ICE makes these swing voters anxious, but they don’t want to ‘abolish ICE’
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hey there, it is the NPR Politics Podcast for Tuesday, February 11th, 2026. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting.
I'm Ashley Lopez.
I cover politics. And I'm Mara Liason, Senior National Political Correspondent.
And today on the show, it's another edition of our Swing Voter series. We're checking in monthly with voters who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and switched to Donald Trump in 2024 to see how they're feeling about everything right now. We heard from swing voters in Pennsylvania last month. You can go find that show earlier in the feed. But today we're going to Arizona. Ashley, tell us a little bit more about the voters we're going to hear from today.
Yeah. So just like last time, we talked to 14 voters, seven in each focus group. This time there was a pretty good mix politically. Four people out of the 14 identified as Democrats, three as Republicans, and we got seven independents, which make up a big chunk of swing voters. So this was a really good mix of folks.
Was there any broad takeaways, I guess, big picture before we drill down into specific issues?
Sure. So not surprisingly, because we're in Arizona or, you know, virtually in our case in Arizona, a border state, immigration and ICE were very top of mind.
What insights do swing voters from Arizona share about ICE?
When Rich Tao from Engages, who moderated these focus groups, asked, you know, at the top, give me a word, something top of mind. What is really concerning you right now? Almost unanimously, we heard immigration. We heard ICE. And just to give people context, the last time we talked to swing voters, this was right after the killing of Renee Macklingood and the killing of Alex Preddy hadn't happened. So this is the first time we've heard from voters after both those shootings in Minneapolis.
Mara, did you notice that there was a sort of difference in how the voters in Arizona talked about this issue compared to Pennsylvania?
Yeah.
So what really struck me was how these voters talked about the chaos that ICE has called. One woman said, it's constant chaos in the world. I want this all to stop. And there was a broad view that securing the border was a good thing. Not having undocumented immigrants with criminal records in the United States was a good thing. But having ICE go out without uniforms, attacking American citizens or protesters was not a good thing. And it makes them anxious. That was the big takeaway. The ICE is making voters anxious. A lot of chaos.
Yeah. And I will say compared to Pennsylvania, the amount of people. So it was nine out of 14 people said they or someone they knew had actually changed their life out of concern about possibly interacting with ICE. And part of the understanding with these focus groups is that folks only provide their first name. So we're going to hear Carolyn, Esmerita and Stephanie talk about how ICE is affecting their lives and the lives of people around them.
I live in a 55 and older community and they were trying to find like Asian people so that they could deport them. And that was too far because they're just elderly people. If you're not here legally, you need to go back to where you came from and do it the right way. You know, but we should not be afraid to be walking the streets. They're down the street from my house now. I was born in Nigeria and I know people who have been arrested. And it was like, oh, you look like someone that was illegal. And so it's like you have to almost like carry your passports just in case I look like someone who is here illegally.
It's so interesting. So this is like not an abstract issue or an academic issue on how people feel about immigration as a policy. But literally, like most of these people have found that it has impacted their day to day lives.
Yeah. And so one of the folks that we heard from there, Esmerida, she's from El Mirage. She identifies as a Democrat. She says that she was born in the United States, but she's Hispanic. And she's very aware of the fact that she looks Hispanic. And so that is part of like the calculus she's making when she's deciding to go out in the street, especially since there's a detention center so close to her, like just physically so close to her.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:04–1:15
2
What insights do swing voters from Arizona share about ICE?
1:15–4:27
3
How do Arizona voters perceive immigration and its enforcement?
4:27–7:07
4
What concerns do swing voters express regarding ICE's tactics?
7:07–10:41
5
How has ICE impacted the daily lives of voters in Arizona?
10:41–16:18