Immigration and Customs Enforcement's favorability rating has improved since the beginning of the year, but it remains underwater with American voters, according to a series of Harvard CAPS/Harris polls. The findings come as the Trump administration continues to expand immigration enforcement nationwide, even as some of the highly publicized operations seen earlier this year in cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and Minneapolis have receded from public view. The latest Harvard CAPS/Harris survey, conducted August 28-30 among 2,100 registered voters, found that 39 percent viewed ICE favorably while 47 percent viewed the agency unfavorably, producing a net favorability rating of -8 percentage points—one of the better ratings the agency has received in the polling series this year.
In January, the poll recorded a -16 net approval rating, with 34 percent viewing ICE favorably and 50 percent viewing the agency unfavorably following the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota during Operation Metro Surge. The change is also three points better than the agency's -11 rating recorded in July, when 38 percent of voters viewed ICE favorably and 48 percent viewed it unfavorably. While ICE's net favorability has improved since January's -16 rating, it has not been a steady climb.
Harvard/Harris recorded the agency's favorability rating as -8 in February, -11 in March, -6 in April, -9 in May, -11 in July and -8 in August. The series' strongest reading—though still underwater—came in April, when ICE was 40 percent favorable and 46 percent unfavorable, for a net favorability rating of -6. Alexander Kustov, an associate professor of migration at the University of Notre Dame, told Newsweek: "Most of this movement may just be a random survey error.
With 2,100 respondents, the margin on a net favorability number is closer to plus or minus 4 points than the 2 the poll reports, and for the difference between two months, it is closer to 6. "So a series bouncing between -6 and -11 is basically flat as far as I can tell. The one reading that looks like more than volatility is January, right after the Minneapolis shootings, but even that had basically reverted by February.
My sense is that the issue is much less salient now than it was just a couple of months ago." Julia Gelatt, an associate director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, told Newsweek: "To some extent, these changes in the net favorability rating might just be reflecting normal month-to-month polling variation. This poll says the margin of error for the full sample is +/- 2 percentage points, so a change from -9 to -11 or -8 to -6 might not be meaningful." "But it seems likely that the especially negative views of ICE in January 2026 were generated by the heavy-handed enforcement operations in Minneapolis and other cities, and particularly the deaths of Renée Good and Alex Pretti." On January 7, an ICE agent fatally shot Good in Minneapolis.
Later that month, in the same city, a Border Patrol agent shot and killed Pretti. Even with its August improvement, ICE remained one of the few institutions in the survey with a net-negative favorability rating. The agency's -8 rating trailed the Department of Homeland Security (+13), the Department of Justice (+12), the FBI (+23) and local police (+36).
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