By Tom Ozimek
Public approval of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has jumped sharply in the past year, making it the only major federal agency to show a significant gain in Gallup’s latest annual governance survey—as ratings for most other agencies have fallen to record lows.
According to Gallup’s poll, published on Oct. 9, DHS’s job performance was rated as “excellent” or “good” by 42 percent of respondents, up from 32 percent in 2024. That 10-point increase is the largest year-over-year improvement among the 15 federal agencies measured though still below its 2017 peak of 59 percent.
By contrast, ratings for six other prominent agencies—including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Internal Revenue Service—dropped to their lowest or near-lowest levels in Gallup’s multi-year trend.
FEMA’s positive score plunged from 46 percent to 26 percent, the steepest decline of any agency, followed by the CIA with a 10-point drop, and the CDC with 9 points down.
Gallup found that partisan divisions were widest for DHS. While 73 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents gave the department favorable marks, only 14 percent of Democrats did—an almost 60-point gap.
“These partisan swings suggest both politics and performance drive confidence in government,” according to Megan Brenan, senior editor at Gallup.
The Trump administration has relied on DHS, together with the Pentagon, to carry out its efforts to curb illegal immigration, as well as other public safety initiatives including dispatching the National Guard to high-crime cities.
Majorities of Republicans now rate DHS, the Department of War, and the FBI positively, whereas no agency earned majority-level support from Republicans a year ago.
The Epoch Times has reached out to DHS with a request for comment but has not received a response.
Border Arrests at Historic Low
The jump in DHS approval comes as the agency touts record-low apprehensions of illegal immigrants at the U.S.–Mexico border.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Oct. 7 that the 2025 fiscal year produced 237,565 arrests, an 87-percent drop from the average of the last four fiscal years, and the fewest since 1970.
“We have had the most secure border in American history, and our end-of-year numbers prove it,” Noem said in a statement. “We have shattered multiple records this year, and once again we have broken a new record.”
The 2025 fiscal year ran from Oct. 1, 2024, through Sept. 30, 2025. DHS noted that about 72 percent of those arrests occurred in the final months of the Biden administration, prior to President Donald Trump’s return to office. Arrests, which had already dropped after then-President Joe Biden’s June 2024 asylum restrictions, fell further once the Trump administration “virtually eliminated asylum access and dispatched thousands of military troops to the border,” the department said.
DHS also said that September marked the fifth consecutive month with zero releases by Border Patrol, compared with thousands of releases during the previous administration.
Those enforcement results were paired with record deportation totals. Shortly before the fiscal year ended at the end of September, DHS reported that more than 2 million illegal immigrants had been deported or had voluntarily left the country since the start of Trump’s second term.
Recent polling shows strong public support for the Trump administration’s mass deportations of illegal immigrants. A Harvard/Harris survey taken Oct. 1–2 showed that 56 percent of registered voters support deporting all illegal aliens, while 78 percent support deporting criminal illegal aliens.
“President Trump and Secretary Noem are delivering on the American people’s mandate to deport illegal aliens, and the latest polls show that support for the America First agenda has not wavered,” Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, said in a statement. “The American people, the law, and common sense are on our side, and we will not stop until law and order is restored after Biden’s open border chaos flooded our country with the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens.”
“Law and order will win the day.”
T.J. Muscaro contributed to this report.
