When the Immigration Debate Becomes War by Another Name

Sometimes we don’t appreciate people until they’re gone.

That thought came to mind with the news that the Gallup Organization’s latest poll shows a dramatic surge in positive views of immigrants.

The share who thought immigration should decrease, as President Trump wishes, dropped to 30% of all respondents this year from its five-year high of 55% in 2024, while those who thought immigration is a "good thing for the country" soared to 79% of respondents — a record high.

In other words, the more the administration has pursued the undocumented, and the more Americans have observed of the way they are being pursued, the less Americans have become inclined to view immigrants as the problem Trump has painted them to be.

That's even true of Republicans. The proportions of GOP respondents who view immigration favorably rose in the last year from 39% to 64%.

Moreover, the U.S. public is growing more inclined toward pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and less favorable of crackdown policies, such as hiring more Border Patrol agents and deporting the undocumented.

However Americans may feel about immigration broadly speaking, most of us don't like when immigrants are treated poorly in our name. And there is a growing perception that Trump's deployments of National Guard personnel and federal law enforcement agents themselves are a threat to public order.

Ask the organizers of El Grito Chicago, the city's official festival for Mexican Independence Day, who reluctantly announced that the festival would be postponed because of safety concerns.

Although violent crime has fallen in recent years, Chicago has found itself bracing for hundreds of federal agents to arrive because Trump calls the city a “killing field” and a “disaster” in need of a cleanup by federal immigration agents and National Guard troops.

Although crime in Washington D.C. was already in decline after spiking during the pandemic, the Trump administration put the district's police under federal control a little more than three weeks ago and put the National Guard on the city’s streets to fight crime and “clean up” the nation’s capital.

As one who spends most of my professional time in Chicago and the nation’s capital, I am relieved that, contrary to the city-under-siege hype, many of the guardsmen I have seen were put to work on such non-lethal chores as picking up trash — or, as we called it in my Army days, “policing the area.”

Still, Trump sounded jubilant last month during a visit to law enforcement officers on the southeast side of the district.

“We’ve had some incredible results,” Trump said. “It’s like a different place. It’s like a different city.”

He should get out more.

Meanwhile, perhaps in a preview of what’s to come on the fiscal side, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday that Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles amounted to expensive political theater — at a cost to taxpayers of almost $120 million.

Republicans like to dismiss such complaints as Democrats' opposition to law and order. Never mind that the complaint is coming from people who actually deal with the issues of law and order first hand.

Like any other crime-vulnerable resident, I care about law and order, too. But I want solutions that work and that are consistent with American principles of justice and consent. It’s not very reassuring when Trump announces his plans for policing a city without consulting with local officials on what strategies are workable and acceptable to their communities.

This is the clearest indication that Trump's crackdown policies are less about public safety than showboating. Baltimore and Chicago are next, he has said, without any apparent effort to work with those city leaders, either.

Most of the soldiers sent to Los Angeles were sent home in August, officials said, although 300 remain in the city. When a federal judge in San Francisco on Tuesday barred troops from aiding in immigration arrests in a blistering opinion, it marked a major victory for states like Illinois that also are critical of Team Trump’s deployments.

If and when Trump brings his circus to Chicago, Gov. J.B. Pritzker says the state’s first move similarly will be to the courthouse.

They’ll have a lot of other critics on their side, judging by the new Yahoo/YouGov poll that finds only 37% approve of the president’s sending troops to other major cities — while a 53% majority said they disapprove.

”We’re going in,” Trump told reporters Tuesday about deploying troops to Chicago, “We have the right to do it.”

A “right” to barge in and disturb the peace and public order of American cities without permission or consultation, for the sake of political theater? The American public increasingly sees this for what it is. And we can only hope the courts continue to do so as well.

In other times and places, this kind of behavior has touched off dangerous riots and even civil wars. With that in mind, Trump needs to assimilate a little bit of street wisdom, namely: Don't start none, won't be none.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at clarence47page@gmail.com.)