WASHINGTON (AP) — After months of aggressive immigration enforcement measures from the Trump administration, Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander adults are more likely to hold a negative view of President Donald Trump's handling of immigration, a new AAPI Data/AP-NORC poll finds.
About 7 in 10 AAPI adults nationwide disapprove of Trump's approach on immigration, according to the survey from AAPI Data and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, an increase from 58% in March. The new poll also finds that a solid majority of AAPI adults say the Republican president has overstepped on deporting immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, and most oppose several specific tactics used by the administration, such as using the military and National Guard to carry out arrests or deportations.
The findings come as federal immigration agents expand a crackdown in the Chicago area, where more than 1,000 immigrants have been arrested since last month. The escalation in Chicago is just part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to boost deportations, which has been a high priority for the president since he took office at the beginning of the year.
This approach does not seem to be landing well among AAPI adults, a diverse and rapidly growing group where many were born outside the U.S. Even among foreign-born AAPI adults, who tend to be more conservative, most disapprove of the president's handling of immigration.
Joie Meyer, 25, was born in China and adopted as an infant. The Miami resident, who identifies as a Democrat, supports secure borders but Trump's recent actions have made her wonder what would happen if she suddenly lost her citizenship.
“If I was at risk of like being stripped away from my home, family, friends, everything I knew because of like a technicality, which is what some people are facing, that’s just heartbreaking,” Meyer said, adding that she finds Trump's methods “punitive.”
AAPI adults are particularly likely to think Trump has crossed a line on immigration enforcement. About two-thirds say Trump has “gone too far” when it comes to deporting immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, compared to about 6 in 10 Black and Hispanic adults in a separate AP-NORC poll conducted in September. In that survey, less than half of white adults thought Trump had overstepped on immigration.
The finding, combined with AAPI adults' increased disapproval of Trump on immigration, signals that the president's handling of the issue over the past few months may have turned some people off. Some may be finding “a big difference in terms of what policy support looks like in theory and how it plays out," said Karthick Ramakrishnan, AAPI Data executive director and researcher at the University of California, Berkeley.
Immigration is frequently in the local news for 38-year-old Peter Lee of Tacoma, Washington, where there is an active Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center. He sees Trump as hastily meeting deportation quotas without compassion.
“One, there doesn’t seem to be a clear game plan for what he’s doing in terms of immigration enforcement other than just pure numbers. Second it seems like his directives come from just gut, not fact-based," said Lee, a Democrat, who is Korean American. “The fact that he’s deporting people to third-party countries not of their origin, I think that it’s ridiculous.”
American-born and foreign-born AAPI adults are equally likely to think Trump has overstepped on immigration overall. But they're more divided on issues related to illegal immigration.
Just over half of foreign-born AAPI adults, who tend to be older and more conservative than other AAPI adults, support deporting immigrants living in the U.S. illegally who have been charged with misdemeanors, compared to 41% of American-born AAPI adults. AAPI adults who were born outside the U.S. are also more likely than American-born AAPI adults to support deporting all immigrants who are in the country illegally.
More than half of AAPI adults are foreign-born, Ramakrishnan said, adding that American-born AAPI adults may be less “attuned in terms of what it takes to maintain one’s status.”
Tyrone Tai, 65, who has homes in Tampa and Lauderhill, Florida, was born in Jamaica. The half-Chinese and half-Jamaican immigrated with his parents to New York City when he was 12. He recalls how they struggled but eventually gained U.S. citizenship. He indicated Trump has “not gone far enough” when it comes to arresting those who “jump the line.”
AAPI adults who were born outside the U.S. are more likely than American-born AAPI adults to approve of Trump's handling of immigration, although they still don't rate him especially highly on the issue. They're also more likely to approve of his handling of crime, suggesting that the president's efforts to link illegal immigration with crime may be resonating with some among this group.
Some of the Trump administration's tactics are particularly unpopular among AAPI adults, the poll found. For example, about 6 in 10 AAPI adults oppose conducting large-scale immigration enforcement operations in neighborhoods with high populations of immigrants, deploying the military or National Guard to carry out arrests and deportations, detaining immigrants at their workplaces, or allowing agents to cover their faces during arrests.
Videos of ICE officers wearing masks and snatching people while they are at work or on a public street has rattled Michael Ida, a 56-year-old resident of Honolulu. An independent and Christian, Ida believes that some immigrants in the country illegally may deserve to stay.
“When it comes down to justice or mercy, we should err on the side of mercy. It’s very disturbing to me,” Ida said. “As an Asian American especially, I feel like there’s a little bit of anxiety to travel outside of Hawaii.”
Tai, however, says that ICE agents should be allowed to wear masks.
“Those poor ICE agents, they’re doing their job there and people are basically threatening their families. That shouldn’t be,” Tai said.
Ida, who is half Korean and half Japanese, sees parallels with World War II, when in 1942 the U.S. government began forcing Japanese Americans from their homes and into incarceration camps.
“History doesn’t repeat but it rhymes. There’s kind of echoes of what happened in the past.”
The poll of 1,027 U.S. adults who are Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders was conducted from Sept 2-9, 2025, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based Amplify AAPI Panel, designed to be representative of the Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 5.0 percentage points.
Members of the Texas National Guard stand outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing facility in Broadview, Ill. on Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Talia Sprague)
Government officials watch protesters gathering in Chicago, Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025. (Anthony Vazquez/Chicago Sun-Times via AP)
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — State and federal authorities are closely tracking online criticism and protests against the immigration crackdown in New Orleans, monitoring message boards around the clock for threats to agents while compiling regular updates on public “sentiment” surrounding the arrests, according to law enforcement records reviewed by The Associated Press.
The intelligence gathering comes even as officials have released few details about the first arrests made last week as part of “Catahoula Crunch,” prompting calls for greater transparency from local officials who say they've been kept in the dark about virtually every aspect of the operation.
“Online opinions still remain mixed, with some supporting the operations while others are against them,” said a briefing circulated early Sunday to law enforcement. Earlier bulletins noted “a combination of groups urging the public to record ICE and Border Patrol” as well as "additional locations where agents can find immigrants.”
Immigration authorities have insisted the sweeps are targeted at “criminal illegal aliens.” But the law enforcement records detail criminal histories for less than a third of the 38 people arrested in the first two days of the operation.
Local leaders told the AP those numbers — which law enforcement officials were admonished not to distribute to the media — undermined the stated aim of the roundup. They also expressed concern that the online surveillance could chill free speech as authorities threaten to charge anyone interfering with immigration enforcement.
“It confirms what we already knew — this was not about public safety, it’s about stoking chaos and fear and terrorizing communities,” said state Sen. Royce Duplessis, a Democrat who represents New Orleans. “It’s furthering a sick narrative of stereotypes that immigrants are violent.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about the intelligence gathering and referred the AP to a prior news release touting “dozens of arrests.” The agency has not released an accounting of the detainees taken into custody or their criminal histories.
DHS has publicly detailed only six arrests stemming from the operation — all people with criminal histories — including a man they vaguely said was convicted of “homicide” and another convicted of sexual assault. The agency, which has several hundred agents on the ground in southeast Louisiana, has said it aims to make at least 5,000 arrests in the region over an operation expected to last up to two months.
“Americans should be able to live without fear of violent criminal illegal aliens harming them, their families or their neighbors,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said.
DHS and Republican leaders have framed the crackdown as targeting the most violent offenders. But the records reviewed by the AP identify only nine of the 38 people arrested in the first days as having criminal histories that rose beyond traffic violations — information the intelligence bulletins warn “should not be distributed to the media.”
New Orleans City Council President J.P. Morrell said the stated goals of the operation to arrest violent offenders did not align with the reality of what is taking place.
“There’s literally no information being given to the city of New Orleans whatsoever,” Morrell said. “If the goal was for them to come here and augment existing law enforcement, to pursue violent criminals or people with extensive criminal histories, why wouldn’t you be more transparent about who you’ve arrested and why?”
Morrell and other officials have said the crackdown appears to be a dragnet focused on people with brown skin, citing viral videos of encounters such as masked agents chasing a 23-year-old U.S. citizen returning home from the grocery store.
Law enforcement officials have been carefully tracking such footage and public reaction. “For some supporters, the videos with sounds of children crying in the background as their parents are placed under arrest, is weighing heavy on their hearts,” one briefing stated.
The records also shed new light on cooperation among state and federal authorities in an operation welcomed by Louisiana’s Republican Gov. Jeff Landry. Both the FBI and Customs and Border Protection have stationed agents at the Louisiana State Analytical and Fusion Exchange, an intelligence and data sharing center that is closely following discussions on the online forum Reddit that local residents have used to exchange information about the immigration raids.
One briefing noted that some “have gone so far as to accuse agents of racially profiling Hispanic areas specifically.” Another flagged social media posts suggesting agents “are not keeping with the mission of targeting criminal immigrants only.” And a third pointed out that critics of the raids “bring up past hurricanes and the work done by immigrants” in their aftermath.
“The chatter is slower during the night, mainly just commenting on posts from earlier in the day,” one of the briefings states. “Once daylight arrives and agencies are back out, the chatter and new posts will pick back up.”
The briefings have identified no threats to law enforcement, but the fusion center has sought to debunk what it called false reports that a pedestrian was fatally struck by law enforcement. “It has been confirmed that this actually did not occur,” the center told law enforcement on Saturday.
One briefing described an incident involving “suspicious persons/protesters” who showed up early Saturday at an ICE facility in St. Charles Parish, where records show the detainees were expected to be processed.
Some local officials said they had been unaware of the state's role in the online monitoring. Louisiana State Police pledged “operational support” to immigration authorities and warned the public that troopers will arrest anyone who assaults a federal agent or causes criminal damage to property.
“The Louisiana State Police remains vigilant in monitoring social media activity related to protests, activism and other forms of public response,” Trooper Danny Berrincha, a state police spokesperson, wrote in an email to the AP. “Through the LSP Fusion Center, we actively track developments and facilitate the sharing of information and communication among our partner agencies.”
The fusion center also has tracked the tools used by protesters to foil federal immigration enforcement, highlighting social media links to whistle handouts, trainings on filming federal agents and the emergence of a hotline for reporting arrests. The surveillance extended to activist discussions about immigration authorities’ presence near an elementary school and recapped demonstrations inside the New Orleans City Council chambers and elsewhere.
“They can monitor me all they want,” said Rachel Taber, an organizer with the New Orleans-based grassroots advocacy group Union Migrante, which shares crowdsourced reports and videos of the federal immigration enforcement operations. “We are not doing anything illegal."
Beth Davis, a spokesperson for Indivisible NOLA, which has organized some of the trainings described in the law enforcement briefings, said it was sad authorities seemed preoccupied with law-abiding citizens. “That they feel threatened by a bunch of community organizers that have nothing other than phones and whistles blows my mind.”
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Mustian reported from New York.
FILE - U.S. Border Patrol Commander at large Gregory Bovino, center, walks on the street in New Orleans, La., Dec. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
FILE - U.S. Border Patrol Commander at large Gregory Bovino talks to the media in Kenner, La., Dec. 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
FILE - Customs and Border Patrol agents question occupants of a vehicle they pulled over, during an immigration crackdown in Kenner, La., Dec. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
FILE - Wilma Fuentes yells at Customs and Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino and some of his agents as they walk through a neighborhood during an immigration crackdown, in Kenner, La., Dec. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
