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PBS News Hour - Segments

How public opinion shifting against ICE may affect the DHS funding showdown in Congress

PBS News Hour - Segments

PBS NewsHour

News, Daily News

4.11K Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2026

⏱️ 5 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As immigration crackdowns spread to new cities across the country, Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of the actions of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, according to a new PBS News/NPR/Marist poll. Lisa Desjardins joins William Brangham to discuss how public opinion is shifting and how it may play into the debate on Capitol Hill. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to the NewsHour. As immigration crackdown spread to new cities across the country,

0:06.5

Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of the actions of ICE and customs enforcement agents.

0:12.5

That's according to a new PBS News NPR Marist poll.

0:16.4

Our political correspondent Lisa Desjardin joins us with more on how public opinion is shifting

0:21.7

and how it may play into the debate on Capitol Hill. Hi, Lisa. What do Americans think about ICE?

0:28.6

What does this poll show us? These numbers are in big, bold print that the majority of Americans

0:33.3

very clearly do not approve of what ICE is doing, and they're doing it by a large and growing

0:38.2

margin. Here's what we got in our poll. Sixty-five percent of Americans told us that they do not,

0:44.4

that they believe ice has gone too far. Now, what's interesting about this is when you look at how

0:49.8

that compares to last year in June, at that time it was 54% of Americans. That is a very big jump.

0:55.6

And also, June was an interesting pivot point as well. That is when the president first sent ICE

1:00.9

investigations and roving raids there into Los Angeles. Well, of course, this poll, the 65%

1:07.1

number you just saw, happened in the wake of the killing of Alex Preti, the review of that video and the way the administration reacted to that.

1:14.4

Now, something else in this number shows is that concern rose interestingly across

1:19.7

political parties. So I'm going to take a look at that. There is a classic partisan divide

1:24.3

here about the idea that ICE has gone too far. Democrats overwhelmingly think that.

1:28.3

But I want to draw your attention to that bottom number.

1:30.3

27 percent of Republicans now think ICE has gone too far.

1:33.3

That is seven points higher than it was last year.

1:36.3

And honestly, William, that is some of the highest disapproval ratings I've ever seen by Republicans for a Trump policy, they generally are in lockstep

1:46.1

with this president.

1:47.9

Separate from these numbers, it's hard not to see that these videos and images have been

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