On Friday, President Trump asked the Supreme Court to uphold his controversial decision earlier this month to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — a wartime law that hasn't been used since World War II — in order to deport 238 Venezuelan migrants without due process.

A federal judge had previously ordered the administration to turn its planes around so

Trump’s actions could be reviewed. The administration did not comply with the judge’s order.

Yet according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll, just 32% of Americans agree with a version of the argument the administration plans to put to the Supreme Court: that Trump was "right… not to comply with the judge's order" because judges "should not be able to stop the president from deporting people."

In contrast, a full 54% of Americans say that “it was wrong for Trump not to comply with the judge’s order” because “this issue should be resolved in court.”

The survey of 1,677 U.S. adults, which was conducted from March 20 to 24, finds some openness to Trump’s initial removals — depending on what kind of information is provided about the deportees.

But it also reveals widespread opposition to the way the president has handled subsequent pushback from the courts.

To test how certain details affect public opinion on deportation, Yahoo News and YouGov asked half of respondents to weigh in on Trump’s decision to remove "more than 200 Venezuelan migrants” with no additional description of who those migrants might be.

More Americans oppose (41%) than favor (36%) Trump’s deportations when they’re characterized that way.

Meanwhile, the other half of respondents received an additional piece of information: that the migrants were "accused of being gang members." More of these Americans favor (45%) than oppose (36%) Trump's deportations.

Such results suggest that support for the president’s actions may hinge less on their legality than the status of the people he’s deporting.

Defense lawyers and relatives have insisted that many deportees are not gang members — something they didn't have a chance to prove in immigration court before the administration suddenly sent them to a notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador. So far, the administration has provided limited evidence to support gang connections.

But while feelings about Trump’s initial deportations may be mixed, public sentiment about what he did next is not — and it is much more negative toward the president.

In addition to the 54% of Americans who say Trump was wrong not to comply with the judge's order to turn the planes around, most also reject the president's argument that the same judge is a "lunatic" who should be "impeached" by Congress.

A full 55% of U.S. adults say that particular judge should remain on the bench; just 26% say he should be impeached.

Even fewer (21%) favor removing the judge in question when told that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts — a Republican appointee — reacted to Trump with a rare statement saying "impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision."

The new Yahoo News/YouGov poll does have some good news for the president on immigration in general. Near the end of Trump’s first term in 2020, a series of Yahoo News/YouGov surveys found that, on average, more Americans disapproved (52%) than approved (42%) of the way he was handling the issue.

But today, more approve (48%) than disapprove (44%).

Pro-Trump sentiment is especially strong among the 11% of Americans who say immigration is their most important issue: 70% of them voted for him in 2024, 85% of them rate him favorably and 87% of them approve of his job performance overall.

The risk for Trump is that four times as many Americans (46%) name either the cost of living (23%) or the economy (23%) as their most important issue — and Trump's ratings in those areas are far more negative than positive.

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The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,677 U.S. adults interviewed online from March 20 to 24, 2025. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2024 election turnout and presidential vote, party identification and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Party identification is weighted to the estimated distribution at the time of the election (31% Democratic, 32% Republican). Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. adults. The margin of error is approximately 2.6%.