The key term is “mass deportations,” which President Donald Trump has identified as having created problematic and negative optics for his immigration enforcement policy.

According to reports, Trump became convinced through conversations with his wife, Melania, and other advisors like Chief of Staff Susan Wiles, that his administration’s immigration enforcement had effectively gone too far, at least with the broad policy optics of “mass deportations,” and his immigration policy was souring on the American public.

Instead, Trump wants to refocus his policy messaging on arresting the “bad guys,” or, as Border Czar Tom Homan has repeatedly emphasized, have ICE target the “worst of the worst.” As Trump put it, “We’ve got to focus on the criminals.”

Following the confrontations in Minneapolis between immigration enforcement officers and anti-ICE activists, which left two agitators dead, the Trump administration has struggled to address a growing negative mainstream media framing of its immigration enforcement.

It helped to create a window for Democrat lawmakers to exploit in their demand for ridiculous and radical enforcement changes for ICE. Indeed, Senate Democrats have succeeded for a month now in shutting down the Department of Homeland Security as they seek to leverage the negative perception of ICE to gain concessions from Republicans and the Trump administration.

Trump’s removal of Kristi Noem from heading the DHS, as well as the now-former Border Patrol commander at large, Greg Bovino, was a not-so-subtle acknowledgement that while they met expectations when it came to getting results in tracking down, arresting, and deporting criminal illegal aliens, they had failed in effectively responding to the Democrats’ and Leftmedia’s framing of the immigration enforcement.

In fact, months ago, Homan warned that leaning too hard on a wide net, a mass deportation approach, would end up backfiring on the positive political capital Trump had built up against the Biden administration’s immigration willful negligence and de facto open borders policy.

With Trump tasking Homan to take over ICE operations in Minneapolis and tapping Senator Markwayne Mullin to head DHS, he’s aiming to reframe the optics on his immigration enforcement policy, not change his original strategy, the targeting of criminal illegal aliens. As White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson explained, “Nobody is changing the Administration’s immigration enforcement agenda. President Trump’s highest priority has always been the deportation of illegal alien criminals who endanger American communities.”

Mullin also tacitly identified the problem of negative optics surrounding ICE, stating, “My goal in six months is that we’re not in the lead story every day.”

According to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, some 58% of respondents agreed with the statement that “Trump is going too far” with deportations. Just a month prior, 48% of respondents saw it that way. Given the actual data and success of Trump’s immigration and border enforcement, and the major benefits it has brought, with crime down by a significant amount across the country, it’s not Trump’s policy that was the problem; it’s that his administration had allowed the Democrats and the mainstream media to negatively frame his administration’s enforcement.

It’s unfortunate that months ago, when a disagreement arose within the White House over how best to focus on immigration enforcement, Noem’s hard-nosed, in-your-face messaging approach apparently won out over Homan’s advice of a more low-key, but targeted operations prioritizing the arrest and removal of criminal illegals.

With midterms fast approaching and Republican lawmakers struggling to find an edge over Democrats on popular legislation like the SAVE Act, which the vast majority of Americans support, taking the issue of ICE enforcement off the front page should help GOP candidates come November.

As frustrating as it can be at times, how a policy is framed and packaged for the American public is just as important, if not more so, than its actual implementation. In politics, whoever wins the optics battle usually wins the issue.