Almost 70% of Houston-area residents disapprove of how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is handling its job, according to a recent survey.
Thesurvey, published this week by the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs, found that 69.9% of respondents in the greater Houston area disapprove of ICE. The survey also found that nearly a quarter of respondents, 23.5%, reported that they or someone they know has encountered ICE in their neighborhood.
ICE has ramped up deportations in the Houston area and across Texas and the United States under President Donald Trump.
"Public opinion of ICE in the Greater Houston area is marked by broad disapproval," the survey authors wrote in their conclusion. "Nearly seven in ten area residents disapprove of how ICE is handling its job, majorities oppose local cooperation between sheriffs or police and federal immigration authorities, and a slim majority support eliminating the agency altogether."
ICE approval ratings in the Houston area
According to the survey, residents in the city of Houston and Fort Bend County had the highest disapproval of the federal agency at 78.8% and 80.1%, respectively. Montgomery County had the lowest disapproval rating within the region, but the majority of respondents from the county north of Houston, 52.7%, still disapproved of ICE.
In Harris County, which includes Houston, 64.3% of respondents disapproved of ICE's operations, according to the survey released Thursday.
Overall, respondents also disapproved of local law enforcement's cooperation with ICE.
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In the city of Houston, 74.9% opposed the Harris County Sheriff's Office working with ICE, while 70% opposed "local cooperation" altogether.
Local cooperation with ICE was also unpopular in the surrounding areas. In Harris County, 55.8% of respondents were opposed to cooperation. In Fort Bend County, 55.8% opposed cooperation.
Montgomery County was the only one of the four survey areas in which less than 50% of respondents, 36.9%, opposed local cooperation.
Across the entire region, 53.9% of respondents said they support eliminating ICE entirely.
ICE approval across Houston-area demographics
When broken down by race, white respondents were the least likely to disapprove of ICE operations, with 58% saying they disapprove. Black respondents were the most likely to disapprove of ICE, with 78.3% disapproving. Hispanic respondents were only slightly less disapproving of ICE than Black respondents, with 77% of Hispanic respondents in the area disapproving of the agency's operations, according to the survey.
The survey found that white respondents were the only demographic in which the majority did not want to eliminate ICE. According to the survey, 41.7% of white residents supported the elimination of ICE.
ICE approval across political ideologies
According to the survey, 69.7% of the respondents who identified as Democrats supported eliminating ICE, while 90.1% of Democrats said they disapprove of ICE's operations.
Respondents who identified as political independents were less likely to oppose ICE, but overall, 76.5% of independents disapproved, with 53.3% of those respondents also supporting eliminating the organization, according to the survey.
Just over one-third of Republican respondents disapproved of ICE, with 29.8% of Republicans supporting the elimination of the agency.
According to the survey's authors, they collected responses from more than 1,500 people in April, and the results have an overall margin of error of 3.53%.
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