President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation campaign is starting to make some Republicans uneasy.

As midterms approach, GOP lawmakers, candidates, strategists and people close to the White House are warning that the administration’s mass deportations policy — and the wall-to-wall coverage of enforcement operations, arrests of U.S. citizens and clashes between protesters and federal officials — could cost them their razor-thin House majority.

The administration’s forceful approach across the U.S. risks repelling the swing voters who fueled Trump’s return to the White House but are increasingly wary of how the president is implementing a central campaign promise. Further complicating the issue is that Republicans are split on the best way to address the eroding support, with some in the party viewing it as a messaging problem, while others argue that the administration’s policy itself is driving voters’ concerns.

“If we don’t change our approach, it will have a negative effect on the midterms, for sure,” said Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.), who recently decided not to seek reelection.

A new POLITICO poll underscores those worries: Nearly half of all Americans — 49 percent — say Trump’s mass deportation campaign is too aggressive, including 1 in 5 voters who backed the president in 2024. In a sign of growing discomfort among the president’s base, more than 1 in 3 Trump voters say that while they support the goals of his mass deportation campaign, they disapprove of the way he is implementing it.

The president ran on removing the millions of immigrants living in the country illegally, while connecting former President Joe Biden’s border crisis to the violent crime plaguing U.S. cities. The White House has pressured immigration officials to fulfill the president’s goal, an effort that requires targeting immigrants well beyond violent criminals.

But Americans broadly do not support such a sweeping approach. In the poll, 38 percent of Americans said the federal government should prioritize deporting immigrants who have committed serious crimes, while 21 percent said the administration should only deport serious criminals. The poll was conducted from Jan. 16 to 19, after an ICE agent killed Renee Good in Minneapolis. There was another federal officer-involved shooting on Saturday in Minneapolis, though details remain scarce.

“ICE should focus on the bad hombres. The bad hombres, that’s it, not the cleaning ladies,” said Rep. Maria Salazar (R-Fla.). “One thing is the gardeners, another thing is the gangsters. One thing is the cooks, the other thing is the coyotes.”

The White House, so far, has maintained its heavy enforcement presence in Minneapolis, betting that the issue is messaging, not its policies. The president said this week that his administration needs to do more to highlight the criminals they’ve arrested during the Minnesota crackdown.

A person close to the White House, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said Republicans have to keep the focus on criminal arrests, public safety and the Trump administration’s success in securing the southern border, which are more popular with voters across the board. Otherwise, the person worried, the GOP is losing support with moderate Republicans, independents, Latinos and young voters.

“Do I think we have to be a little bit smarter about it? I don’t think there’s any question about it,” the person said of the party’s messaging. “The reason why crime is down across the country, especially in these Democratic states and these blue cities, is because of one thing — the only thing that changed is President Trump’s policies.”

Most Trump voters do support his mass deportations campaign, with 55 percent saying the actions, including his widespread deployment of ICE agents across the U.S. are “about right,” the POLITICO Poll with Public First finds. But there is a notable split between Trump’s strongest 2024 voters and those who are more malleable: Among the 2024 Trump voters who do not identify as MAGA, a more moderate group of Trump supporters, 29 percent say his campaign is too aggressive. Seventeen percent of these voters say it is not aggressive enough.

And a 43 percent plurality of non-MAGA Trump voters say they support the goals of Trump’s deportation agenda but not how he is implementing it, compared to 28 percent of MAGA Trump voters — his strongest supporters — who say the same.

The poll results suggest Americans are uneasy with the Trump administration’s approach, and that even many Trump voters who support increased immigration enforcement oppose the president’s sprawling deportation campaign.

“They are going to be worried about, OK, is ICE using excessive force? Are they going after, you know, moms and dads that have a clean record?” said Brendan Steinhauser, a GOP strategist in Texas. “I don’t think that plays well with independents and moderates. I don’t think it plays well with center-right Republicans. It does seem to play well with a smaller subset of the Republican Party. But I don’t think that’s where, nationally, the people who swing elections are on this.”

Some battleground Republicans, worried immigration enforcement could become a political albatross in an already tough election year, are trying to walk a tightrope of showing support for ICE in general while also calling for restraint in their actions.

“ICE exists to carry out laws passed by Congress, and in that sense, its role is absolutely necessary, but at the same time, enforcement must be professional and targeted and humane,” said Republican candidate Trinh Ha, a Vietnamese immigrant running in Washington’s eighth district, a seat currently held by Democratic Rep. Kim Schrier. “What’s happening right now underscores why enforcement must always be paired with restraint and accountability.”

A White House spokesperson said the president’s mass deportations agenda was a central campaign promise and argued that the administration’s enforcement — and its message — has and will continue to focus on the “worst of the worst,” including people with convictions for assault, rape and murder. The official said the administration won’t allow criminals to remain free in cities where “Democrats don’t cooperate with us,” adding that there “wouldn’t be a need for as much of an ICE presence if we had cooperation.”

The president has expressed concerns about how ICE is being perceived. He posted Tuesday on Truth Social that the Department of Homeland Security and ICE needed to do more to highlight the “murderers and other criminals” they’re detaining, arguing that it would help boost Americans’ support of ICE. He then took to the podium during a White House press briefing and spent the first 10 minutes sifting through photos of immigrants who had committed crimes.

“Because Minnesota is so much in the fray, and I say to my people all the time — and they’re so busy doing other things — ‘they don’t say it like they should,’” Trump said. “They are apprehending murderers and drug dealers, a lot of bad people. … I say why don’t you talk about that? Because people don’t know.”

Vice President JD Vance traveled to Minneapolis on Thursday, where he said he wanted to “lower the temperature.” Flanked by immigration agents, Vance empathized with community members’ concerns, while blaming state and local officials’ lack of cooperation and far-left agitators for fueling chaos in the city.

“We want to be able to enforce the immigration laws on the one hand, while on the other hand, we want to make sure the people in Minneapolis are able to go about their day,” he said.

It remains to be seen whether the administration’s message will be enough to tame the concerns coursing through the party. While many Republicans remain confident that they are still most trusted on immigration and border security — and that Democrats will ultimately be seen as too extreme in their response — others warn that Trump’s base won’t be the voters who swing races in 2026.

Immigration still ranks far below economic concerns for voters, according to The POLITICO Poll. When asked to select the top three issues facing the country, just 21 percent cited illegal immigration, compared with half who said the cost of living. But as the White House continues to make immigration a policy priority, crucial swaths of swing voters and soft Trump supporters are expressing discomfort with some of the administration’s tactics.

“I’d reframe the ‘raids’ narrative,” said Buzz Jacobs, a Republican strategist and White House immigration policy director for former President George W. Bush. “The reality is that most enforcement activity is routine and never becomes a headline.”