Midterm Voters Didn't Reject ICE. The Data Says Otherwise.

The establishment press has declared the midterms a repudiation of immigration enforcement — and they're either lying or not reading their own polls.

AM New York ran an op-ed insisting Americans "rejected how this administration has carried out its agenda" on immigration, citing exit polls showing 57% of voters said Trump's enforcement went too far. The Portland Press Herald followed suit, framing the Democratic sweep as a mandate to rein in a "rogue agency." Here's what both outlets buried: immigration wasn't even close to the top issue. In Maine, it ranked third — trailing inflation and the economy, according to a September NYT/Siena poll the Press Herald itself reported. Voters didn't reject border enforcement. They rejected a political class that spent years promising enforcement and delivered spectacle instead.

The spin is obvious. AM New York framed the election as a "referendum on the Trump Administration and its policies," then leaped to the conclusion that voters want Democrats to "bring order and decency back" to immigration. That's editorial laundering, not analysis. The Press Herald gave ample oxygen to politicians like Sen.-elect Troy Jackson, who called ICE a "rogue agency" and campaigned on abolishing it entirely. Jackson said during an October debate: "It's time that ICE is disbanded and we go back to putting that money into Customs and Border Patrol." But even the Press Herald had to acknowledge that Marcela Escobari, a Brookings senior fellow and former NSC immigration adviser, called full abolition unlikely — there simply isn't the political appetite.

And that's the tell. If the American electorate truly rejected immigration enforcement, abolition would have momentum. It doesn't. Even the Democrats' own strategists know it. What voters actually rejected was the GOP consultant class that talked border security on cable news and then presided over the same $70 billion enforcement apparatus that can't seem to deliver results. That's the bipartisan failure both outlets refuse to name: Republicans campaigned on enforcement, Democrats campaigned on reform, and Congress — under both parties — passed $70 billion in immigration enforcement funding while the border remained a mess.

Ruben Torres, policy director at the Maine Immigrants' Rights Coalition, was more honest than either outlet's editorial board: "Just because there's this majority in Congress doesn't mean raids are going to stop. It doesn't mean arrests are going to stop." He's right. The structural reality — ICE housed under the executive branch, enforcement directed by the president — doesn't change because Nancy Pelosi or Mike Johnson holds the gavel.

The real question neither outlet asked: if voters care most about inflation and the economy, why is the press spinning this as an immigration mandate? Because the lobbying class and the consultant class need that narrative to protect their own relevance. The base wants enforcement. The politicians promised enforcement. The consultants failed to deliver. So now the press rewrites the verdict to protect the consultants and blame the voters. Standard procedure.

The open question is whether either party will figure that out before 2028 — or whether they'll keep listening to the same people who just cost them an election.