Independent Voters Shaping National Dialogue on ICE, Immigration, Greenland

Independent voters have an unsatisfactory view of the Trump administration’s domestic and foreign policies involving immigration enforcement, efforts to take control of Greenland, and filling the power vacuum in Venezuela, according to a new poll.

The administration has continuously defended the president’s campaign promise to secure the domestic borders while removing criminal undocumented immigrants. Border crossings have drastically been reduced in comparison to the previous Biden administration.

Tensions have been stoked in cities across the country, most notably Minneapolis, after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents killed Americans Renee Good and Alex Pretti. That has sparked ongoing debate about civil rights including protesting and possessing a firearm in public, and whether immigration policies should focus only on individuals with criminal backgrounds rather than those who have remained inside the U.S. without proper documentation but lack a criminal history.

“I think the independents are going to be very hard for him to win back because what they voted for is not what they're getting,” Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist University Institute for Public Opinion, told Military.com of Marist’s newest survey released Thursday, Feb. 5. “The idea of starting with renaming the Gulf of Mexico and then Canada and then Greenland—these are all things that it's not a good setup."

In other words, people didn't know we had issues there. Ukraine, Middle East, yeah, that's been there, but he said those would be solved immediately.

Policies abroad have also been met with skepticism that fall along traditional lines of partisanship, though independent voters represent outliers pushing back against Trump’s actions in Greenland and Venezuela.

Regarding Greenland, the president has claimed that a U.S. takeover would better prevent the region from Chinese or Russian threats than if Denmark continues to have oversight. The United States’ actions have been met with blowback from longtime allies including Canada and France—both nations simultaneously opening consulates in Greenland.

Venezuela is also a political mixed bag following the United States’ capture of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores, during the Jan. 3 military operation "Operation Absolute Resolve" in Caracas. The couple face federal drug trafficking charges in the U.S. while questions remain about the United States’ long-term role in the country and how it meshes with new Venezuelan leaders stepping forward at the moment.

“To have a partisan divide is expected on almost every question,” Miringoff said. “What I was struck by overall in the survey is obviously this says a lot of questions about ICE and how they're being perceived.

“But when you look at the major priorities and how that is different from the perception of what the Trump administration is doing, I think that underscores why the ICE issue—along with a lot of other things—are creating problems for his overall approval ratings.”

ICE Trust Relies on Partisanship

The NPR/PBS News/Marist Poll national survey of 1,462 adults was conducted from Jan. 27-30, asking adults aged 18 and older questions about ICE, Greenland and the economy over phone, text, or online. The poll has a +/- 2.9 margin of error and occurred after the deaths of Good and Pretti.

The survey found that 65% of respondents believe ICE has “gone too far” in its enforcement of immigration laws, followed by 22% who described it as “just right.” Another 12% responded that they haven’t yet gone far enough. That 22% figure is down from 26% from a previous poll asking the same question.

Broken down from a place of political partisanship, Democrats and independents have questioned ICE even more so than in previous polls.

Among those who said ICE has gone too far, the percentage for Democrats has increased from 83% to 93% while the percentage for independents has increased from 59% to 71%.

Roughly 45% of Republicans, down from 49% in the previous survey, described the actions as just right. Also, the proportion of Republicans who say ICE has gone too far has increased to 27% from the previous 20% figure.

Miringoff told Military.com that a broader aspect to consider in all of this is how the U.S. economy impacts public sentiment about domestic and foreign policies that extend beyond proverbial so-called kitchen table issues.

“I think that underscores why the ICE issue, along with a lot of other things, are creating problems for his overall approval ratings,” he said. “Trump is around 40%, but when you look at the economy and the ICE activity and foreign policy, that's mid-30s [36% per the poll] and suggesting that the issues are a drag…kind of keeping his approval rating from doing anything better because the economy remains the No. 1 concern.”

The new poll shows that 54% of respondents think lowering prices should be the top priority for the Trump Administration, with 22% saying immigration should be a top initiative. Republicans are the only demographic that focused more on immigration than lowering costs.

Also, 56% of respondents said placing tariffs or fees on imported products from other countries hurts the U.S. economy. About 31% said the opposite, again highlighted by 66% of Republicans supporting that policy. 

I think that's sort of the overall take on this, that people expected [Trump] to do things on immigration, expecting him to do things on the economy. They did not expect him to get involved with all these other countries. But right now, the economy and lowering prices is really what people want him to be focusing on. That's not happening.

Here are other data from the poll regarding ICE:

• 62% of respondents said ICE’s actions are making Americans somewhat less safe or much less safe, while 37% said the opposite.
• Roughly 6-in-10 respondents disapprove of the job ICE is doing while 33% approve. Democrats (91%) overwhelmingly disapprove and 66% of independents agree. Almost 3-in-4 Republicans (73%) approve.
• Roughly 6-in-10 respondents (59%) think the demonstrations around the country to oppose ICE and its actions are mostly legitimate protests, while 40% said they involve people mostly acting unlawfully. 

'Every Day Is Another Event'

When it comes to the U.S. stake in Greenland that is been a source of constant discussion from the White House, both Democrats and independents were stronger in their opposition to that than Republicans were in their support for it.

Approximately 67% of total respondents either oppose or strongly oppose the U.S. trying to take control of Greenland, with 32% either strongly supporting or supporting that.

On a more granular level, 93% of Democrats oppose the idea—including 74% who say they strongly oppose it. Among independents, 75% oppose it and 52% strongly oppose it. On the GOP side, 68% of Republicans either strongly support or support taking over Greenland and 22% strongly support it.

“The whole visual day-by-day—whether it's someone hauling off a 5-year-old or obviously a shooting, which is, even more dramatic for people—there's some of that [affecting voter sentiment],” Miringoff said. “But with Donald Trump, so much of it is baked in.

“And we see that with his approval rating, there's very little movement from poll to poll.  Events may be evaluated in terms of the policies, but they don't necessarily affect him other than it keeps him sort of locked in at a certain place. With Donald Trump, every day is another event.”

NATO and Shifting Voter Sentiment

That could be vying for control of Greenland, oral attacks on Canada and making it the 51st state, criticizing NATO allies, or not ending long wars in Ukraine and Gaza, he added.

The poll found that 56% of residents have a favorable opinion of NATO, 20% do not, and 24% have either never heard of NATO or are unsure how to rate it. Numbers are closest among Republicans, of which 46% have a favorable view and 30% have an unfavorable one.

Another 66% of respondents said the U.S. benefits a great deal or good amount from being a member of NATO, while 33% said the opposite.

These are all things that have had their moment and, again, not the kind of thing that controlling inflation or lowering prices would do for him. That’s what got him back into the White House.

Trump’s approval rating among Republicans has dropped 10 percentage points, from around 95% to the current 85%, according to Miringoff. He notes that the 95% rating was when Trump faced former Vice President Kamala Harris in the general election, which offered Americans a two-person choice vote.

While the Trump base remains “pretty rock solid,” Miringoff said shifts in younger voters and minority groups could also pose trouble for the Trump administration. That will be determined during the 2026 midterm elections when the president’s name is on the ballot, which in the past has notoriously led to less-than-stellar results for Republicans.

“People sort of wanted him to erect the borders and get into more of an isolationist mode, and yet he's very much trying to leverage different things,” Miringoff said. “The notion that politics is, say you're going to do it, do it, and then say you've done it. These are things he doesn't say he's going to do.

“People are thinking, you know, the economy's his, he owns it now. He doesn't seem to be as preoccupied with that as he is some of these other things, including the Kennedy Center and other things that really detract from the ticket he punched to get back into the White House. And I think that's the biggest single problem.”