Morning Consult just released its latest poll, and it has some strange takeaways. “Strange”, that is, if you read media reports claiming Donald Trump’s deportation policies have become a millstone around the collective neck of the president and his congressional allies, because it reveals immigration is the incumbent’s best performing issue and that registered voters trust Republicans in Congress to handle it compared to Democrats by a wide (seven-point) margin. Crucial changes must be made, however, if the GOP expects it to be a winning issue with the voters, and the sooner DHS leadership realizes that the best enforcement is the enforcement nobody talks about, the better the party’s prospects will be.

That poll was conducted between January 23 and 25, surveying 2,201 registered voters. The margin of error was +/- two percentage points.

Trump Approval Generally

Let me be clear from the outset: This poll doesn’t paint a rosy picture for the president.

Overall, 45 percent of respondents approve of Trump’s performance as president, 28 percent of them “strongly” approving. By contrast, 52 percent of those polled disapprove of the job the president is doing, 44 percent “strongly”.

Trump’s still popular among GOP voters, 60 percent of whom have a strongly favorable view of Trump’s performance and an additional 27 percent of whom somewhat approve. Just 11 percent of the Republican electorate disapproves of the job the president is doing.

A full 81 percent of Democratic voters, however, strongly disapprove of Trump’s performance (9 percent only somewhat disapprove), but if it’s any comfort to the White House, 8 percent of registered Democrats do approve of how he’s operating.

Impressions are only a little better among Independents, 63 percent of whom either strongly (51 percent) or somewhat (12 percent) disapprove of Trump’s performance. On the “bright” side, 29 percent of the politically unaligned take a favorable view of the job the president is doing.

All that said, Trump’s doing better than any other politician of either party out there.

In the Morning Consult’s latest poll: 43 percent of respondents have a favorable view of congressional Republicans; 41 percent have a favorable view of Vice President J.D. Vance; and an equal percentage (41 percent) have a favorable view of congressional Democrats. You can do the math and figure out roughly how many registered voters have a negative view of each.

It’s true that Senate Majority Leader John Thune only has an 18 percent favorability rating, but that’s likely because few voters either know him or are familiar enough to have an opinion of him.

Thune also has the lowest unfavorable rating (23 percent) among politicians polled, indicating he’s less unfavorable than Speaker Mike Johnson (28 percent favorable/33 percent unfavorable), House Minority Leader Hakeen Jeffries (27 percent favorable/30 percent unfavorable), or Thune’s predecessor, current Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (25 percent favorable/43 percent unfavorable).

Obscurity does have some perks.

“Trump’s Performance on the Issues”

Which brings me to voters’ assessment of Trump’s performance on 12 different issues, from “trade” to “LGBTQ+ rights” in the latest Morning Consult poll.

Just 33 percent of those polled approve of how Trump is handling the latter (his worst issue), while he received much more favorable (43 percent) approval on the former, but the president failed to break the 50 percent approval bar on any of them.

Though he did come close to par on one of those dozen issues: “immigration”.

In the Morning Consult poll, 49 percent of the voters surveyed approved Trump’s handling of that issue, compared to just 45 percent who disapproved of the job the president is doing on deportations and the border.

There was a similar four-point difference in Trump’s favor among registered voters with respect to “national security” (48 percent approve/44 percent disapprove), an issue that might have given the president a bigger boost if more voters either knew or cared more about it.

Eight percent of those polled didn’t know enough about Trump’s handling of national security or didn’t have an opinion they cared to share, compared to just 6 percent who said the same about immigration.

“Congressional Trust on the Issues”

In addition, Morning Consult asked respondents which party in Congress they trusted more to handle each of those issues, and aside from LGBTQ+ rights (a winner for the Democrats at 51 percent vs. a measly 24 percent for the GOP), neither broke the 50 percent mark on any of them.

That said, voters plainly had a preference on which party they preferred to handle other issues, including national security (GOP by nine points), “health care” (Democrats by 11 points), Medicare (same), and trade (GOP by three points).

National security aside, however, voters preferred congressional Republicans to handle immigration (47 percent) over Democrats (40 percent) by a wider margin (seven points) than on any remaining issue.

Curiously, the related issue of “crime” was omitted from the list (a perennial winner for Republicans) but it’s important to consider both Trump’s and the congressional GOP’s edge on immigration among registered voters in light of other findings from the Morning Consult poll.

“What Voters Heard About Each Issue Over the Past Week”

A majority, 52 percent, of respondents claimed the news they had heard about immigration over the past week was “mainly negative”, compared to just 24 percent who said their immigration reporting was “mainly positive”.

That should come as no surprise, given that this poll was conducted over the weekend Alex Pretti was shot by CBP agents in Minneapolis (on January 24).

In fact, voters polled claimed that they’d heard more “mainly negative” news about immigration than on any of the other nine issues Morning Consult polled: “the economy” (46 percent mainly negative); “global affairs” (45 percent); “public safety/crime” (41 percent); health care (44 percent); “trade” (38 percent); national security (36 percent); “taxes” (34 percent); “climate change” (34 percent); and “abortion” (25 percent).

If the president or his fellow Republicans expect a fair shake from the media on immigration, they are delusional. Outlets complicit in underplaying the largest illegal migration surge in history under Biden will never become “enforcement-minded border hawks”, and human-interest stories, many of them one-sided, sell.

Narratives change quickly (check out the shifting descriptions of a five-year-old boy purportedly used by ICE as “bait” to catch his father in Minnesota) and even when the press admits a salacious story that appeared on Page A1 was incorrect, the clarification or retraction will appear on Page A27, below the minutes from the local sewer board meeting.

That means it’s incumbent on DHS officials to respond appropriately from the outset when immigration news breaks, not with knee-jerk claims of their own or trite or reheated characterizations, but with calm dispatch that explains the law and the known facts — all the better to frame the story going forward.

It’s true that “a poor sailor claims the wind is always against him”, and in the same vein, responding to opprobrium with recriminations is a sign of weakness the administration can ill afford.

There’s a Right Way to Do Things

Again, however, and despite all the negative press of late, immigration remains the closest thing there is to a winning issue for the White House and congressional Republicans right now.

Neither the president nor his advisors, however, should view that as proof that there’s a “silent majority” that wants every DHS encounter to look like an episode of “Cops”. Rather, it’s a sign most voters remember the societal and fiscal impacts of non-enforcement during the four years of the Biden administration and remain willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt.

Having worked alongside both Border Patrol agents and what are now ICE officers for decades, I support both but also understand each brings a different set of skills to the job.

DHS leadership should apportion their ICE and CBP resources appropriately; just because the law refers to them all as “immigration officers” doesn’t mean they are interchangeable; they aren’t.

Over my nearly 34 years of experience in this field, I have seen immigration enforcement wax (Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama) and wane (Obama and Biden). More importantly, I’ve seen what works from both a “good government” and a “political” perspective and what doesn’t.

In a republic of querulous and fickle voters, those two perspectives are often interchangeable but impressions of each are largely driven by the “Fourth Estate”. Mixing it up with the press may garner clicks, but it’s a losing strategy in the long term.

The best immigration enforcement is both effective and overlooked in the news, as is the case at the Southwest border today. The administration should learn from CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott, and let the border be its guide.

“Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made,” and you can add law enforcement to that list. There’s a reason police departments leave public affairs to specialized officers who don’t splash arrest videos across the internet, let alone appear in them personally.

The latest Morning Consult poll reveals that, despite all the negative press of late, immigration remains the closest thing to a winning issue the president and his congressional allies have. If it doesn’t want to completely lose its edge on immigration, the GOP must quickly realize there’s a right way and a wrong way to do things, and the best enforcement is enforcement nobody talks about.