Trump immigration approval drops to 39% in new Reuters/Ipsos poll

President Donald Trump’s approval rating on fighting illegal immigration has fallen to a new low as a majority of Americans say the crackdown by federal agents has gone too far, according to a new national poll.

The investigation, conducted by Reuters/Ipsos, was conducted from Friday to Sunday, before and after federal immigration agents fatally shot a second U.S. citizen protesting the crackdown in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The poll is the latest national survey to highlight Trump’s deteriorating approval on immigration and declining support for aggressive enforcement operations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

Thirty-nine percent of adults surveyed nationwide said they approved of the president’s work on immigration, and 53 percent disapproved.

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President Donald Trump is touting that tougher ICE enforcement is forcing illegal immigrants and violent criminals to leave the United States, citing reverse migration, releases from foreign prisons and increased subway raids. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

The president’s approval on the issue is at its lowest level in Reuters/Ipsos polls since Trump returned to the White House a year ago. In February of last year, weeks after his second inauguration as president, Trump was 50% approval and 41% disapproval on immigration, as he quickly halted the flow of migrants across the country’s southern border with Mexico.

Illegal immigration, with Trump promising a massive increase in deportations of undocumented migrants, was a key issue that propelled Trump and the Republican Party to decisive victories at the polls in 2024, as they won back the White House and Senate and successfully defended their razor-thin House majority.

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But the fatal shootings of mother of three Renee Good earlier this month and nurse Alex Pretti last weekend, while protesting the aggressive actions of masked federal agents conducting immigration operations, sparked nationwide debate and protests, further stoking political tensions around Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

FBI agents at the scene in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

“Donald Trump’s approval on an issue that worked for him, immigration, is going down and continues to go down,” Larry Jacobs, a public affairs professor at the University of Minnesota, told Fox News Digital.

Jacobs said “the crackdown on illegal immigration and the conduct of ICE have squandered the advantage” Trump once enjoyed in public opinion.

A veteran Republican strategist who asked to remain anonymous to speak more freely told Fox News Digital that “the missteps have turned an advantage into a neutral issue or, at best, a net negative. People don’t like illegal immigration, but they’re also troubled by the tactics they see.”

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Pretti was shot and killed Saturday by Border Patrol agents while recording federal immigration operations in Minneapolis.

Department of Homeland Security DHS officials initially said Pretti, who was legally armed with a handgun, was threatening agents who they said fired in self-defense. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem called Pretti’s actions “domestic terrorism” and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called him a “potential assassin.”

A screenshot from a video shows a law enforcement officer spraying irritants on Alex Pretti before he was fatally shot by federal agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 24, 2026. (Reuters)

Videos of the shooting show Pretti, an intensive care nurse at a VA hospital, appearing to tend to a woman who officers had knocked down when he was sprayed with an irritant, pushed to the ground and beaten. On the ground, bystanders said he was brandishing a cellphone rather than his gun, and one officer was seen pulling Pretti’s gun from his waistband before other officers fired several shots and killed him.

“The sickening lies told about our son by the administration are reprehensible and disgusting,” Pretti’s family wrote in a statement obtained by the AP. “Alex is clearly not holding a gun when he is attacked by Trump’s murderers and cowardly ICE thugs. He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman who ICE just pushed down while being pepper sprayed. Please get the truth out about our son. He was a good man. Thank you.”

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Fifty-eight percent of respondents said federal immigration agents went “too far” in their crackdown, with 12% saying they didn’t go far enough and 26% saying the agents’ efforts were “about right.”

A wide partisan divide was expected, with about nine in 10 Democrats and six in 10 independents saying the agents went too far, compared to just two in 10 Republicans.

Alexandra Koch of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.