Why Has Obama’s Approval Rating Among Latinos Fallen 20 Points Since Election Night?

Why Has Obama’s Approval Rating Among Latinos Fallen 20 Points Since Election Night?

Why Has Obama’s Approval Rating Among Latinos Fallen 20 Points Since Election Night?

His deportation policy isn’t just a moral failure—it’s bad politics, too.

Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky
Pocket
Email

In an effort to win Republican support for reforming a cruel and dysfunctional immigration system, President Obama has adopted enforcement policies that have produced almost 2 million deportations in five years, including a record 410,000 in fiscal year 2012. Between 2010 and 2012, 200,000 parents of US-born children were deported. As a result, approximately 5,000 children of deportees are in foster care today. If the trend continues, that number is expected to reach 15,000 by January 2017.

Obama’s policy is a moral failure, but it has also hurt him politically. Despite the draconian measures, Republicans still accuse him of being too lenient, while the policy has angered some of his staunchest supporters. In response, in 2011 the president announced that deportations would be limited to serious criminals, and in 2012 he announced a temporary halt in deportations of young people who qualify under DREAM Act guidelines with respect to education or military service. Even so, a New York Times study released this April of 3.2 million deportations over ten years shows that only 20 percent of deportees had committed serious crimes; about two-thirds had committed only minor infractions like traffic violations.

Obama has said he lacks the legal authority to discontinue his strict enforcement policy, but experts disagree. As the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist observed, an “agency’s decision not to prosecute or enforce [a law] is a decision generally committed to an agency’s absolute discretion.” Moreover, the president’s own actions—including not only the DREAM deferral but also a measure adopted last year that de facto legalizes military families—are exercises in such discretion.

The White House has warned that slowing deportations could impede reform, because Republicans will not trust the president to enforce future legislation. But executive measures now could actually spur reform; they would not only rally electoral support for the president and Democrats in immigrant communities, but also drive a wedge between anti-immigrant GOP hard-liners and mainstream Republicans who support reform because they know they can’t continue to alienate the rapidly growing Hispanic and Asian populations (the Hispanic share of the electorate alone is expected to double by 2030).

Democrats certainly can’t take the support of immigrant communities for granted. A recent poll found that if deportations continue at the current pace, 34 percent of Hispanics and 29 percent of Asian-Americans will blame Obama and the Democrats. Since the 2012 election, the president’s approval rating among Latinos has fallen from 73 to 54 percent.

Obama may finally be getting the message. After meeting with Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson in April, leaders of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus expressed renewed hope for executive action. Representative Luis Gutiérrez vows that if there’s no legislative action by July and Obama doesn’t take action himself, activists will turn up the street heat. At the very least, there must be a substantial reduction in deportations and the number of families torn apart. Other measures include broadening the deportation deferrals from DREAMers to other categories of people, such as the undocumented parents of children who have citizenship, as well as granting temporary legal status and expanded access to work permits.

Good-faith enforcement of the serious-crimes limitation alone could reduce deportations by 80 percent. Nothing in the law bars such an approach, and smart politics and basic compassion compel it.

Take Action: Tell President Obama: Deportations Are Tearing Families Apart. We Need You to Act

Hold the powerful to account by supporting The Nation

The chaos and cruelty of the Trump administration reaches new lows each week.

Trump’s catastrophic “Liberation Day” has wreaked havoc on the world economy and set up yet another constitutional crisis at home. Plainclothes officers continue to abduct university students off the streets. So-called “enemy aliens” are flown abroad to a mega prison against the orders of the courts. And Signalgate promises to be the first of many incompetence scandals that expose the brutal violence at the core of the American empire.

At a time when elite universities, powerful law firms, and influential media outlets are capitulating to Trump’s intimidation, The Nation is more determined than ever before to hold the powerful to account.

In just the last month, we’ve published reporting on how Trump outsources his mass deportation agenda to other countries, exposed the administration’s appeal to obscure laws to carry out its repressive agenda, and amplified the voices of brave student activists targeted by universities.

We also continue to tell the stories of those who fight back against Trump and Musk, whether on the streets in growing protest movements, in town halls across the country, or in critical state elections—like Wisconsin’s recent state Supreme Court race—that provide a model for resisting Trumpism and prove that Musk can’t buy our democracy.

This is the journalism that matters in 2025. But we can’t do this without you. As a reader-supported publication, we rely on the support of generous donors. Please, help make our essential independent journalism possible with a donation today.

In solidarity,

The Editors

The Nation

Ad Policy
x