Why GOP voters still love ICE

[marmar]

Why GOP voters still love ICE
New PRRI polling still shows broad Republican support for some of Trump’s most extreme immigration policies

By Chauncey DeVega
Senior Writer
Published January 27, 2026 6:45AM (EST)


(Salon) The Trump administration’s thuggery continues to grow and expand. In the aftermath of Alex Jeffrey Pretti’s killing on Saturday in Minneapolis at the hands of federal agents, hundreds of people almost immediately began to protest at the site where he was held down and shot at least 10 times. Federal law enforcement agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection rained flash bangs and tear gas down on the crowd. They grabbed protesters and beat them. Witnesses described the scene as dystopian, and they had trouble believing that American citizens engaged in peaceful protest would be treated this way by their own government.

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But while tens of millions of Americans are outraged by the growing cruelty of the Trump administration, including his mass deportation campaign, many tens of millions of others are cheering it on. Ninety percent of Republicans expressed support in a recent CBS/YouGov poll. The breakdown on racial lines is stark: A majority of white Americans support the president’s immigration policies, while a majority of non-whites oppose them.

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A majority of Republicans also support arresting and detaining immigrants who do not have a criminal record. Most Americans and the vast majority of Democrats (88%) oppose such a policy.

Republicans, by a large majority (69%), also support putting “illegal immigrants” in internment camps until they can be removed from the country.

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Ultimately, for Trump’s MAGA followers and the larger anti-democracy right-wing, the man screaming at the site of Alex Pretti’s killing is music to their ears. They see dystopia as a utopia. This warped vision of unlimited power, the silencing of critics and ability to impose their beliefs on those deemed to be the Other serves their goal of ending the country’s pluralistic democracy and replacing it with a White Christofascist plutocracy ruled by a very small number of powerful White men. This new America would be a union of Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Jim and Jane Crow, and technofeudalism. Rank-and-file MAGA followers and other members of the right-wing will not live better material lives in this world, but they will enjoy the psychological wages of being told they are inherently superior over the Other as their need for social dominance is validated. .......................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/01/27/why-gop-voters-still-love-ice/