ICE tactics spark debate before pivotal US midterm elections

United States President Donald Trump’s mandate for aggressive immigration enforcement has fractured public support in advance of next month’s critical midterm elections.

In the lead-up to the November 3 vote, Fox News released a poll that found 53 percent of registered voters felt the immigration crackdown had “gone too far”.

That rate was even higher among demographics that may be key to the Republican Party’s prospects in November.

The poll, conducted in September, found that 60 percent of independent voters agreed with the idea that Trump’s immigration efforts have overreached. Two-thirds of Hispanic participants also agreed with the campaign having “gone too far”.

Experts say the political debate about immigration in the US has shifted since the last major election in 2024. At the time, the focus was largely on border security. But increasingly, attention has fallen on how enforcement operations are being conducted.

Cynthia Penaloza is among those questioning the Trump administration’s tactics.

In August, her sister, 23-year-old Joceline Penaloza Magana, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Houston, Texas, during a traffic stop. Joceline remains in custody to this day.

“We’re always afraid. We’re uncertain of what’s going to happen, if she’s going to be sent back to Mexico, if we’re ever going to be together again or how this is going to change our lives forever,” Cynthia told Al Jazeera correspondent Phil Lavelle.

She rejects Trump’s assertion that his administration’s immigration enforcement operations have targeted “the worst of the worst”.

Joceline, according to the Penaloza family, was an honour roll student who does not have a criminal record. She was brought to the US as a young child, about five years old.

“She’s always been a good girl,” Cynthia told Lavelle.

A focus on ‘criminals’

Still, the Trump administration has tied its campaign of mass deportation to efforts to control crime.

In a statement earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration enforcement, credited Trump’s policies with having “unleashed ICE to target the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens, including pedophiles, murderers, gang members, terrorists, and rapists”.

Immigration arrests have been on the rise under Trump. In September, ICE announced it had tallied two consecutive months with more than 50,000 immigration arrests, beating a record set in June, when 43,900 people were detained.

Homeland Security has argued that approximately 70 percent of its immigration detainees are criminals, if pending charges are factored in.

But critics have questioned that statistic, given that the legal system in the US gives suspects the presumption of innocence until they are proven guilty in a court of law.

In other words, many of the accused could be acquitted or see their charges dropped. A large portion of those with criminal charges may also be accused of non-violent crimes.

Analysts have found that a majority of people currently in immigration custody are not considered criminals under the law. According to the Deportation Data Project, which analyses government data sets, some 70 percent of those held in ICE detention have no criminal record.

The Trump administration has nevertheless pushed to increase detentions.

“We need more. We need more arrests, and we need more deportations,” Tom Homan, the White House “border czar”, said in an interview in July.

Pushback on the campaign trail

The aggressive arrest tactics may have repercussions on the Republican campaign for the midterms, though.

Republicans are hoping to defend their majorities in both chambers of Congress, as well as in key state and local elections.

Trump made significant gains in the 2024 elections with Hispanic voters. During his re-election bid, he received nearly 48 percent support among Latinos, according to an exit poll from the Pew Research Center — up 12 percentage points from the 2020 election.

But Pew found that his gains may be eroding. Among the Hispanic voters who supported him in 2024, his approval rating has steadily declined, from a high of 93 percent at the start of 2025 to a low of 57 percent as of last week.

Some Republicans running in the midterm election, including Congress member Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida, have even openly criticised the president’s hardline immigration policies.

“Mr President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” Salazar said in an advertisement campaign launched in September. She cited the large number of immigrants who were arrested without a criminal record.

Other Republicans, however, blame previous presidencies for creating the conflict over immigration enforcement.

“A mess was created, and now cleaning it up is dirty business,” Jeremy Price, a Republican in Texas, told Al Jazeera. “You’re having to find people, arrest them against their will and remove them from the country because they don’t want to leave.”

Democrats, meanwhile, hope to convert that outrage over immigration enforcement tactics into votes, come November.

“I would hope they’d abolish ICE,” Richard Gonzales, the chair of the Hidalgo County Democratic Party in Texas, said in an interview with Al Jazeera’s Lavelle.

“I mean, in my perspective, I think that they’ve, the agency has just lost its identity, and there’s no way to rehabilitate that.”