In Focus delivers deeper coverage of the political, cultural, and ideological issues shaping America. Published daily by senior writers and experts, these in-depth pieces go beyond the headlines to give readers the full picture. You can find our full list of In Focus pieces here.
A full year into President Donald Trump’s second term, Democrats have bet that the so-called “vibe shift” that carried the president back into the White House and his policies back into the mainstream of public opinion is now over. The prevailing debate between the progressives within Congress and the Bolsheviks trying to unseat them is whether to defund Immigration and Customs Enforcement or to abolish it entirely, with the formerly self-described “centrist” Seth Moulton (D-MA) threatening another government shutdown over ICE’s funding. As one of her first acts as Virginia’s new governor, Abigail Spanberger, who won by campaigning as a moderate Democrat, reversed her Republican predecessor’s executive order that required state and local law enforcement to collaborate with federal immigration enforcement.
As a matter of political expediency, restoring sanctuary policies that defy federally binding immigration law is radical and, statistically speaking, unpopular. But if you are an immigration squish — the sort of median American voter who disliked the Biden administration-era influx of illegal immigrant criminals but is weary of forcibly deporting the migrants who have never committed any other crime than entering or remaining in the country illegally — sanctuary policies are worse than unlawful and dangerous for American citizens; they sacrifice the residency of otherwise “noncriminal” illegal immigrants to protect the ones who threaten the safety of all of us.
Talk to any career staffer at the Department of Homeland Security, and they will say that the sort of sweeping immigration raids witnessed at workplaces and on the streets of sanctuary cities and states could be ended if blue jurisdictions make one concession: let DHS into the jails.
In the reddest states of the union, nearly all the illegal immigrants ICE arrests are not nonviolent Dreamers or abuelas caught up in a viral raid outside a home depot, but instead criminals who have been incarcerated for crimes unrelated to their immigration status. More than 4 in 5 ICE arrests in Iowa (2024 presidential margin: Trump +13), South Dakota (Trump +29), Montana (Trump +20), Mississippi (Trump +23), Wyoming (Trump +46), and South Carolina (Trump +18) occurred in jails, prisons, or other lock-ups. These arrests occur because in non-sanctuary jurisdictions, local law enforcement complies with immigration detainers, requests from ICE for local law enforcement officers to inform them and hold an illegal immigrant for 48 hours if they arrest a migrant for an unrelated offense that ICE has probable cause to believe qualifies for deportation.
ICE has an extreme preference for detaining illegal immigrants in prisons and jails for the obvious reason that, given these individuals have already been booked and deprived of any weapons they may have had on their person, ICE can take custody of them without risking violence to either LEOs or the public.
The median American voter should prefer such arrests because they mean ICE is prioritizing the removal of illegal immigrants who have committed violent and non-immigration crimes instead of otherwise noncriminal migrants.
By contrast, by refusing to comply with ICE’s immigration detainers, sanctuary jurisdictions protect these criminal illegal immigrants at the expense of folks who have only committed the crime of nonviolently entering or remaining in the country. “At-large” arrests, or the arrests that occur at worksites, private property, or in the broader community and often as a result of the raids that stoke such outrage online, comprise the overwhelming majority of ICE arrests in sanctuary states because ICE has no other way to track down the actual dangerous and violent criminal illegal immigrants who remain in the country. More than 1 in 10 ICE arrests are at-large in Massachusetts (2024 presidential margin: former Vice President Kamala Harris +25), Oregon (Harris +14), and Connecticut (Harris +15), and more than 4 in 5 are at-large in New York (Harris +13), Vermont (Harris +32), and Illinois (Harris +11).
All in all, sanctuary policies protect criminal illegal immigrants at the expense of otherwise non-illegal immigrants. While the overall ICE arrest rate per capita is indeed higher in non-sanctuary states than in sanctuary states and jurisdictions, only one-third of illegal immigrants arrested by ICE in Texas are taken into custody solely due to an immigration offense, compared to nearly half of all those detained by ICE in California. In the Golden State, an otherwise noncriminal immigrant is now as likely to be arrested by ICE as a criminal migrant convicted of a non-immigration crime.
The Stephen Millers of the Make America Great Again coalition probably do not care. For a non-trivial faction of the right wing, deporting noncriminal abuelas who overstayed their visas a decade ago is as much a priority as deporting rapists, murderers, and drug dealers. But while we do not have comprehensive data breaking down how many of the more than 10 million illegal immigrants who entered the country during the Biden administration had committed additional crimes unrelated to immigration, ICE data from 2024 showed that among suspected illegal immigrants not in federal detention, nearly half a million were convicted of non-immigration crimes, and another quarter-million faced pending criminal charges. Of the former, 62,231 were convicted of assault, 15,811 of sexual assault, 13,099 of homicide, and 56,533 of drug charges.
For the non-trivial center of the country that decides our elections, deporting these violent illegal immigrants is a priority in a way that deporting abuela is not. According to December’s Harvard University-Harris poll, 54% of the country supports deporting “all immigrants who are here illegally,” including nearly half of all independents and a third of all Democrats, but support for reporting “immigrants who are here illegally and have committed crimes” unrelated to illegally immigrating is nearly unanimous, with 7 in 10 Democrats and 4 in 5 independents concurring with 9 in 10 Republicans.
This means about one-quarter of the country would prefer to let abuela quietly remain in the country, but deport illegal immigrants if they commit DUIs or burglaries. In other words, the most movable quarter of the electorate is getting the exact opposite of what they want from sanctuary policies that shield criminal illegal immigrants while putting noncriminal illegal immigrants at a severely escalated risk of deportation.
Although some indigo jurisdictions within Virginia maintained their sanctuary policies in defiance of former Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s order that local LEOs comply with federal immigration enforcement, nearly half of all illegal immigrants arrested by ICE in the first seven months of 2025 had either criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. Spanberger’s statewide sanctuary order will likely reverse the trend, making it increasingly likely that ICE arrests more noncriminal illegal aliens instead of those convicted or charged with crimes.
It is possible that such sanctuary policies are cynical ploys to intentionally goad the Trump administration into committing the politically dicey raids that inveigle noncriminal illegal immigrants as ICE tries to scour the masses for the violent criminals. It is also possible that progressives pushing sanctuary policies simply don’t care about ICE getting those tens of thousands of known rapists, murderers, and drug dealers.
But the median American does care, and as uncomfortable as they are with nonviolent abuelas being shipped off to the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo in El Salvador, if the median American is forced to choose between deporting what they perceive as too many illegal immigrants versus allowing too many to enter the country and remain, voters indicate they will overwhelmingly choose the former. Although voters polled by the Wall Street Journal slightly disapprove of Trump’s immigration performance by a net margin of minus 4 points, they still trust congressional Republicans over congressional Democrats to better handle immigration by a net margin of 11 points. When the issue is narrowed specifically to border security, the Republican margin of voter trust explodes to 28 points.
TIANA LOWE DOESCHER: HIGH-SKILLED IMMIGRANTS ARE NOT, IN FACT, STEALING OUR JOBS
So when liberals try to juice nationwide data that some substantial share of illegal immigrants arrested by ICE are otherwise noncriminal, that data is not in any way indicative of what the Trump administration or Republicans more broadly want at scale. Not to mention that three-quarters of illegal immigrants arrested by ICE in the first nine months of the second Trump administration had criminal convictions or pending criminal charges.
If Democrats earnestly want to protect otherwise noncriminal illegal immigrants from deportation, they could and would follow the model of Idaho and Alabama, which comply fully with the Trump administration and see 80% of their ICE arrests occur exclusively within jails and prisons as a result. Until then, voters should take the data seriously and literally, and understand that politicians pushing sanctuary policies either do not care about sacrificing the residency of noncriminal illegal immigrants or outright support the protection of the rapists and murderers still storming our streets.
