President Trump’s stunning success in stopping migrants from crossing into the U.S. has drained some of the energy from the border issue, leaving the GOP scrambling to fire up the base in what promises to be a bruising midterm election.
On the flip side, Mr. Trump’s aggressive deportation sweeps inside the U.S. have energized the left to stampede to the polls in November.
Jai Chabra, an Ohio‑based GOP consultant who has advised Vice President J.D. Vance, said immigration has been a No. 1 or No. 2 issue for Republicans and many independents since 2016, making it a reliable tool in the party’s get-out-the-vote machine.
“It has been a huge driver, but because the administration has had so much success solving the issue at the border, it is not the pertinent issue it used to be for them,” Mr. Chabra said. “As a result, that has contributed to a lack of enthusiasm in the Republican base.”
Polling shows the shift.
Gallup’s latest numbers find 29% of voters in June said immigration levels should be decreased — down from 55% before the 2024 election.
Back then, 32% of voters viewed immigration as a bad thing; today, it’s 21%.
A similar trend exists among Republicans.
YouGov tracking surveys show the number of Republicans who said immigration was the most important issue in October 2024 has fallen to 13.7% from 25%.
Trump pollster John McLaughlin’s July survey shows the same pattern nationwide, with the share of voters pointing to the border and immigration as the most important issue sliced in half since the last presidential election.
“We are victims of our own success,” Mr. McLaughlin said.
Democrats, meanwhile, say Mr. Trump’s enforcement push — including two fatal ICE shootings in Minneapolis and a more recent shooting of a Colombian national in Biddeford, Maine — has jolted their side.
Gregg Shapiro, chair of the Biddeford Democratic Party, framed the debate over the Trump administration’s policies as a “what color is the sky in your world moment.” Democrats insist the heavy-handed approach to immigration enforcement is not working, not necessary and sweeping up innocent people in raids — and sometimes killing people.
Mr. Shapiro said the issue was already top of mind for voters, and the July shooting supercharged it.
“It definitely has energized people,” he said. “We are seeing significant uptick in interest and involvement.”
A similar dynamic played out after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, handing pro‑life and social conservatives a hard-fought win but energizing Democrats ahead of the 2022 midterms, particularly women.
Amid the immigration crackdown, Mr. Trump’s support among Latino voters has slipped. Those voters swung roughly 22 points toward Republicans compared to 2020, according to Pew. In an April survey, Pew found that 66% of the Latino voters who backed Mr. Trump approved of his job performance. That’s down from 93% at the start of his second term — a drop attributed in part to his aggressive immigration enforcement.
The shifting politics follow a dramatic overhaul at the border.
At the peak of the migrant surge under President Biden, Border Patrol agents were catching a quarter‑million illegal immigrants a month along the southwestern border and releasing most into the interior. Under Mr. Trump, agents are arresting fewer than 10,000 a month — and none are being released.
Rescues along the border — another measure of the flow and the dangers migrants face — topped 3,000 a month in fiscal year 2023. So far this year, they’ve fallen to about 100 a month, a 97% decline.
Crime numbers have also been falling on Mr. Trump’s watch, something he has highlighted, though not as consistently as some in the party would like.
FBI data show the national murder rate dropped an estimated 18.1% from 2024 to 2025. It is the largest single‑year decline since 1937 and follows double‑digit decreases in 2023 and 2024.
A midyear review by the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice found homicides in 30 cities down another 18% in the first half of 2026, a decline of 215 cases. Researchers now say the 2025 homicide rate is likely the lowest since at least 1900, with 2026 on track to fall even further.
Republicans say the silver lining is that Democrats are overplaying their hand on immigration and crime.
That includes Democrats in marquee Senate races — Abdul El‑Sayed in Michigan, Troy Jackson in Maine and Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota — who want to abolish ICE.
Mr. Jackson has said federal agents “have been abducting our neighbors in brazen violation of the Constitution,” calling ICE a “rogue agency.” Mr. Flannagan has used Rep. Angie Craig’s vote for the Laken Riley Act as a cudgel against her ahead of their primary Tuesday.
And some House candidates who have won primaries in New York and Colorado ran as Democratic Socialists of America, whose platform calls for an end to all deportations, amnesty for all illegal immigrants and efforts to “punish federal agents’ brutality.”
“The big government socialists who are winning the Democratic primaries want to go back to open borders and allowing criminal illegal immigrants to come in and stay,” Mr. McLaughlin said. “We need to run on that contrast.”
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