The Forum Daily | Friday, January 16, 2026https://www.forumtogether.org

Some advisers to the president are concerned about private, Republican polling indicating that public support for the administration’s immigration enforcement approach is falling, report Alex Isenstadt and Marc Caputo of Axios [link removed]. 

The polling comes as "confrontational enforcement tactics" continue and are widely shared, they report. 

"He wants mass deportations. What he doesn't want is what people are seeing," a top Trump advisor said. "He doesn't like the way it looks. It looks bad, so he's expressed some discomfort at that. ... There's the right way to do this. And this doesn't look like the right way to a lot of people." 

Our polling bolsters that take. Last month [link removed], 80% of Republicans said they’d support immigration solutions that, among other things, "focus immigration enforcement on threats to public safety and national security." 

Speaking of not looking right, federal officials acknowledged this week that the deportation of a Babson College freshman over Thanksgiving was erroneous, Sean Cotter of the Boston Globe [link removed] reports.  

Separately, in Tennessee, state lawmakers have released a package of anti-immigration bills that were crafted in cooperation with the Trump administration, saying it could be a "model for the rest of the nation," report Sam Stockard and Anita Wadhwani of the Tennessee Lookout [link removed]. 

The package’s eight or nine bills are expected to include guidance that would require public schools, vehicle registration centers and health centers to report and track immigration status. 

Welcome to Friday’s edition of The Forum Daily. I’m Dan Gordon, the Forum’s VP of Strategic Communications, and the great Forum Daily team also includes Jillian Clark, Nicci Mattey and Clara Villatoro. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected]. 

**OPPORTUNITY** — The optics and "surprisingly modest results" of the administration’s crackdown could open the door to legislative immigration solutions, Ronald Brownstein writes in his Bloomberg [link removed] column. "[T]he immediate priority for Congress, the media and the public should be closer scrutiny of [Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s] tactics and culture," he writes. "But demonstrating the political viability of an alternative strategy is an important way to expand the audience for reconsidering the current one." 

**‘WHOLESALE PUNISHMENT’** — Some military veterans are pushing back on what they call the "wholesale punishment" of Afghans after the tragic shooting of two National Guard members in November, reports Patty Nieberg of Task & Purpose [link removed]. Andrew Sullivan, executive director of No One Left Behind, said that while the shooting requires scrutiny, "we need to turn [resettlement programs] back on because, unfortunately, there are tens of thousands of allies that kept Americans alive, kept Americans safe, that are going to be punished by this one gentleman." 

**MORE STATE MOVES** — Some Florida legislators are pushing further immigration restrictions on the state level, reports Steve Newborn of WUSF [link removed]. A bill authored by Florida Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia that would increase penalties for undocumented workers and ban them from opening bank accounts with state accredited banks. Another proposal would force any company that hires undocumented workers to pay out-of-pocket for any injuries, Newborn highlights. 

**WHAT IS REQUIRED** — The deportation of a woman and her 5-year-old daughter has led the Austin Police Department to revise how and when officers communicate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), reports Mose Buchele of The Texas Newsroom [link removed]. The woman had an ICE "administrative warrant," which doesn't require a report to ICE, Chief Lisa Davis clarified.  For a separate, illuminating law enforcement perspective, read or listen to Minneapolis Chief Brian O’Hara’s conversation with Michael Barbaro of The New York Times’ [link removed] "The Daily."  

Thanks for reading,  

Dan 

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