I & I Editorial BoardWith the economy showing signs of strengthening, Democrats clearly hope that their attacks on ICE will help them win control of Congress after the midterm elections. Which is another reason for President Donald Trump to stay the course.
As Politico put it, “An ICE agent’s killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis has pushed the fight over immigration enforcement to the center of the midterm campaign trail — opening new fault lines in some of Democrats’ most competitive congressional primaries.”
It is true that the polls are not looking so hot for Trump’s handling of one of his signature campaign promises.
A CBS News poll finds that “more Americans say ICE is being too tough,” with 61% saying that, up from 56% in November. It finds that 52% say ICE is making communities less safe and that fewer than half (46%) approve
An AP poll finds that just 38% of adults support Trump’s handling of immigration, down from 49% last March.
A Pew Research Center poll finds that Trump’s approval among Hispanics has fallen.
Even the White House is said to be “worried” about poll numbers that administration officials are seeing.
Last week, Axios reported that “internal GOP polling” has “alarmed some Trump insiders.”
Those polls, it says, show that “60% of independent voters and 58% of undecided voters said Trump was ‘too focused” on deporting illegal immigrants” and that “ICE’s tactics are drawing pushback from some prominent Trump supporters.”
Axios quotes an unnamed “Trump adviser” as saying that while Trump wants deportations, “What he doesn’t want is what people are seeing. He doesn’t like the way it looks. It looks bad, so he’s expressed some discomfort at that.”
See Also: “Now We Know: Obama And Biden Deportation Numbers Were Bogus“
Fortunately, Trump doesn’t seem to be cowed by the polls.
On CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that the administration has no intention of stopping its work, not even in Minneapolis.
“We won’t stop until we are sure that all the dangerous people are picked up, brought to justice, and then deported back to their home countries,” she said.
That’s good news, because surrendering to the anti-ICE mob in a panic over the election fallout would be a political disaster of epic proportions. It would demoralize Trump’s base while energizing Democrats. It would lend credence to the radical left campaign to terrorize the nation to get its way.
That’s not to say that Trump couldn’t handle the situation more deftly. He and his leaders should be reminding the public every day of the scum and villainy that ICE is getting off our streets, and that Democrats are trying to protect.
That they are the ones fueling the violence and, as we said in this space Monday, “the pressure to turn down the temperature should be squarely on the Democrats.”
Surrender cannot and must not be an option.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
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