The anti-ICE movement gave it everything.
Two deaths turned into martyrs. Governors calling agents Nazis. A district attorney threatening to hunt down federal officers. Cities burning. Churches stormed. Award shows weaponized. Student walkouts organized. Media coverage wall-to-wall for weeks.
The most intense, sustained, coordinated campaign against immigration enforcement in American history.
The result: Americans moved two percentage points.
In the wrong direction for the protesters.
The Numbers That Ended the Debate
Marquette Law School polled 1,003 adults nationwide from January 21 to 28.
Support for deporting illegal immigrants: 56%.
Opposition: 44%.
In November 2025 — before the protests, before the deaths, before Minneapolis burned — support was 58%. Opposition was 42%.
Two points. That’s the total impact of the most aggressive anti-enforcement campaign in modern American history.
Two points within the margin of error.
Statistically, nothing changed. The American public watched weeks of chaos, absorbed weeks of propaganda, and shrugged.
The Protests Were Supposed to Change Minds
The entire anti-ICE strategy was built on a theory: if the images are bad enough, if the stories are emotional enough, if the confrontations are dramatic enough, public opinion will turn against enforcement.
Renee Good was shot on January 7. The protests erupted. Minneapolis became a war zone. Media coverage was relentless.
The poll was conducted January 21 to 28. Most interviews were completed before Pretti’s death on January 24. The timing captured the peak emotional impact of the Good shooting and the initial wave of protests.
If the anti-ICE movement was ever going to move public opinion, this was the moment. Maximum media attention. Maximum emotional intensity. Maximum cultural pressure.
The public didn’t move.
70% of ICE Arrests Involve Criminal Records
DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin provided the context the media won’t.
“Seventy percent of illegal aliens arrested by ICE have been charged with or convicted of a crime in the U.S.”
Seven out of ten people ICE arrests have criminal records.
Not immigration violations. Crimes. Assault. Theft. Drug trafficking. Sexual offenses. Domestic violence.
Americans understand this. Despite the media’s relentless effort to portray ICE operations as random sweeps targeting innocent families, the public recognizes that enforcement primarily targets criminals.
When 70% of arrests involve people with criminal records, the “ICE is terrorizing innocent communities” narrative collapses against reality.
Support for Deporting Long-Term Residents Holds Too
The poll asked a more nuanced question: should immigrants who “have lived here for a number of years, have jobs and no criminal record” be deported?
Support for deportation even in this sympathetic scenario: 44%.
Opposition: 56%.
Unchanged from November.
The anti-ICE movement couldn’t even move the needle on the most sympathetic framing imaginable. Long-term residents. Employed. No criminal record.
If weeks of protests, deaths, and media saturation can’t increase opposition to deporting this group, nothing will.
Pro-Deportation Voters Overwhelmingly Support ICE
Among respondents who favor deportation, 65% approve of how ICE is conducting enforcement. Only 35% disapprove.
That 35% is the only opening the anti-ICE movement has — people who support deportation in principle but have concerns about methods.
But even that number hasn’t grown. The protests and media coverage haven’t increased disapproval of ICE methods among deportation supporters.
The movement needed to peel off supporters by making ICE look reckless. It failed.
Anti-Deportation Voters Were Already Lost
Among those who oppose deportation, 96% disapprove of ICE.
That’s not a persuadable population. That’s a fixed position. The 4% who oppose deportation but approve of ICE are a rounding error.
The anti-ICE movement isn’t converting anyone. It’s performing for an audience that already agrees. The protests, the media coverage, the celebrity endorsements — all of it is preaching to a choir that was already singing.
The 56% majority that supports deportation watched the same coverage and didn’t flinch.
Harvard-Harris: 80% Support Deporting Criminals
The Marquette poll isn’t an outlier.
McLaughlin cited a Harvard CAPS-Harris poll showing 8 in 10 Americans support deporting illegal aliens with criminal records.
Eighty percent. That’s not a partisan position. That’s a national consensus.
When four out of five Americans agree on something, the people opposing it aren’t fighting a policy battle. They’re fighting the country.
And losing.
The Student Walkouts Changed Nothing
On January 30, students across the country participated in a “National Shutdown” to protest ICE operations.
They walked out of classes. They carried signs. They chanted. They posted on social media.
The polls didn’t move.
Young people are disproportionately opposed to deportation. But they’re also disproportionately unlikely to vote. And even within their age cohort, the opposition isn’t universal.
The walkouts generated media coverage. They generated social media content. They generated the appearance of a movement.
They didn’t generate a single additional opponent of deportation that the polls can detect.
Tom Homan’s Strategic Withdrawal
Homan announced Wednesday that the Trump administration will withdraw 700 law enforcement officers from Minnesota.
This isn’t a retreat. It’s a strategic reallocation.
Minnesota’s political leadership — Walz, Frey, the Hennepin County Attorney — made enforcement in Minneapolis as difficult and dangerous as possible. Death threats, obstruction, political interference, organized confrontations.
Homan is moving resources to jurisdictions where local cooperation makes enforcement efficient and safe.
The result for Minnesota: ICE leaves. Criminal aliens remain. Crime continues. And Minnesota’s politicians own every consequence.
The withdrawal is also a political masterstroke. Democrats demanded ICE leave Minneapolis. They got what they wanted. Now they own the outcomes.
The Media’s Influence Is Collapsing
This poll is the most devastating evidence yet that media-driven narrative campaigns no longer move public opinion on immigration.
Every major outlet covered the anti-ICE protests extensively. CNN ran wall-to-wall coverage. MSNBC treated Minneapolis like a war zone. The New York Times and Washington Post published daily stories framing enforcement as authoritarian overreach.
Celebrities weighed in. Award shows were weaponized. Late-night hosts cried on camera.
The entire apparatus of American cultural influence was deployed against immigration enforcement.
The polls didn’t move.
Americans have stopped taking direction from institutions they no longer trust. Media approval ratings are at historic lows. Celebrity political opinions are increasingly irrelevant. Institutional authority has been spent.
The anti-ICE movement has the media. It has Hollywood. It has the cultural establishment.
It doesn’t have the public.
56% Is a Mandate
Fifty-six percent support for deportation isn’t a slim majority. In a country as polarized as America, 56% is a mandate.
It means deportation has bipartisan support. It means independents break toward enforcement. It means the Democratic coalition includes millions of people who support the policy Democrats are protesting.
Every riot. Every celebrity lecture. Every media campaign. Every student walkout. Every congressional tantrum.
None of it changed the fundamental reality: the majority of Americans want immigration laws enforced.
The resistance threw everything it had at that number. It absorbed it all and barely moved.
Fifty-six percent. After everything. Unchanged.
The American people have spoken. They keep speaking. And the people who refuse to listen keep losing.