🔥 TARLOV SAYS MOST AMERICANS HAVE TURNED AGAINST ICE RAIDS — NOW A HEATED NATIONAL SHOWDOWN IS ERUPTING. WHERE DO YOU STAND? |
JESSICA TARLOV SAYS MOST AMERICANS OPPOSE ICE RAIDS — THE POLLS SHOW VOTERS BACK DEPORTATION BUT REJECT MANY OF THE TACTICS
A viral social-media challenge says Fox News co-host Jessica Tarlov claimed that most Americans are against ICE raids and asks users to prove her wrong by voting for or against the operations.
The problem is that a social-media comment section is not a national poll — and the real polling tells a much more complicated story than either side's slogan.
I could not locate a primary-source Fox transcript containing the exact viral sentence that “most Americans are against the ICE raids.” Fox has, however, documented Tarlov arguing that the Trump administration has gone too far in its mass-deportation effort, and she has repeatedly cited polling showing public discomfort with ICE tactics.
On the substance, she is directionally right about several forms of aggressive enforcement. The latest major national polling shows majorities saying the administration has gone too far when it sends federal immigration agents into American cities and when agents use traffic stops to locate and arrest people living in the country illegally.
At the same time, Americans have not rejected deportation itself. A large Reuters/Ipsos survey found that a clear majority still supports deporting unauthorized immigrants.
The real public position is therefore not simply “pro-ICE” or “anti-ICE.” Many Americans support enforcing immigration law and removing people who are in the country illegally while simultaneously believing that some current raids and enforcement tactics have gone too far.
The statement “most Americans oppose ICE raids” is too broad unless the type of raid is specified. Polling shows majority opposition to several aggressive tactics, but also majority support for deportation as a general policy goal.
The Latest AP-NORC Poll Is Bad News for ICE's Current Tactics
The freshest major national survey directly examining ICE enforcement was conducted by AP-NORC from July 23 through July 27, 2026 and published August 2.
Fifty-five percent of U.S. adults said President Trump had gone too far in sending federal immigration agents into American cities.
A majority also said the administration had gone too far in using traffic stops to find and arrest immigrants living in the United States illegally.
When respondents were asked more broadly about ICE itself, 49 percent disapproved of the way the agency was enforcing immigration laws, compared with 29 percent who approved.
Another 21 percent were neutral or did not know enough to offer an opinion.
That is not a technical majority disapproving of ICE enforcement overall, but it is a decisive 20-point gap between disapproval and approval.
The latest AP-NORC poll does support saying most Americans believe some high-profile ICE tactics have gone too far. It does not show that most Americans oppose every immigration arrest or deportation operation.
The Same Poll Shows a Huge Partisan Divide
The national topline hides one of the largest partisan gaps in American politics.
In the AP-NORC survey, 86 percent of Democrats disapproved of the way ICE was enforcing immigration law.
Among Republicans, 64 percent approved.
Independents were much closer to the national mood: 41 percent disapproved, just 18 percent approved and 27 percent were neutral.
That matters politically because independents — not viral social-media followings — are often the voters who decide competitive House and Senate races.
The poll also found that Trump's approval on immigration stood at 39 percent nationally even though immigration remains one of his strongest issues inside the Republican Party.
Reuters/Ipsos Found a Seemingly Contradictory Result — and It Explains the Debate
A large Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in February produced one of the clearest pictures of what voters actually believe.
Sixty-one percent of Americans said they support deporting unauthorized immigrants.
But 60 percent also said immigration agents had gone too far.
Those numbers are not mutually exclusive.
A voter can believe that someone living in the country illegally should ultimately be removed while also objecting to masked agents, indiscriminate sweeps, workplace arrests, family separations, confrontational tactics or operations involving people with no criminal record.
That distinction is the central fact missing from most online arguments over ICE.
Supporting deportation does not necessarily mean supporting every method used to carry it out. Pollsters repeatedly find substantial numbers of Americans holding both positions at once.
One Ipsos Question Shows Exactly How Americans Split
Ipsos tested the tension directly in a January 30-February 1 survey.
Twenty-six percent of Americans said they supported deporting undocumented immigrants and were comfortable with current federal enforcement tactics.
Another 45 percent said they supported deportation but were uncomfortable with the tactics being used.
Twenty-six percent opposed deporting undocumented immigrants.
In other words, roughly seven in ten supported deportation in principle, but only about one in four supported both the goal and the current methods without reservation.
That is why reducing the debate to “Are you for or against the raids?” can produce a misleading picture of public opinion.
Workplace Raids Have Drawn Majority Opposition
Polling that uses the word “raids” more directly has also found majority opposition in specific settings.
A Pew Research Center survey conducted in June 2025 asked whether ICE should conduct more raids at workplaces where people in the country illegally may be working.
Fifty-four percent disapproved and 45 percent approved.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll the following month found only 28 percent agreeing that immigration arrests at workplaces were good for the country, while 54 percent disagreed.
Republicans were much more supportive than the public as a whole, illustrating again why a poll taken among followers of a conservative social-media account cannot be treated as a representative test of national opinion.
The Public Is More Supportive When the Target Has a Criminal Record
Americans become substantially more supportive of deportation when the question specifies serious criminal conduct.
Polling has repeatedly found strong support for removing undocumented immigrants with criminal records.
The political weakness for the administration appears when enforcement expands to long-term residents with jobs, families and no criminal history.
A Marquette Law School national poll found 56 percent opposed deporting immigrants who had lived in the United States for years, had jobs and had no criminal record, while 44 percent supported doing so.
That helps explain why public reaction can change depending on who is shown being arrested.
A raid targeting a convicted violent offender and a workplace sweep arresting long-term workers with no criminal convictions may both be described online as an “ICE raid,” but voters do not necessarily view them the same way.
Current Enforcement Is Not Limited to Violent Criminals
The Trump administration has repeatedly emphasized the removal of dangerous criminals.
ICE does arrest people with serious criminal histories, and those cases often receive extensive public attention from the Department of Homeland Security and conservative media.
But recent reporting shows the expanded enforcement campaign is also detaining large numbers of people without criminal convictions.
That fact matters because polling consistently shows greater public tolerance for enforcement against criminals than for broad sweeps involving people whose only violation is immigration status.
The public debate therefore cannot be accurately reduced to a choice between deporting violent criminals and allowing everyone to remain.
ICE arrests include both people with serious criminal histories and people without criminal convictions. Polling support changes sharply depending on which population respondents are asked about.
Americans Still Want Immigration Law Enforced
The backlash against ICE tactics should not be confused with a national embrace of open borders.
The Ipsos survey found 61 percent of Americans considered secure borders extremely or very important.
Fifty-seven percent placed similarly high importance on enforcement of existing immigration laws inside the country.
At the same time, 60 percent also considered it important to create a way for undocumented immigrants with jobs and no criminal record to obtain legal status.
That combination looks contradictory only if immigration politics is treated as a binary choice.
A large bloc of voters wants border control, enforcement and deportation in some cases while also supporting legal pathways and limits on how federal agents operate.
Gallup Shows Americans Still View Immigration Positively Overall
Gallup's June 2026 survey adds another layer.
Seventy-three percent of U.S. adults said immigration is a good thing for the country, while 21 percent said it is a bad thing.
That does not mean Americans approve of illegal immigration.
It does mean the public's overall view of immigrants and immigration is far more positive than the rhetoric surrounding ICE raids might suggest.
The same electorate can favor immigration, demand border enforcement and reject some forms of mass-deportation enforcement at the same time.
A Social-Media Poll Cannot 'Test' a National Poll
The viral challenge itself has a methodological problem.
A poll posted to a politically conservative account is shown primarily to people who follow, share or interact with that kind of content.
Participation is voluntary rather than randomly or probability sampled.
Users can share the poll with ideologically similar audiences, and platform algorithms amplify posts that generate engagement.
The result can tell the account owner what that account's audience thinks.
It cannot tell us what the United States as a whole thinks.
Professional national pollsters use sampling and weighting techniques designed to approximate the country's population. They publish sample sizes, field dates and margins of error so that readers can judge the results.
A viral X, Facebook or Instagram poll can measure the sentiment of people who choose to interact with it. It is not evidence that a nationally representative survey is wrong.
Tarlov's Exact Viral Quote Is Harder to Verify Than the Polling
There is another fact-checking issue with the meme itself.
The sentence claiming that Jessica Tarlov “just said that most Americans are against the ICE raids” has circulated repeatedly across social media for months.
I could not find a primary Fox transcript or clip containing that exact sentence.
Fox did publish a January 27 interview in which Tarlov explained why she believed the Trump administration had gone too far in its mass-deportation effort.
She has also repeatedly referenced polling showing Trump and ICE underwater on several immigration-enforcement questions.
It is therefore reasonable to describe the viral line as a paraphrase of her broader polling argument unless the original clip is produced.
It should not be presented as an exact quotation without that source.
The Numbers Have Shifted as Enforcement Became More Aggressive
Trump began his second term with immigration as one of his clearest political strengths.
Early in 2025, even Tarlov acknowledged on Fox that immigration was an area where the president was polling well.
As workplace raids expanded, heavily armed or masked agents became more visible and fatal confrontations generated national attention, those numbers deteriorated.
Reuters/Ipsos found Trump's immigration approval falling during 2025.
By 2026, several major pollsters were consistently finding that roughly half or more of Americans believed enforcement had gone too far.
The latest AP-NORC data suggest the backlash remains significant even though it has moderated somewhat from the intense reaction following the Minneapolis shootings earlier in the year.
The Word 'Raid' Is Doing Too Much Work
One reason the online debate produces confusion is that “ICE raid” has no single meaning in public polling.
It can describe agents executing a targeted warrant on a convicted offender.
It can describe a workplace sweep involving dozens or hundreds of workers.
It can describe officers moving through immigrant neighborhoods looking for removable noncitizens.
It can describe traffic-stop operations, courthouse arrests or arrests at homes.
Polling shows Americans respond differently to each scenario.
A serious analysis therefore has to ask: a raid where, targeting whom and using what tactics?
The Strongest Pro-Enforcement Argument
Supporters of Trump's approach have a substantial case that should not be erased by unfavorable polling.
Federal immigration law exists and the executive branch is responsible for enforcing it.
People with final removal orders and noncitizens convicted of serious crimes cannot simply be ignored because enforcement is politically controversial.
Trump campaigned explicitly on tougher deportation enforcement and won the 2024 election.
A majority of Americans in the Reuters/Ipsos survey continued to support the basic proposition that unauthorized immigrants should be deported.
From that perspective, the administration can argue that public discomfort with tactics should lead to operational reforms rather than abandonment of immigration enforcement.
The Strongest Criticism of the Raids
Critics respond that winning an election does not erase due process, proportionality or the public's right to judge how government power is exercised.
They argue that broad sweeps involving people without criminal records undermine the administration's repeated emphasis on dangerous offenders.
They also point to public concern about masked agents, aggressive traffic stops, raids in sensitive locations and encounters that have ended in injury or death.
The polling suggests these arguments have moved a significant portion of the electorate.
That is particularly important for Republicans heading into the November midterms because independents have been much more critical of enforcement tactics than Republican voters.
What Can Actually Be Said With Confidence
Jessica Tarlov has publicly argued that the Trump administration has gone too far in its mass-deportation effort, but the exact viral sentence that “most Americans are against the ICE raids” is not readily verifiable as a verbatim Fox quote.
The core polling claim is partly supported.
The latest AP-NORC survey found 55 percent of Americans saying Trump had gone too far in sending federal immigration agents into U.S. cities.
A majority also said using traffic stops to find and arrest immigrants living in the country illegally had gone too far.
Forty-nine percent disapproved of the way ICE was enforcing immigration law, compared with 29 percent who approved.
Earlier Reuters/Ipsos polling found roughly 60 percent saying immigration agents had gone too far.
Specific polling has found majority opposition to workplace raids.
At the same time, Reuters/Ipsos found 61 percent of Americans support deporting unauthorized immigrants.
Another Ipsos survey found 45 percent of Americans supported deportation while simultaneously saying they were uncomfortable with current enforcement tactics.
Americans are generally more supportive of deporting people with serious criminal records and less supportive of deporting long-term residents with jobs and no criminal record.
That means neither side's simplest slogan is accurate.
It is wrong to say the public has rejected immigration enforcement or deportation.
It is also wrong to say national polling shows broad approval of the way today's ICE raids are being conducted.
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The strongest defensible conclusion is that Americans still want immigration law enforced, but a large — and on several tactics, majority — share believes the current enforcement campaign has crossed important lines.
A partisan social-media poll may produce a landslide for ICE. That result says far more about the audience taking the poll than it does about the country.
