Last week, a federal circuit court upheld a Department of Homeland Security directive from January 2025 allowing for the “expedited removal” of any illegal immigrant apprehended anywhere in the United States who cannot prove two years of continuous residency. The ruling overturns a district court decision from last August favoring a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which struck down Homeland Security’s previous policy, based on a law passed by Congress in 1996, which limited deportations of nonresident illegals to those apprehended within just two weeks of arrival and less than 100 miles from a land border.

The circuit court ruling has now restored the Trump administration’s policy to full effect, pending reversal on appeal to either an en banc appellate review or, possibly, to the Supreme Court, whose conservative majority has generally ruled in the administration’s favor when it comes to immigration. Indeed, on the same day the circuit court issued its ruling, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the administration in a separate case, allowing immigration authorities to take punitive measures against noncitizen green card holders accused of crimes.

The general consensus in America is against illegal immigration—making it perhaps the most popular issue available to Republicans seeking to avoid midterm losses in November. A Harvard/Harris poll of registered voters conducted in the final days of May and released earlier this month revealed that immigration remains Trump’s leading issue, with 49 percent of respondents expressing approval of his immigration policies, compared to an overall job approval rating for the president of 43 percent. Trump scored significantly lower on such economic issues as inflation, with just 35 percent approving, and on tariffs and trade, which got an approval rating of 37 percent, while his score on crime was marginally lower than his performance on immigration, with an approval rating of 48 percent.

When Trump is removed from the polling data, however, the issue looks even better for Republicans. According to the same Harvard/Harris poll, a towering 80 percent of Americans now favor deporting illegal immigrants who commit other crimes while present in the country, a 5 percent increase from the same organization’s polling results on that question in April. While this month’s figure in favor includes 90 percent of Republicans, it also includes 71 percent of Democrats—an 8 percent increase over last month—and 79 percent of independents, whose votes often swing national elections, an increase of 6 percent.

On the simpler question of whether all illegal immigrants should be deported, including those who do not commit any other crimes while present in the country, the data is still jarringly in favor of administration policy. A 56 percent majority favor the proposition. That figure is up just 1 percent over the previous month, but among both Democrats and independents it jumped four points in the intervening weeks, from 33 percent to 37 percent and from 49 percent to 53 percent, respectively. Republicans still strongly favor universal deportation, at 77 percent, but that figure actually declined slightly, from 80 percent the previous month.

This remarkable consistency in public attitudes had persisted despite nearly a year and half of media sob stories about the fate of illegal immigrants, acerbic political attacks on immigration enforcement, damning exposés of conditions in U.S. and international detention facilities, and civic resistance to immigration enforcement in blue jurisdictions, where both elected political leaders and grassroots groups have—sometimes with questionable legality—opposed or frustrated the enforcement of immigration laws. The strong support continues following the removal of some three million illegals so far during Trump’s second term, a figure Homeland Security released to Fox News in May. The same report announced the definitive end of “catch and release,” a Democratic policy that allowed for illegal immigrants apprehended on American soil to be released into the general population, claiming that there had not been even one such case in the previous 12 months.

Immigration enforcement techniques have proved less popular, but a March NBC News poll reported by the New York Post showed that ICE, the chief government agency for detaining and deporting illegal immigrants, was still more popular than the Democratic Party, outperforming it by 38 percent to 30 percent among registered voters.

Republicans hoping to retain control of Congress in November have other causes for concern, but illegal immigration is, in at least some respects, the 80-20 issue they need.