After an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis one week ago, reactions on social media and among politicians and political influencers rapidly polarized. But how do the rest of Americans – i.e. those who didn’t so quickly weigh in – feel? We’ve now got a better sense, thanks to three high-quality polls released in the last 24 hours – including a new poll from CNN. Here are a few things we can say. You could have been forgiven for thinking the ICE shooting would be a 50-50 issue – or close to it. But it’s not. The CNN poll shows 56% of US adults said the ICE agent’s use of force was “inappropriate,” compared to just 26% who said it was “appropriate.” Similarly, Quinnipiac University and Yahoo News-YouGov polls released Tuesday tested whether people thought the shooting was “justified.” The former showed registered voters said it was “not justified” by 53%-35%, while the latter showed Americans said it wasn’t justified 52%-27%. So three polls, all with margins of between 18 and 30 points against ICE. That’s a pretty decisive verdict in public opinion. Each poll showed independents said the shooting was wrong by at least a 2-to-1 margin. And Democrats were significantly more likely to object (87% in the CNN poll) than Republicans were to stand by the ICE agent (61%). Most everything the Trump administration is doing these days is unpopular. But these numbers suggest ICE’s use of force is more unpopular than most. And it’s not even as if Trump supporters are united. But it’s worth emphasizing that the Trump administration didn’t just say the ICE agent, Jonathan Ross, was justified in shooting Good. It went quite a bit further, immediately casting Good’s actions as “domestic terrorism” and saying she intentionally targeted the ICE agent with her car. It’s looking pretty clear that that is out of step with the public’s interpretation of events. The Yahoo-YouGov poll shows just 24% of Americans said Good was committing domestic terrorism. Only 52% of Republicans agreed with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on that. Some in the administration have occasionally seemed to walk back Noem’s claim, allowing that perhaps Good didn’t deliberately target the officer. “Look, I don’t know what’s in a person’s heart or in a person’s head,” Vice President JD Vance conceded last week when pressed on Good’s intent In case there was any doubt how big this news was, the polls show Americans are overwhelmingly paying close attention. The Yahoo poll showed 63% said they had heard “a lot” about the situation. And the Quinnipiac poll showed 82% of voters said they’d seen a video of the shooting. Those are huge numbers in an American public that often tunes out political news. For instance, even after the US ousted a foreign leader (Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro) earlier this month, just 42% in a Reuters-Ipsos poll said they had heard “a lot” about it. Marquette University Law School regularly asked such questions throughout 2025. Out of dozens of news events tested, only a handful garnered that much attention. Indeed, the danger in this episode for the administration is not just that Americans disagree with its posture on the ICE agent. As I wrote last week, the political risk is that this becomes a flashpoint in the debate over ICE and President Donald Trump’s deportation campaign. ICE and Trump’s deportations have polled poorly for a while now, but we haven’t seen a huge backlash in Congress or the streets. In recent days, we’ve started to see some key influencers like Joe Rogan more vocally criticizing the ICE raids. Rogan, who supported Trump in 2024, likened ICE’s actions to the “Gestapo.” The new polls show ICE’s overall numbers haven’t changed much; people disliked the way the agency is enforcing immigration laws before the Minneapolis shooting (57%-39% in a July Quinnipiac poll), and they still dislike it today (57%-40%). But the numbers also suggest the episode could add some urgency to the public’s pre-existing concerns about Trump’s deportations. The CNN poll asked a follow-up for those who labeled the shooting “inappropriate.” It asked whether they believed this was just an isolated incident or whether it “reflects bigger problems with the way ICE is operating.” Fully 9 in 10 critics of this episode chose the latter. So a 51% majority of Americans said not only that the ICE agent’s actions were wrong in this situation, but they attached it to more systemic problems with the agency. Also striking were a pair of poll findings testing views of ICE raids overall: That’s two polls showing people think these raids are actually counter-productive – both by 20-point margins. We’ve seen evidence before that Americans think Trump overreached with his deportations and don’t like his administration’s tactics. But not necessarily like this. There’s a budding movement in the Democratic Party to potentially target Noem for impeachment. The polls suggest her political stock is declining. Americans disapproved of Noem 61%-38% in the CNN poll and registered voters disapproved 52%-36% in the Quinnipiac poll. The latter suggested Noem has lost ground in recent months. A July Quinnipiac poll showed Noem 11 points underwater (50%-39%), compared to 16 points underwater today.