Elisha Wiesel Discovers Public Opinion, Is Not a Fan
The Hill presents: How to Be Wrong With Complete Confidence
Two posts today. This is it I promise.
Elisha Wiesel wrote an opinion piece claiming Trump’s immigration enforcement is a mandate in action. His reasoning is simple. Trump won the election on immigration, so this must be what voters wanted. Wiesel even argues that the strategy is not working, suggesting it needs to be dialed back. He is wrong on both counts.
The strategy is working. The numbers prove it. The problem is that working looks a lot like fascism.
Let me show you what “working” actually means. The Department of Homeland Security reports that nearly 3 million people have left the country since Trump took office, including 2.2 million self-deportations and more than 675,000 formal deportations (Department of Homeland Security, 2026). Border encounters dropped from over 5,000 per day under Biden to just 251 per day under Trump (Department of Homeland Security, 2026). ICE detainee numbers surged 65 percent in 2025 to an all-time high (Statista, 2026).
That is not failure. That is efficiency. And efficiency in a system designed to terrorize people into leaving is exactly what authoritarian enforcement looks like.
The polling confirms what we are seeing. A January 2026 Reuters/Ipsos poll found that only 39 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of immigration, with 53 percent disapproving (Lange, 2026). Fox News found that 59 percent of voters now see ICE as too aggressive (Blanton, 2026). But here is what the pollsters are missing. The reason these numbers are so bad is not because the strategy is failing. The reason is because the strategy is succeeding, and Americans are watching it happen in real time.
ICE is not broken. ICE is doing exactly what it was designed to do, which is to create enough fear and chaos that people decide America is no longer a place where they can build a life. That is the policy. That is the strategy. And by every metric that measures fear and flight, it is working beautifully.
I do not like fascism. I do not like what ICE has become. The agency has transformed from an immigration enforcement body into a spectacle of state power designed to make people afraid. Videos of armed agents in tactical gear storming homes, detaining people in front of their children, and shooting citizens in the street are not bugs in the system. They are features. They are the point.
Trump voters are getting exactly what they voted for. The enforcement is aggressive. The deportations are massive. The border is more secure. The numbers prove it. But watching your neighbors get dragged away, watching citizens get shot, watching communities live in fear of the next raid? That is not what people thought they were voting for.
The focus group data tells the real story. Navigator Research interviewed Trump voters in battleground states who now regret their choice (Navigator Research, 2026). One Hispanic woman from Georgia who voted for Trump said she did not think he would go this route because she did not think it was personally good for him (Navigator Research, 2026). A Hispanic man from North Carolina called Trump a great con man (Navigator Research, 2026). These are not people who wanted fascism. These are people who wanted a political stance and got a policy reality.
The difference matters. Wiesel argues that the strategy is not working and needs adjustment. That framing lets everyone off the hook. It pretends that the problem is execution when the problem is the whole enterprise. The enforcement is effective. The terror is intentional. The goal was always to make America hostile enough that immigrants leave, and it is working exactly as designed.
That is the critique Wiesel refuses to make. He wants to believe that with better tactics, the policy would be acceptable. But the policy itself is the problem. The aggression is not a side effect. It is the main attraction. And the numbers showing three million people leaving are not failures. They are successes, which is exactly what should disturb us.
If you want to see an argument slowly decompose in real time, read the full piece here: https://thehill.com/opinion/immigration/5712389-immigration-control-wiesel-perspective/
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Works Cited
Blanton, D. (2026, January 28). Fox News poll: 59% of voters say ICE is too aggressive, up 10 points since July. *Fox News*. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-59-voters-say-ice-too-aggressive-up-10-points-since-july
Department of Homeland Security. (2026, January 20). DHS sets the stage for another historic, record-breaking year under President Trump. *Homeland Security*. https://www.dhs.gov/news/2026/01/20/dhs-sets-stage-another-historic-record-breaking-year-under-president-trump
Lange, J. (2026, January 26). Trump’s immigration approval drops to record low, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds. *Reuters*. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-immigration-approval-drops-record-low-reutersipsos-poll-finds-2026-01-26/
Navigator Research. (2026, January 21). Focus group report: Trump regrets... they’ve had a few. *Navigator Research*. https://navigatorresearch.org/focus-group-report-trump-regrets-theyve-had-a-few/
Statista. (2026, January 19). Chart: Number of ICE detainees surged 65% in 2025. *Statista*. https://www.statista.com/chart/35665/number-of-ice-detainees/