Do Democrats Think They Can Skate On ICE To The Midterms?

With nothing else to run on, Democrats appear to think that demonizing Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers will be enough to win them control of Congress come November.

“In their campaigns, Democrats across the country are responding to the anger felt by many communities over the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operations,” reports CBS News. If they can sustain today’s anger, the argument goes, voters will turn out in droves to clip the Trump administration’s wings in his last two years in office.  

But there are a multitude of reasons why this strategy isn’t likely to work.

First, November is a long way off. And anything can happen between now and then that will shift the public’s attention.

Second, deportations aren’t necessarily a winning issue for Democrats. Polls on this are decidedly mixed.

A new survey by RealClear Opinion Research finds that, while 48% of respondents say immigration policy is worse than a year ago, the public is still far more supportive of Trump’s approach than Biden’s open-border chaos (by a margin of 43% to 28%)  

A poll by Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton’s America One Policies PAC finds that a whopping 78% agree that the government should deport immigrants who are in the country illegally and have criminal records, 56% support deporting illegals who came within the last four years.

“The basic takeaway here is that, according to the PAC’s polling, Americans are comfortable with deportation, but ICE needs to change its tactics,” as Punchline puts it. 

Changing tactics is easy enough, which can drain the energy of the issue in voters’ minds.

Third, it doesn’t help Democrats to be on the side of crazed rioters, funded by far-left groups, who are attacking law enforcement in support of dangerous felons in the country illegally, rioters who are willing to storm a church service and viciously attack a female reporter covering their antics (see below).

Finally, the economy matters far more to voters than protests in far-left cities such as Minneapolis and Los Angeles.

And there are signs that growth will be the story of the day this fall. The Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank’s latest GDPNow pegs growth in the last three months of 2025 at 4.2%. That would be on top of 3.8% growth in Q2 and 4.4% growth in Q3.

Goldman Sachs is projecting 2.5% growth this year, which is higher than most economists have been predicting, and even that could be too pessimistic, given that the Trump economy has consistently outperformed expectations. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said recently that the administration expects growth in 2026 to be closer to 5%.

Inflation is moderating. The prices of some things — like gasoline and eggs — are down. Real wages are climbing.

But then again, the Democrats’ hysteria about ICE isn’t about deportations or tactics or civil rights. It’s about winning the next election.

That means keeping their base in a state of high agitation about Trump, while trying to demoralize Republicans and independents. And if it’s not ICE, they will find something else.

Any scare tactic will do.

–  Written by the I&I Editorial Board