TheTrump administration is backing down in Minneapolis and Minnesota, after White House border czar — and one of the few remaining public-facing grown-ups in Trump’s arsenal — announced that “Operation Metro Surge is ending.” While some levels of immigration enforcement will remain, and despite Tom Homan’s claim of supposed enforcement victories, there’s only one way to describe this decision: a massive “L” for the Trump administration.
In the short term, this decision is somewhat understandable, given that polling has indicated a collapse in public support when it comes to Trump’s most concrete and consistent policy: immigration and border control. Now, almost half of Americans “strongly disapprove of how Trump has handled border security and immigration,” with these numbers being just 38% last summer and 34% last April. Of course, these sorts of poll numbers are going to set off alarm bells in the White House, with the reflex response being to simply run away from the problem, hoping that the poll numbers will slowly recover.
