As Public Support for ICE Drops, Women’s March WIN Launches Campaign Urging Agents to Walk Away
As the Trump administration enters its eleventh month pushing aggressive immigration crackdowns, public sentiment appears to be shifting. A new YouGov survey finds growing discomfort with the broad and aggressive methods being employed by the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). According to the poll, a majority (53%) of Americans somewhat or strongly disapprove of how ICE is handling its job, while 39% approve of ICE.
YouGov’s Alexander Rosell Hayes noted that “About half of Americans say that ICE’s tactics are too forceful and are concerned that someone they know could be mistreated by ICE. One half or more of Americans think that ICE wrongfully arrests, deports, and uses unnecessary force against both U.S. citizens and immigrants. Americans are more likely to approve than to disapprove of protests against ICE.”
In recent months, ICE’s increasingly visible raids — including forced entries, collateral arrests, and detentions of families — have sparked demonstrations across the country. Independent voters, immigrant communities, and moderate or liberal-leaning respondents are expressing rising doubts about the administration’s escalated enforcement. A mix of nationalism fatigue, enforcement overreach, and growing public awareness of abuses appears to be weakening prior blanket support for ICE.
While ICE raids will no doubt continue, so will demonstrations against ICE, Women’s March / Women’s March WIN has come up with a new approach; one not aimed at policymakers, but aimed at the conscience of ICE agents. It recently launched a new ad campaign titled “What Will You Say?” that directly targets ICE agents and urges them to “walk away.”
The ad opens on a child greeting her father (an ICE agent) coming home from work, asking “Daddy, how was your day?” Then it cuts to disturbing images — forced-entry raids, families being detained, smashed windows, and similar enforcement scenes. The ad then asks: “What will you say when she asks about your day?”
The narrator warns that “a mask can’t hide you from your neighbors, your children, and God,” and tells ICE officers they can avoid “shame” by leaving the job before “the violence follows you home.”
The ad campaign is explicitly described by Women’s March WIN leadership (via a press release quoted in media coverage) as a conscious effort to counter ICE’s own recruitment pushes and to highlight what the group sees as the moral costs of enforcement.
The ads are airing across multiple channels and streaming platforms — including major news networks and streaming services — in selected markets (e.g. Charlotte, Palm Beach, Chicago).
Since at least 2017–2018, there has been a strong movement advocating for abolishing or radically reforming ICE — typically via protests, legislation, and public pressure. The Women’s March WIN campaign is different in that it targets agency personnel rather than just institutions or policies. Instead of only calling for abolition/de-funding or systemic change, it’s trying to persuade individual agents to leave — reframing the crisis as a moral and personal one, not just political or systemic.
This mirrors somewhat earlier efforts by another activist group, Never Again Action, which offered “career support services” to ICE agents wishing to quit — providing job-search guidance to make leaving the agency more feasible.
Whether this new moral-pressure campaign will persuade ICE agents to resign remains to be seen. But as public opinion increasingly sours on ICE’s tactics — including among some Hispanic voters who backed Trump in 2024 — the political stakes may grow. A question now is whether escalating enforcement will continue to push voters away from the GOP and toward the Democrats.
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