How immigration is molding the US midterms: ‘Trump has gone too far’

Federal agents at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, on 30 May. Photograph: Julius Constantine Motal/The GuardianView image in fullscreenFederal agents at Delaney Hall in Newark, New Jersey, on 30 May. Photograph: Julius Constantine Motal/The GuardianHow immigration is molding the US midterms: ‘Trump has gone too far’From restaurants to farms to healthcare, the US president’s hardline policies have reshaped Americans’ daily lives

If there is one campaign promise that Donald Trump has kept, it is his pledge to deliver “mass deportations”.

Two years later, voters are living uneasily with the consequences.

Trump himself has called the midterm elections this November – which will decide which party controls each house of Congress – a referendum on his presidency. In many ways, they will also serve as a referendum of his hardline anti-immigration policies, and the multitudinous ways they have reshaped Americans’ daily lives.

In Florida, restaurant and hotel owners have said that ICE’s presence is frightening away both workers and customers, and Republican congresswoman María Elvira Salazar, who is running for re-election, aired a Spanish-language ad breaking with the president, saying his immigration crackdown had “betrayed” Hispanic voters in her district.

In Maine, the fatal ICE shooting of a 25-year-old asylum seeker has cast a pall over the campaign to re-elect Republican senator Susan Collins, who supported Trump’s plans to supercharge immigration enforcement.

Read moreIn Kansas, cattle ranchers said ICE operations were having “a massive chilling effect on the legal, documented, skilled workers that put beef on the table” and warned that meat prices would spike as a result. At the same time, Republican senator Roger Marshall – who had once vehemently backed Trump’s immigration agenda – started to grow uneasy in a tightening re-election race, and softened his hardline rhetoric.

View image in fullscreenUndocumented immigrants, shackled at the wrists and ankles, were searched before boarding a charter flight at Kansas City International Airport, run by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Department. The detainees were flown to Louisiana, Texas or Arizona, where they are returned to or flown to the detainees countries of origin. Photograph: Kansas City Star/TNSAnd in Texas, which has seen a slew of violent ICE arrests including a fatal shooting in July and a non-fatal shooting in September, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico appears to be gaining momentum against the state’s Trump-backed attorney general Ken Paxton, with a message that Trump’s ICE has gone too far.

Several national polls have shown voters’ growing distaste for the Trump administration’s militarized immigration enforcement operations. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on 21 September found that only 36% of voters approved of Trump’s handling of immigration. According to Pew research, half of Americans see the administration’s immigration tactics as too aggressive.

In Texas, a recent poll by the New York Times and Siena University found voters there evenly split on which Senate candidate they trusted more to handle immigration – a striking shift in a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic senator in almost 40 years.

And while Latino voters, who swung toward Trump in 2024, still rank the economy as a top issue, a strong majority are viscerally opposed to the president’s immigration agenda. An October NBC News/Telemundo poll of registered Latino voters found that two-thirds believe his enforcement policies have gone “too far”. The issue is deeply felt, with more than one in four saying they know someone who had been deported or detained by ICE since Trump’s second term began, and 17% saying that they or someone close to them had considered not voting in person this year because of concerns about ICE.

View image in fullscreenThe site of the Wilbur Rafael Garces Perez shooting by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the intersection of Anderson Square and Research Boulevard in Austin, Texas, on September 21, 2026. Photograph: Rafael Lopez/NurPhoto/ShutterstockAfter the killing of two US citizens during immigration raids in Minneapolis sparked massive public backlash, the Trump administration signalled it would take a softer approach, and the new homeland security secretary, Markwayne Mullin, said his goal would be to keep ICE out of the news headlines.

But immigration agents are still shooting people. And with enforcement operations across the US gaining momentum, and immigration arrests at a record high, voters are continuing to see a supercharged ICE at work.

“It does cause quite a disruption in the community,” Scott Fischer, the Republican chair in Ford county, Kansas, told Politico. “We don’t want our community disrupted.”

Perhaps even more pertinently, voters – and the politicians vying for their support – are coming to the realization that even if immigration itself doesn’t rank in surveys as a top issue, Trump’s immigration policies have affected every other issue that matters to them.

Read more“Even if this isn’t a top concern for voters casting their ballots, it is a part of a general perception that the president’s policies have gone too far, and that they’re affecting people who are not immigrants,” said Matthew Grossman, a political scientist and professor of public policy at Michigan State University.

Take, for instance, the cost of living – a consistently top-ranking issue for voters in midterm polls. Trump’s immigration raids, and his policies stripping legal work permits from thousands of workers, are causing disruptions not just in the cattle industry, but also across agriculture, food service, hospitality and construction.

“So many industry segments are reliant on immigrants, so it’s an issue across the economy,” said Matt Teagarden, CEO of the Kansas Livestock Association. Dairy producers and ranchers have long lobbied the government to create more legal pathways for the immigrant workers who staff their enterprises. But now, the US cattle herd has shrunk to its lowest numbers in 75 years – and ranchers are struggling to keep up with consumer demand, Teagarden said, adding: “But they are not able to expand without the workforce.”

View image in fullscreenA detainee acknowledges protesters outside of Delaney Hall Immigration Detention Center on June 05, 2026 in Newark, New Jersey. Photograph: Michael M Santiago/Getty ImagesMeanwhile, about two-thirds of farm workers are non-citizen immigrants. As the administration targets these workers, food producers could struggle to keep up operations, and prices are expected to increase steeply, according to a study by the thinktank Fwd.us.

Many of the staff at chef Carlos Raba’s restaurant Clavel in Baltimore are Salvadorians who have lived and worked in the US for years while holding temporary protected status (TPS). Trump has already revoked TPS for thousands of Haitians and Syrians, and if the administration also revokes TPS protections for Salvadorians – as it is imminently expected to do – Raba could lose 80% of his staff, he said at a congressional hearing. “We could not operate the way that we operate today if they are all gone,” he said.

“I think about the cooks, dishwashers, farmers, bakers, entrepreneurs that I work with,” he said. “They are my co-workers, my friends and my community.”

The owner of a burger restaurant not far from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf course said the president’s policies and immigration raids had affected not only workers but also customers, who are scared to come out and eat due to the constant presence of ICE officers.”Our sales have dropped 70%. We spend hours empty,” said Katia Rios of Pipo Burgers.

The same applies for healthcare, a top issue especially for rural voters, according to a KFF-AP poll. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, a non-profit organization representing physicians in North America, nearly one in four doctors in the US was trained abroad – and these immigrant physicians have been key to addressing medical staff shortages especially in rural areas, where few American doctors want to move.

Senior living and eldercare facilities – which are also heavily staffed with immigrant caregivers – have also been left in the lurch. Of the 330,000 Haitian TPS holders who suddenly lost their legal status this summer, about 13,000 work daily as nursing assistants, caring for 65,000 patients, according to the Boston Globe.

Even voters who aren’t cattle ranchers or restaurateurs, who might not clearly see the impacts of immigration policies on their economic reality, are nonetheless feeling the effects, said Grossman, of Michigan State University.

“Regardless of whether people connect the dots between the president’s policies and outcomes, if those policies have real effects, then that’s another channel by which people tend to move against the party in power,” he said.