Nationwide protests against President Trump’s crackdown on immigration are putting Democrats in tricky political territory ahead of the high-stakes midterms. 

After demonstrations against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids roiled Los Angeles and prompted Trump to call in the National Guard despite California’s objections, protests cropped up this week in cities big and small, thrusting to the fore what has been a winning issue for Republicans in recent elections. 

While many in the party, including California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), are using the moment to hammer Trump on executive overreach, some also see the controversy as a key opening for Democrats to define themselves on immigration, where the GOP has held the advantage.

“Democrats have been so untrusted to handle this issue, in such a deep hole, that unless they reestablish themselves as trusted folks to handle it, they’re not going to be able to take advantage of any chaos or softening [poll numbers] that’s happening with Trump,” said Lanae Erickson, senior vice president for social policy and politics at the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way. 

Trump, who won the White House last fall with promises to “seal” the border and kick-start day-one deportations, has been implementing an aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration in his second term. ICE arrests have topped 100,000 under Trump so far, the White House announced last week, and border czar Tom Homan said workplace immigration enforcement is set to “massively expand” amid the pushback.

Protests broke out June 6 after ICE raids in Los Angeles, prompting Trump to call in National Guard troops and Marines, as well as spurring on similar demonstrations in other cities. More were planned for this weekend, though not all are specific to immigration, and set to coincide with Trump’s massive military parade in Washington. 

The demonstrators have largely been peaceful, but Republicans have seized on scenes of chaos including a viral clip of a figure brandishing a Mexican flag atop a vehicle amid flames to support long-standing claims that Democrats are weak on immigration and crime. 

“My party loses the moral high ground when we refuse to condemn setting cars on fire, destroying buildings and assaulting law enforcement,” Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) pointed out on the social platform X this week. 

As a result, blue state leaders in California and elsewhere have been walking a balance beam between supporting the right to protest and condemning any violence, while also navigating debate on issues that have long been weak points for the party. 

“This whole situation is doing something Trump has been very good at in his elections, which is to smash together immigration and crime and make it seem like Democrats don’t care about addressing either of those problems,” Erickson said.

“If it seems like Democrats are letting [lawbreakers] do that with impunity and only criticizing Trump, I think that that’ll really undermine our trust with American voters.”

Meanwhile, some recent polls have suggested a softening of approval for Trump’s immigration handling as the ICE raids make headlines. 

A Quinnipiac poll released this week had Trump 11 points underwater on the issue, compared with 5 points underwater in April. AP-NORC polling last week had him 7 points underwater, compared with 2 points last month. 

If Democrats can avoid playing into the idea of the party being soft on crime and border security, and use this moment to unify their messaging on immigration policy, they could make critical inroads ahead of the next election, argued Democratic strategist Maria Cardona. 

“Part of the problem for Democrats in the last election was that we didn’t talk about [immigration] enough, and we didn’t define ourselves. … We gave Republicans a huge opening to weaponize it against us, and they took it,” Cardona said.

Now, the growing protests present a “terrific opportunity” for Democrats to lean in, Cardona said, pointing to the protests across the country as “proof that Trump’s approach on this is failing.”

New polling on key 2026 battleground districts from the progressive group Way to Win and the firm Impact Research, conducted just before the protests, found that Trump was “the strongest and most trusted voice” on immigration issues, with congressional Democrats a whopping 58 points in the negative, compared with their Republican counterparts’ minus 11 points. 

But there were “significant openings” for Democrats, researchers said. Most voters said Trump and Republicans have “gone too far” in their handling of immigration, and there was a 6-point gap between voters’ support for GOP immigration policies and the way that those policies have been carried out and enforced. 

“Immigration was not a winning issue for Democrats last cycle. That’s true … and certainly, remaining silent on the issue didn’t help. So when Trump made his whole campaign a campaign that once again scapegoated immigrants … and there’s no pushback, or if the pushback stays on his turf, making it a story about linking immigration to criminality only, then we lose,” Tory Gavito, president of Way to Win, told The Hill. 

“Democrats need to remember that public opinion can shift, and Democrats have a role in shifting public opinion by making a clear argument about what they believe in and why,” Gavito said.

When respondents in the survey were presented with messaging that suggested Trump and Republicans’ immigration enforcement signals a threat to citizens’ rights, his approval on immigration dropped 10 points.

“The immigration policy battlefield is a challenging one for Democrats, it truly is. But if you walk away from the battle, you’re letting the other side play alone, and that’s how they win.”

At the same time, experts say the protests also pose a prime chance for Democrats to knock Trump for executive overreach and an abuse of power, even if they can’t win the argument on immigration. 

“The risk attached to the current protests over Trump’s immigration raids is that Democrats will again be painted as ‘soft on crime,’ which requires that the immigrants being rounded up are overwhelmingly guilty of some serious criminal offense. Clearly this is not the case, but the administration and its allies are putting out tons of disinformation,” said Wayne Cornelius, director emeritus of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego and a former immigration adviser to former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s and former President Biden’s campaigns, in an email to The Hill. 

“The potential opportunity for Democrats … is that the administration will overreach, causing widespread economic disruptions and backlash in the communities into which long-staying immigrants have become integrated.” 

Newsom has been among the leading voices messaging along those lines, casting Trump’s moves in California as an existential fight for democracy that could quickly impact the rest of the country.

“This is about all of us. This is about you,” Newsom said this week. “California may be first but it clearly won’t end there. Other states are next. Democracy is next.”

The complex conversations about how Democrats should approach immigration and border security come after the topics were seen as defining factors in their 2024 losses, and as the party looks toward a high-stakes midterm cycle next year.

“Immigration is quite possibly the wedge issue of this season for Democrats. If they swing too far in one direction, they will be painted and seen as anti-order on behalf of non-Americans. … If they swing too far in the other direction, they will be seen as complicit in the destruction of our democracy,” said Democratic strategist Fred Hicks. 

“We have to connect this to larger issues with the Trump administration,” Hicks said. “This can’t be about immigration alone, or Democrats run the risk of losing the projected advantage in 2026.”