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  • California Republicans are divided on Trump’s immigration enforcement policies, poll finds

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    Republicans in California have diverging opinions on President Trump’s immigration enforcement policies, according to a study published by the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute on Monday.

    The Trump administration has deployed a sweeping crackdown on immigration, launching ICE raids across the country and removing legal barriers in order to make deportations faster. The study found that while Democrats were largely consistent in their opposition to these immigration policies, Republican sentiment varied more, especially by age, gender and ethnicity.

    “At least some subset of Republicans are seeing that these immigration strategies are a step too far,” said G. Cristina Mora, a sociology professor and co-director of the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, which administered the poll. The polling data were collected from nearly 5,000 registered voters in mid-August. Just over 1,000 of those surveyed were registered Republicans.

    Latino Republicans, with whom Trump made historic gains during the 2024 elections, showed the highest levels of disagreement with the party’s aggressive stance on immigration. Young people from 18 to 29 and moderate women in the Republican Party also more significantly diverged from Trump’s policies.

    The majority of Republican respondents expressed approval of Trump’s immigration strategy overall. However, the study found respondents diverged more from Trump’s policies that ignore established legal processes, including due process, birthright citizenship and identification of federal agents.

    “On these legalistic issues, this is where you see some of the bigger breaks,” Mora said.

    Of those surveyed, 28% disapproved of the end of birthright citizenship, which Trump is pushing for, and 45% agreed that ICE agents should show clear identification. Four in 10 Republican respondents also support due process for detained immigrants.

    Young people, who make up about 15% of the party in California, were on average also more likely to break from Trump’s policies than older Republicans.

    The analysis also found that education level and region had almost no impact on respondents’ beliefs on immigration.

    Latinos and women were more likely to disagree with Trump on humanitarian issues than their demographic counterparts.

    Nearly 60% of moderate Republican women disagree with deporting longtime undocumented immigrants, compared with 47% of moderate men. 45% of women believe ICE raids unfairly target Latino communities.

    The political party was most split across racial lines when it came to immigration enforcement being expanded into hospitals and schools. Forty-four percent of Latinos disagreed with the practice, compared with 26% of white respondents, while 46% of Latino respondents disagreed with deporting immigrants who have resided in the country for a long time, compared with just 30% of their white counterparts.

    Trump had gained a significant Latino vote that helped him win reelection last year. Democratic candidates, however, made gains with Latino voters in elections earlier this month, indicating a possible shift away from the GOP.

    The data could indicate Latino Republicans “are somewhat disillusioned” by the Trump administration’s handling of immigration, Mora said. “Latinos aren’t just disagreeing on the issues that we think are about process and American legal fairness. They’re also disagreeing on just the idea that this is cruel.”

    Mora said the deluge of tense and sometimes violent encounters posted online could have an impact on Republican opinion surrounding immigration. A plainclothes agent pointed his gun at a female driver in Santa Ana last week, and two shootings involving ICE agents took place in Southern California late last month.

    “You now have several months of Latinos being able to log on to their social media and see every kind of video of Latinos being targeted with or without papers,” Mora said. “I have to believe that that is doing something to everybody, not just Latino Republicans or Latino Democrats.”

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    Itzel Luna

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  • Most California voters disapprove of Trump’s immigration enforcement policies, poll shows

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    Most California voters strongly disapprove of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies and believe that raids in the state have unfairly targeted Latinos, according to a new poll.

    The findings, released Sunday, reflected striking emotional reactions to immigration enforcement. When voters were asked to describe their feelings about news reports or videos of immigration raids, 64% chose rage or sadness “because what is happening is unfair.”

    Among Democrats, 91% felt enraged or sad. Conversely, 65% of Republicans felt hopeful, “like justice is finally being served.”

    Such divisions were consistent across 11 questions about the administration’s overall immigration strategy and specific aspects of the way enforcement is playing out in the state, with divisions along partisan lines. The UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll was conducted for the Los Angeles Times.

    Democrats almost unanimously oppose President Trump’s tactics on immigration, the poll showed. Most Republicans support the president, though they are not as united as Democrats in their approval.

    “It was essential to show the strength of feelings because Democrats are strongly on the negative side of each of these policies,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the Berkeley IGS Poll. “That struck me. I don’t usually see that kind of extreme fervor on a poll response.”

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    The poll found that 69% of respondents disapprove of the way immigration enforcement is being carried out in the state.

    Among Democrats, 95% disapprove, as well as 72% of voters with no party preference or others not affiliated with the two major parties, whereas 79% of Republicans approve.

    The poll was completed online in English and Spanish from Aug. 11-17 by 4,950 registered voters in California.

    A question that showed the least unified support among Republican voters asked respondents whether they agree or disagree that federal agents should be required to show clear identification when carrying out their work. The question comes as immigration agents have carried out raids using face coverings, unmarked cars and while wearing casual clothing.

    Some 50% of Republicans agreed that agents should have to identify themselves, while 92% of Democrats agreed.

    G. Cristina Mora, IGS co-director and a sociology professor at UC Berkeley who studies race and immigration, helped develop the poll questions. She said the poll shows that Republican voters are much more nuanced than Democrats. They also split on questions about due process, birthright citizenship and immigration enforcement in sensitive locations.

    “Republicans are much more fractured in their thinking about immigration across the state,” Mora said.

    Mora said she developed the question about agent identification in response to the recent bill led by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) that would require immigration officers to display their agency and name or badge number during public-facing enforcement actions, similar to police and other local law enforcement.

    Padilla also spearheaded a letter last month to Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons seeking information about the agency’s policies regarding the identification of agents while on duty. ICE has justified the tactics by stating that agents are at risk of doxxing and have faced increased assault on the job.

    “The public has a right to know which officials are exercising police power, and anonymous enforcement undermines both constitutional norms and democratic oversight,” Padilla and 13 other Democrats wrote in the letter.

    Another poll question that garnered mixed support of Republicans asked respondents to agree or disagree with the statement, “ICE agents should expand immigration enforcement into schools, hospitals, parks and other public locations.”

    Among Republicans, 53% agreed with that statement, though fewer than 1 in 3 agree strongly. Meanwhile, 94% of Democrats disagreed.

    Shortly after Trump took office, his administration rescinded a 2011 memo that restricted immigration agents from making arrests in sensitive locations, such as churches, schools and hospitals. Since then, agents have been filmed entering locations that were previously considered off limits, putting immigrant communities on edge.

    Schools in Los Angeles reopened this month with “safe zones” in heavily Latino neighborhoods and changed bus routes with less exposure to immigration agents. An 18-year-old high school senior, Benjamin Marcelo Guerrero-Cruz, was walking his family’s dog in Van Nuys when he was taken into federal immigration custody.

    Mora said the varied responses illustrate how California Republicans view the Trump administration’s immigration tactics with “degrees of acceptability.” They might feel strongly that immigrants with violent criminal histories should be deported, she said, but the takeover of MacArthur Park, when a convoy of immigration agents in armored vehicles descended there in a show of force, or the enforcement actions outside of public schools “might have been a step too far.”

    Mike Madrid, a GOP political consultant who wrote a book about how Latinos have transformed democracy, said the split among Republicans is consistent with national polling. The trend is problematic for Trump, he said, because it means he is losing big swaths of his base.

    “This is becoming viewed as overreach more than it is immigration control,” he said. “The idea sets a frame for it, but the actual implementation is widely unpopular.”

    Republicans were largely united in response to other questions. Asked about the Trump administration’s proposal to do away with birthright citizenship — which confers citizenship to all children born in the U.S. regardless of their parent’s legal status — 67% of GOP respondents approved, and most of them strongly approved. By contrast, 92% of Democrats disapproved, and as did seven in 10 respondents overall.

    Mora said she was surprised by the fact that Latinos didn’t stand out as substantially more opposed to Trump’s actions than voters of other racial and ethnic groups. For example, 69% of Latino voters said ICE raids have unfairly targeted Latinos, just five percentage points higher than the 64% of white non-Latino voters who agreed.

    “You would imagine Latinos would be through the roof here, but they’re not,” Mora said. She said this reminded her of research around the tendency for Latinos to individualize their experiences instead of seeing them as racially unjust.

    Broadly, 72% of Latinos disagree with the way the Trump administration is enforcing immigration laws in California, while 25% approve and 3% have no strong opinion.

    Among Latino voter subgroups, older men and third-generation (or beyond) women are the more likely to support the way immigration enforcement is being handled in California, with 38% of Latino men over age 40 in agreement compared to 11% of Latinas ages 18-39, although among both groups majorities disapprove.

    Madrid said that’s consistent with national polling showing a decrease in support for Republicans among Latinos after record gains in the last presidential election. The question, he said, is whether Trump’s approval ratings among Latinos could regress substantially enough to flip control of Congress in the midterms.

    “We’re not there yet,” he said.

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    Andrea Castillo

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  • No shots for Spot? Study finds owners’ vaccine hesitancy can extend to pet dogs

    No shots for Spot? Study finds owners’ vaccine hesitancy can extend to pet dogs

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    Individuals who are skeptical of vaccines for themselves are also more like to question the need or efficacy of getting shots for their four-legged companions, according to a recent study.

    In the study, published in the medical journal Vaccine, researchers asked 2,200 Americans their thoughts on vaccines and whether they were dog owners. If they were, respondents were then asked whether they would vaccinate their dogs for rabies.

    Approximately half of the pet owners surveyed expressed some degree of vaccine hesitancy — with 53% saying they believed vaccines administered to dogs were unsafe, ineffective or unnecessary, the study found.

    That group was 6% more likely to have dogs that were not vaccinated for rabies, and 27% more likely to oppose rabies vaccine mandates when compared with survey respondents who did not express vaccine hesitancy, according to predicted probabilities outlined in the study.

    Matt Motta, an assistant professor at the Boston University School of Public Health and one of the study’s co-authors, said he was not surprised to see some respondents express reluctance regarding canine vaccines, but was intrigued by the raw data.

    “I think we were pretty shocked at just how pervasive it is, and I think what I found even more shocking is how detrimental its health consequences might be,” Motta said.

    Rabies, though relatively rare, is almost always fatal in animals and humans alike, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, due to vaccines, it’s also highly preventable: Only a few human cases are recorded each year in the United States.

    “The rabies shot is the most important canine vaccination for protecting human health, and yet growing numbers of pet owners are skeptical of it,” the authors of the study wrote for Harvard Public Health.

    Most infections in humans are caused by domestic dog bites.

    California law requires all dogs over 4 months old to be vaccinated for rabies, and similar rules exist throughout most of the U.S.

    Dr. Jeanne Noble, an emergency medicine doctor and COVID-19 response director for UC San Francisco, attributed the recent uptick in vaccine hesitancy in part to the mandates imposed during the pandemic.

    “When public health officials used mandates to increase uptake of COVID vaccines, rather than sticking to broad education campaigns highlighting the tremendous benefits of the vaccine, while also acknowledging the small but measurable risks, we lost the trust of vaccine hesitant communities,” she wrote in an email. “These are folks that previously were cautiously abiding by vaccination recommendations for their children, and their pets, but are now opting out.”

    To build back that trust, Noble suggested meeting people where they are and having honest and complete discussions — answering their questions and concerns without minimizing their fears.

    The authors of the canine vaccine hesitancy study agree, and recommended paying special attention to pet owners.

    “Public health campaigns tackling vaccine hesitancy would do well to consider dog owners in their messaging, and consider drops in pet vaccination, especially for rabies, an important bellwether for gauging public trust in vaccines,” they wrote in their Harvard Public Health post.

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    Jeremy Childs

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