The NPR Politics Podcast - ICE makes these swing voters anxious, but they don’t want to ‘abolish ICE’

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

NPR reporters observed focus groups of 14 swing voters from Arizona. We discuss how they feel about federal immigration enforcement tactics and what about the economy worries them.This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, political correspondent Ashley Lopez, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there. It is the NPR Politics Podcast for Tuesday, February 11th, 20206. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And today on the show, it's another edition of our swing voter series. We're checking in monthly with voters who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and switch to Donald Trump in 2024 to see how they're feeling about everything right now. We heard from swing voters in Pennsylvania last month. You can go find that show early. earlier in the feed, but today we're going to Arizona. Ashley, tell us a little bit more about the voters we're going to hear from today. Yeah, so just like last time we talked to 14 voters, seven in each focus group. This time, there was a pretty good mix politically.

Four people out of the 14 identified as Democrats, three as Republicans, and we got seven independents, which make up a big chunk of swing voters. So this was a really good mix of folks. Was there any broad takeaways, I guess, big picture before we drill down into specific issues. Sure. So not surprisingly because we're in Arizona or, you know, virtually in our case, in Arizona, a border state, immigration and ICE were very top of mind when Rich Tao from Engages, who moderated these focus groups asked, you know, at the top, give me a word, something top of mind. What is really concerning you right now? Almost unanimously, we heard immigration. We heard ICE.

And just to give people context, the last time we talked to swing voters, this. was right after the killing of Renee Maclin Good and the killing of Alex Pretty hadn't happened. So this is the first time we've heard from voters after both those shootings in Minneapolis. Mara, did you notice that there was a sort of difference in how the voters in Arizona talked about this issue compared to Pennsylvania? So what really struck me was how these voters talked about the chaos that ICE has called. One woman said, it's constant chaos in the world. I want this all to stop. And there was a broad view that securing the border was a good thing.

Not having undocumented immigrants with criminal records in the United States was a good thing. But having ICE go out without uniforms, attacking American citizens or protesters was not a good thing. And it makes them anxious. That was the big takeaway. The ICE is making voters anxious. A lot of chaos. Yeah. Yeah, and I will say compared to Pennsylvania, the amount of people, so it was nine out of 14 people said they are someone they knew had actually changed their life out of concern about possibly interacting with ICE.

And part of the understanding with these focus groups is that folks only provide their first name. So we're going to hear Carolyn, Esmerita, and Stephanie talk about how ICE is affecting their lives and the lives of people around them. I live in a 55, an older community, and they were trying to find, like, Asian people so that they could deport them. and establish you far because they're just their elderly people. If you're not here legally, you need to go back to where you came from and do it the right way, you know? But we should not be afraid to be walking the streets.

They're down the street from my house now. I was born in Nigeria, and I know people who have been arrested, and it was like, oh, you look like someone that was illegal. And so it's like you have to almost carry your passports just in case I look like someone who is, or illegally. It's so interesting. So this is like not an abstract issue or an academic issue on how people feel about immigration as a policy, but literally like most of these people have found that it

has impacted their day-to-day lives. Yeah. And so one of the folks that we heard from there, Esmerida, she's from El Mirage. She identifies as a Democrat. She says that she was born in the United States, but she's Hispanic. And she's very aware of the fact that she looks Hispanic. And so that is part of like the calculus she's making when she's deciding to go out in the street, especially since there's a detention center so close to her, like just physically so close to her. Yeah, I do think the nuance here is really interesting, Mara, because it sounds like from what I'm hearing, people are uncomfortable with the tactics a little bit in terms of how President Trump is going about his immigration enforcement. But the broad premise, the idea that he has increased

immigration enforcement, it seems like these are people who are generally supportive of that. Can you drill down, I guess, on exactly how people are thinking about this? Yeah, I think that this focus group mirrors national polling. A focus group is not a poll. It's a statistically insignificant sample. But we know that a majority of voters like the idea of securing the border. They don't like the idea of ICE going into neighborhoods and grabbing people who otherwise are law-abiding citizens, or maybe they're going through the asylum process.

What was really interesting to me is that Rich Tao, to what you could call Democratic responses to this. The first one was Abolish ICE. Nobody like that. I don't think the Democratic Party is adopting Abolish ICE as a position, but that is something that you've heard from some Democrats.

Here's what some of these voters had to say about abolishing ICE. We're going to hear from Ernie and Scott. They're both independent voters. They have a job to do. You can't have a country without borders, and someone needs to enforce that. But when he tested the list of reforms that Democrats

in Congress are trying to push right now, like getting a warrant before you go into someone's house, verifying citizenship before you arrest someone, doing an investigation if someone is shot or killed, wearing body cameras. All of those reforms, those restraints on ice were very, very popular. And what I thought was interesting, what that tells me is that we are now in February. If Donald Trump wants to, he can correct this. He has a lot of time before the mid-term. terms to change the way that ICE is going about deporting people. That's something that I think voters are open-minded to. Do you guys get the sense of whether this is going to be, or how immigration enforcement is going to rank? I know we're still nine months away from the midterms. I get it.

But is this a top issue? Is this a secondary issue in terms of on these voters' minds and how they're thinking about who they're going to vote for? Where does this rank? I think it's a top issue right now. If it goes away, just like the border is now secure, if ICE disappears, we know that the National Guard is being removed from cities. We know he's backed off from tariffs. In other words, if he changes his approach, I think this will not become top of mind in November. Yeah, I think Mara makes an important point here, which is the how is the thing that really bothers people here. A lot of these voters said that they didn't approve abolishing ICE, mostly because they want to see immigration enforcement in the country. They don't want that to go away.

One part of the conversation that really stood out to me was this one individual, Cannell, he lives in Phoenix. He's an independent voter. He said that, you know, and like a lot of voters, he is worried about the border. He thinks immigration is a problem. Just some context. You know, we get a sense of how these people consume news in a lot of ways. There's a lot of Joe Rogan podcast listeners, a lot of Fox News Watchers. Immigration are things that are talked about a lot in the media that a lot of these voters consume.

But what Connell said is. is, you know, because of social media, because ICE enforcement has gone so far, we're just seeing it a lot. And he thinks that's where the rub is. I think maybe as just as Americans in general, we're not accustomed to seeing these types of activities go on on the streets, right? These things happen in the background. Yeah, they got rid of the people that shouldn't be here. And that's what we're accustomed to seeing. So when we see this play out on our streets every day in our neighborhoods, it's awe. It's shocking. It's like, where the hell do we live? It's like this, some third world country. And maybe that's the problem that people are having with the demonstration of what we're

seeing. I think by the votes that we just had, everyone's aligned to we need an immigration and custom control organization. Absolutely. But I frankly, maybe this is just first world problems. I just don't want to see it. Which is very telling. All they're saying is, look, we do not have problems with the policies themselves. It is the fact that it has gotten. to control that is in our face all the time. And again, this is something that Trump can control. He can't control the economy very well. No president can, but he can control how ICE operates.

And the interesting political question is to see if he decides to change tactics in the next couple of months. Well, counterpoint to that, Mara, though, is, I mean, two people are already dead and there are videos. I mean, those things aren't going to go away, right? I mean, just because— No, and they're going to be in political ads in November. Yeah, exactly.

That's what I'm wondering. It's like even if he does change tactics and he does take some big message from how polling shows that, you know, people are souring on these tactics. I guess I just wonder is the damage already done? Well, to a certain extent, but then again, we're going to have two competing messages in the fall and it'll depend on what people are seeing on their screens at that time. All right. Well, we can leave it there just for a moment. More on all of this when we get back. And we're back. And now we are going to turn to another big issue that voters are clearly thinking about right now, the economy. Mara, how are these voters, these are voters who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and Donald Trump in 2024, how are they feeling about the economy right now? I would say they're feeling pretty bad. I mean, some of them mentioned some good things like gas prices going down, but they talked about groceries and health care and housing being too expensive.

One woman said the state of the economy sucks. Everything is spiraling out of control. The cost of living. Layoffs. Businesses are closing. It was a pretty dire view. I think they are willing to give Trump some time to fix it. There was a big debate about whether it was his economy,

whether he was at fault or was it still Biden's fault. But I think that nothing in our focus group diverged from national polling, which shows that people are very, very sour on the economy. Yeah. And this isn't statistically. significant. It's just interesting that it was most of the folks that were asked if they feel more anxious about the economy than they did when Trump took office. Nine out of the 14 said they feel more anxious, which is pretty interesting. One thing I heard from folks in Arizona that I hadn't heard

from folks in Pennsylvania is we're starting to hear a lot of worries and chatter about the labor market. Folks are talking about all the layoffs that are happening either to them or to people around them. And one woman said she's been looking for a job for two months and hasn't found anything. And she's worried about her finding a job at any time soon. And this is amidst high prices and not feeling like that's going to get any better. It's just like sort of a boiling pot right now of a bunch of economic issues that are making people feel really pessimistic. So are these, again, these are voters who voted for Donald Trump in 2024 and they're feeling more anxious after he's taken office. Are they blaming him for that?

Well, I think there's been a debate about how much to blame Trump for this. Some people said tariffs were raising prices. Other people said it's Biden's fault. That certainly is Trump's message. And these voters are hearing it a lot based on the news sources that they consume. But that's going to be the big battle in the midterms to say whether this is Trump's economy or Biden's economy. One of my takeaways was how much all these things get conflated. The economy, immigration, foreign policy kind of adds up to chaos and anxiety for voters. Here's one voter named NAM. Nancy, who explained how all this makes her feel. Well, I like a few of his policies and things he's done. The issues I have are the big ones with things like tariffs and the, you know, financial impact on our economy, the way he's handling the whole ice thing, trying to start wars everywhere, Venezuela, trying to take over Greenland, everything like that. It's just so chaotic that all the bad stuff just kind of eliminates the good.

That's so interesting. The chaos thing, it feels like the most predictable part of a Trump president. I mean, we saw this already in four years of Trump's first term. Are these voters surprised by that level of uncertainty? We didn't ask them if they were surprised. They just don't like it. Okay. I mean, they do seem like voters, though, who considering they supported Trump in 2024,

would be receptive to his spin on some of the economics. Just because he voted for Trump doesn't mean you like every single thing about him. And that's what these voters were telling us. that they love certain things. I'm just trying to drill down on why are there no rose colored glass at the way that President Trump has been trying to push. Like, there are positives that you can find in the economy right now. Record stock market.

I feel like they can't eat GDP. This is about prices, not the rate of inflation. This is about every day, the people's everyday lives. And even though, yes, the stock market is good, GDP is good, but they're having to pay more, as they told us, for housing, health care groceries. Yeah, groceries came up a lot. that was something that people were mentioned over and over again is that groceries still remain too high. They saw those prices take up during COVID, and they really have not seen them meaningfully go down for the exception of eggs.

Well, how do these people feel about voting for Trump in 2024? Is there any sign of regret at all, or are these people who still feel like they would make the same decision? The short answer is no. Very, very few. I think maybe only one person in this focus group said they wish they'd vote for Kamala Harris. So they're not so much regretting their vote for Trump as they are reconsidering their support for him, as swing voters do. Yeah, and I think this is emblematic of how they feel about Democrats at large, including people who identify as Democrats. Remember, there were four in this group who identified as Democrats.

I didn't hear a single positive thing about them. And even though the Democratic Party gets bad marks, as it does in national polling, the thing about midterm elections is their general. a referendum on the party in power. They're not a binary choice between Republican and Democrat. They're a referendum on the president and his party. At least that's what they've been for the last 50 years. It doesn't mean that Democrats don't have some real hard work to do between now and 2028, where there will be a binary choice. It feels like Democrats in 2025 in the off-year elections really focused on the affordability message and that seemed to work for them. Did this focus group, I guess, further that idea that that is, winning message or something that Democrats should focus on? Or are there any other takeaways that

Democrats can take away from a focus group like this? I would answer that question, yes. The affordability issue in addition to ICE is the most important thing. And I think voters will focus on that and I think Democrats will focus on that. I did hear at least one voter say that they were excited to vote during the midterms. We're definitely going to vote. And that Trump was going to affect their vote because they wanted to make sure they would vote for someone who would oppose him because he already wants to see change. And this was, I believe, during the conversation about the economy, things are not changing fast enough, whether it's Trump's fault or not, whether he doesn't believe his vote was a good idea or not, doesn't matter. He's ready to see things move in another

direction economically. And if all the off-year elections and special elections are any indication because Democrats, even though their brand is in the toilet, it's not stopping them from winning races. Was there any sense of enthusiasm among these people? I mean, are all these people, people who are going to vote in the midterms? Or did they give any sense of that? Yeah, so that's a question we ask. And actually compared to Pennsylvania, there were a few more people who said that they were

definitely going to vote. I think one of the focus groups, it was every single one of them said they were excited to vote. Although that is one of the least reliable questions you can ask a voter, because it's too embarrassing to say, no, I'm not going to vote. All right. Well, we can leave it there for now. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.