Nearly two-thirds of registered voters (61%) think Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have gone too far in their tactics as they seek to fulfill President Donald Trump's deportation agenda, a New York Times/Siena University poll released on Friday found.
But not Republican voters.
The same poll found that more than half of Republican voters (56%) think ICE's tactics have been "about right," while another 24% say that ICE has "not gone far enough.”
That means more than three-quarters of Republicans are fine with ICE’s violence in Minnesota and now in Maine, where Trump has sent his goons to carry out his reign of terror.
Let's take a look at the tactics Republican voters think are "about right" or are not forceful enough.
A Minneapolis Star Tribune photographer captured a disturbing image of federal immigration agents spraying a chemical irritant directly into the eyes of a man who was subdued on the ground—an unquestionably excessive use of force.
There’s also the heartbreaking image of Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-year-old boy in a bunny hat, being arrested by ICE agents. A leader at the boy’s preschool said the masked agents used the boy as "bait" to get to his father, a level of depravity that should nauseate anyone with a heart.
Liam Conejo Ramos, age 5, is detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers after arriving home from preschool on Jan. 20 in a Minneapolis suburb.
Or how about the horrifying image of ICE busting into the home of a U.S. citizen, guns drawn and without a warrant, and then frog-marching him in his underwear and sandals in frigid temperatures into custody? Defending ICE’s depravity, the Department of Homeland Security claimed the man was a sex offender. As it turns out, though, the man was a citizen with no criminal record. As for the sex offender whom ICE said it wanted to arrest? Well, he has been in jail since 2024.
Think those are the only horrors? Think again.
There’s the story of a 6-month-old infant who needed CPR after an ICE agent threw a tear-gas canister under the car the infant’s family was driving. When it exploded, the car’s airbags deployed, trapping them inside to choke on tear gas. Including the infant, there were six children in the car.
DHS initially blamed the family for their infant's hospitalization, saying the parents should not have taken children to a protest. But the family was not going to a protest. They were driving home from their older child's basketball game.
DHS later deleted its victim-blaming post on X, after it was clear that the family was just trying to go about their lives in the occupied hellscape they are unlucky enough to be trapped in.
There's also a disabled woman who was merely trying to drive to a doctor's appointment when ICE agents smashed out her car window and ripped her from her vehicle as she cried and screamed.
And who can forget Renee Good, the 37-year-old mother of three whom an ICE agent shot and killed in her car? DHS lied that the officer who killed her was in danger. But an autopsy revealed that the bullet that killed her went through the side of her head. Add that together with the video evidence, and we now know that the officer was not directly in front of her vehicle and that he killed her when he was not in danger.
These are just a handful of the dozens of instances of ICE using excessive force and flagrantly violating people’s constitutional rights in order to carry out Trump’s racist deportation agenda.
Democrats and independents find it abhorrent. The New York Times poll shows that 94% of Democrats and 71% of independents say ICE’s tactics are going too far.
Yet Republicans are eating it up, because like their Dear Leader, the cruelty for them is and has always been the point.
And now, we’re all paying the price for their sadism.
