GOP Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa went on Fox News Sunday and acknowledged that her party has lost ground with the public on immigration, a topic Republicans have long considered a winning issue.
Fox News host Trey Gowdy, himself a former Republican congressman, pressed Ernst on the numbers, pointing out that President Trump had effectively shut down the border yet the party still trailed in voter opinion on the subject.
Ernst confirmed the problem plainly, saying the party is “underwater” on immigration.
Rather than pointing to the administration’s enforcement approach as a factor, she called on Democrats to work with Republicans and accused them of letting personal animosity toward Trump drive their refusal to cooperate.
“So much can be done on this if only Democrats will want to come to the table, but they’ve demonstrated, whether it’s DHS or anything else, that they just simply despise the president so much they don’t want to do the right thing for our country,” Ernst said.
The polling data backing up her concern is significant.
A NBC News survey from last month found that 60% of Americans disapprove of how Trump has handled immigration, up sharply from 49% who held that view last June.
The erosion in support has tracked closely with the administration’s intensified and at times deadly immigration enforcement campaigns.
Private Republican polling data obtained by Axios in January told a similar story, showing that 60% of independent voters disapproved of Trump’s immigration policies, and that survey was conducted before the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Since Trump’s second term began, federal authorities have arrested more than 328,000 migrants.
More than 73% of those arrested have no criminal record, a figure that contrasts sharply with Trump’s repeated promise to focus deportation efforts on the “worst of the worst.”
