All President Trump had to do to completely discredit his war on immigrants in the eyes of the American public was to wage it. Once our citizens realized it would mean the disruption of law-abiding families and communities, as well as the decimation of nontrivial economic sectors like food cultivation and processing, they turned against it in record numbers.

In the words of the press release that accompanied the Gallup poll released last Friday, “a record-high 79 percent of U.S. adults say immigration is a good thing for the country.” Despite years of Goebbels-esque xenophobic and Great Replacement propaganda from right-wing social media, the Murdoch network, and MAGA politicos, nothing has propelled Americans into a pro-immigrant posture like Stephen Miller’s orgy of deportations. Last year, Gallup found that fully 55 percent of Americans wanted immigration to our nation reduced. This year, in polling conducted over the month of June, when Miller’s masked troopers were visibly snatching Latinos from bus stops and swap meets, that percentage toppled to just 30 percent. From 2024 to 2025, the percentage of Republicans who think immigration is good for the country rose from 39 percent to 64 percent.

What the deportations have done is put a human face on immigrants, while putting a dehumanized, masked face on ICE agents. Clearly, Miller’s festering hatreds eclipsed any concern he might have had for optics, much less any appreciation of the public’s capacity for rudimentary decency.

Support for allowing law-abiding, tax-paying undocumented immigrants to have a path to citizenship has risen to 78 percent; among Republicans, it’s risen to 59 percent. Asked their views on Trump’s handling of the immigration issue—most visibly, his deportations—62 percent of the public disapprove (45 percent strongly disapprove), while just 35 percent approve.