Longtime GOP strategist Karl Rove warned that Donald Trump risks giving up Congressional seats in traditionally red Texas over his immigration crackdown.
After making huge gains with Latino voters in 2024, the former senior advisor to George W Bush told Fox News the Republican Party may lose many of those same voters over ICE raids.
'This is a variable group whose movement into the Republican column in 2024 helped elect Donald Trump to a second term and helped Republicans hold the Senate and the House,' Rove said.
Pew Research said around 50 percent of Latinos voted for Trump in 2024, but recent polling had 70 percent disapproving of the president's performance in his first year back in office.
'It’s a problem and we’re going to see it here in Texas. You can just see the support for Republicans in Texas diminishing, despite the fact that initially there was enormous support for the action in securing the border,' he added.
Rove sees the problem as split districts, where Trump won but a Democrat barely hung on to a Congressional seat in 2024.
He cites districts like the 34th, which Trump won by a narrow margin, as well as the 28th, where centrist Democrat Henry Cuellar refused to switch parties after Trump gave him a pardon on money laundering charges.
'If his support is softening among Hispanics, that makes it unlikely that we’re going to be able to knock off an incumbent Democrat.'
Longtime GOP strategist Karl Rove warned that Donald Trump risks giving up Texas over his immigration crackdown
Pew Research said around 50 percent of Latinos voted for Trump in 2024, but recent polling had 70 percent disapproving of the president's performance in his first year back in office
Every Congressional seat is up for election in 2026 in The Lone Star State, as is one of its Senate seats.
In November, a DailyMail/JL Partners poll had the president's immigration policies as one of the top three reasons voters are souring on him.
These polls were taken long before the ICE-involved fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minnesota and the subsequent liberal protests of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
However, even back then, Trump's net approval on ICE operations dropped four points - suggesting even tough immigration enforcement has its limits with voters.
The White House pushed back on the outcome, telling the Daily Mail that in less than a year Trump has 'already delivered on many of the promises he was elected to enact, but there will always be more to accomplish.'
'He's secured the border; tackled Biden's inflation crisis; lowered drug prices; ended taxes on tips, overtime, and social security; cooled inflation; deported criminal illegal aliens; implemented important reforms putting American workers first; and more,' White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement on the poll's results.
A progressive Democratic operative told a different story, claiming that Trump 'failed' to 'fix' the things he said he would – pointing to his failed 'tariff circus' being the root of the economic bust, with worst yet to come.
'Many have asked when would people see it's 'Don the Con' and the answer is now and we haven't hit rock bottom,' Bradley Beychok with American Bridge told the Daily Mail.
Could Trump’s hardline ICE crackdown cost him support in America’s biggest Republican state?
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In November, a DailyMail/JL Partners poll had the president's immigration policies as one of the top three reasons voters are souring on him. Perhaps most surprising: Trump's net approval on ICE operations dropped four points
Federal law enforcement officers detain a demonstrator during a protest in Minnesota
Hispanic and young voters represent the largest demographic who are abandoning their support for Trump, with just 36 percent among each demographic.
'We're watching the immigrant community be policed and surveilled inhumanely and without regard,' immigration attorney Benjamin Peña said on the declining approval amid nationwide ICE operations. 'I think that if you're witnessing what's happening, the human element plays a key role.'
Those who approve of the president point to Trump's record on border security and improving crime and safety as the top reason they maintain a positive view of the administration.
Those who approve of the president point to Trump's record on border security and improving crime and safety as the top reason they maintain a positive view of the administration.
This was the cornerstone of his 2016 'build the wall' campaign and reemerged as a top issue in 2024 after record-breaking illegal immigration during former President Joe Biden's single term and a spike in violent crime in the US.
With an overall margin of 10 percent among all 1,246 respondents, voters are becoming increasingly disenfranchised by Trump's approach to politics.
Specifically, 41 percent of those who disapprove of the president say the way Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been tasked with enforcing Trump's immigration agenda is why they don't support the current administration.
