Wired: “Federal records show that over the past several months, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security have carried out a secret campaign to expand ICE’s physical presence across the U.S.”

“Documents show that more than 150 leases and office expansions have or would place new facilities in nearly every state, many of them in or just outside of the country’s largest metropolitan areas.”

A new GBAO poll found 58% of Americans have negative views of ICE, and that assessment is even more negative — 64% — among independent voters.

Fifty-two percent support securing reforms for ICE before funding the Department of Homeland Security.

A new NBC News Decision Desk Poll finds nearly 3 in 4 U.S. adults support some changes to ICE, with 29% saying it should be abolished outright.

“Support for President Trump’s immigration agenda is in free fall in early 2026 after federal immigration agents shot and killed two Americans last month,” according to the new NBC News Decision Desk Poll.

“In a double-digit shift, 49% of adults strongly disapprove of how Trump has handled border security and immigration, up from 38% strong disapproval last summer and 34% in April. Self-identified independents drove the erosion, with the share of strong disapprovers in that group having risen 11 points since August.”

“Fully 60% of those surveyed in the week after the death of Alex Pretti in Minnesota somewhat or strongly disapproved of Trump’s actions on border security and immigration.”

Even previously anti-shutdown Sen. Angus King (I-ME) told NBC News he won’t back another funding bill without significant reforms to President Trump’s mass deportation effort.

Long before taking charge in Minneapolis, border czar Tom Homan warned that mass deportations would lose public support if they weren’t narrowly targeted, NBC News reports.

In an interview for an upcoming book, Undue Process: The Inside Story of Trump’s Mass Deportation Program, he argued the administration should prioritize immigrants who have committed additional crimes, saying most Americans support removing “criminal illegal aliens.”

Straying from that focus, Homan cautioned, risks breaking faith with the public.

“Less than 14% of nearly 400,000 immigrants arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in President Trump’s first year back in the White House had charges or convictions for violent criminal offenses,” CBS News reports.

Paul Krugman: “For much of Trump’s first year in office many Democrats were reluctant to challenge his immigration policies, because their defeat in 2024 was widely seen as in part a response to surging immigration during the Biden years. Until recently, Democrats tried to keep the national conversation focused on affordability and Trump’s obvious failure to deliver on his promises to bring grocery prices way down.”

“While the Democratic strategy was an understandable response to a shattering electoral defeat, it rested on a cynical and nihilistic view of American voters: that they couldn’t be trusted to vote against a party that reveled in inflicting cruelty and injustice as long as the price of gasoline fell.”

“But recent events refute this nihilistic cynicism. Yes, Americans still name the economy as the most important political issue. But moral outrage over the Trump administration’s brutality (and its corruption, but that’s a subject for another post) has exploded as a political force over the past two months.”

Rachel Bade: “If it wasn’t clear before, it’s crystal clear now: Democrats are feeling their power when it comes to ICE enforcement and the looming Department of Homeland Security funding deadline.”

“Republicans, meanwhile, face a no-win situation: Hold the line and eat the blowback from a shutdown — or cave and torch their own base.”

“Consider this: In the past 48 hours, President Donald Trump has extended an olive branch to the left on immigration enforcement, taking tangible steps to de-escalate. In a rare moment of introspection, the president admitted in to NBC that he should have taken a ‘softer touch’ with Minnesota. He’s pulled 700 agents out of Minneapolis. And he’s now insisting that he’ll only deploy the feds to cities where governors and mayors ‘ask’ for help.”

“But instead of returning the good-faith gesture, Democrats have hardened their position. Wednesday night — a full five days into the two-week deadline for a deal — they expanded their list of demands to overhaul ICE from three to 10 asks.”

“The Trump administration is attempting to eliminate most opportunities for immigrants with deportation orders to appeal their cases under a new policy, the latest step by the government to strip immigrants of due process rights so they can be deported more quickly,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Under the new policy, posted by the Justice Department to the Federal Register on Thursday, the administration is seeking to change several rules to make it nearly impossible for immigrants, many of whom are seeking asylum, to appeal their deportation cases.”

A new NPR/PBS News/Marist poll finds 65% of Americans said Immigration and Customs Enforcement has “gone too far.”

President Trump’s overall approval rating remains low at 39%, with 56% disapproving, and a whopping 51% strongly disapproving.

That’s the highest Marist has seen in its polling since it started asking how strongly respondents approve or disapprove of presidents dating back to 2017.

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said that House Democrats should propose full-year funding for most agencies under the Department of Homeland Security while withholding funding for immigration enforcement activities as Democrats try to rein in the White House’s aggressive immigration crackdown, Bloomberg reports.

Said Hoyer: “There’s some things in there that need to be funded.”

He added: “We’re going to hold out until we have an agreement which is why we want to fund the rest. Now the Republicans can oppose it and say you don’t get this, but that’s not a very good political position for them to be in.”

New York Times: “Last year, Mr. Trump froze the special visa program that gave… Afghans who worked with the American government over two decades of war with the Taliban a path to legal status in the United States. The president did so hours after an Afghan national who had fought in a paramilitary group linked to the C.I.A. and entered the United States on a two-year grant of parole in 2021 shot two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., one of them fatally.”

“Then on Tuesday, Congress quietly closed the door to the program altogether when it cleared a spending package that authorized no new visas for it.”

“Democrats’ drive to reach a deal to put new restrictions on immigration-enforcement agents is running into a Republican brick wall, with lawmakers in both parties saying an agreement looks increasingly unlikely by a Feb. 13 deadline,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“Congress has just over a week to reach a deal or funding will lapse for the Department of Homeland Security, which is in charge of Immigration and Customs Enforcement but also Transportation Security Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”

“Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), a leading moderate and former FBI agent, endorsed some changes to immigration enforcement tactics Wednesday, saying they’re needed to rebuild trust between federal agents and the communities where they operate,” Bloomberg reports.

Said Fitzpatrick: “They need body cameras. They need to remove masks. They need proper training. They need to be conducting operations that are consistent with their mission. You should not have Border Patrol agents from McAllen, Texas put inside an inner-city doing crowd control. That’s not their mission, that’s not their training. They don’t know how to do it.”

President Trump said that he thinks his administration needs to employ a “softer touch” in carrying out its mass deportation campaign in Minnesota, just hours after he ordered the withdrawal of hundreds of immigration officials from the state, NOTUS reports.

Said Trump: “I learned that maybe we could use a little bit of a softer touch. But you still have to be tough.”