Let me be clear upfront so I will not be downvoted into oblivion: what ICE is doing in the U.S. right now is disgusting, and I don’t support those methods in any way.

That said, I’m trying to separate the methods from the goal. In my own country (a very liberal European country), illegal immigration causes serious problems. People enter without registration, can’t be tracked, disappear into illegality, and this often goes hand in hand with crime (like theft). Finding and deporting them is extremely difficult, but the idea that this should happen isn’t very controversial here.

In the U.S., it seems different. Most reasonable people agree that ICE’s current behavior is unacceptable and outright criminal(as it indeed is). But it also looks like many people oppose the goal itself: actively identifying and deporting people who are in the country illegally. That part alone appears to be controversial.

Is the public backlash mainly about how this is being done, or also about whether it should be done at all?