “I feel we had no choice… I don’t want to see what happened so many times in this country.”
Alex Padilla (D-CA), the state’s senior senator, told the AP that “this is absolutely a crisis of Trump’s own making.”
“There are a lot of people who are passionate about speaking up for fundamental rights and respecting due process, but the deployment of National Guard only serves to escalate tensions and the situation,” Padilla said. “It’s exactly what Donald Trump wanted to do.”
