Trump is telling a story about Abrego García. The public isn’t buying it.

For nearly a month, the White House has tried to tell a story about Kilmar Abrego García, the undocumented immigrant who the Trump administration conceded was mistakenly deported from Maryland and imprisoned in El Salvador.

He’s a dangerous criminal, President Donald Trump has said. He’s a symbol of Trump’s crackdown on immigration, the kind of character that Americans should want deported. And he isn’t coming back.

“This man … is a very violent person,” Trump said this month, criticizing Abrego García in a nearly five-minute riff in the Oval Office. The president followed up with posts on social media alleging that the Salvadoran immigrant was a member of MS-13, a gang that Trump has labeled a foreign terrorist organization. The White House has also mocked Democrats who have traveled to El Salvador to advocate for Abrego García, dismissed arguments that the U.S. legal system is imperiled because the imprisoned man did not get a trial, and tried to shift the spotlight to unrelated criminal acts by other undocumented immigrants.

“If the Democrats want to argue over whether an illegal immigrant, foreign terrorist, MS-13 gang member and wife beater needs to be returned to the United States, that’s a fight we are willing to take. All day long,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

The strategy reflects Trump’s approach to his second term: Hit back, double down, don’t apologize – and change the subject to immigration, when possible. The president has viewed immigration as his strongest political advantage, the chief reason he took back the White House and a go-to attack line in choppy news cycles. His team has spent much of April highlighting the president’s immigration policies, rather than dwelling on the financial fallout since Trump announced sweeping tariffs on foreign imports three weeks ago and stock markets plunged.

But this time, the strategy doesn’t appear to be working. More Americans say Abrego García should be returned to the United States than say he should remain in prison in El Salvador, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll released Friday. A total of 42% say Abrego García, who has lived in Maryland and is married to a U.S. citizen, should be brought back, vs. 26% who say he should remain imprisoned abroad.

About 3 in 10 say they “don’t know enough to say,” an indication that opinions on the high-profile case are still forming. There also are key partisan splits, with about three-quarters of Democrats saying Abrego García should be returned, compared with just over half of Republicans who agree with Trump that the Salvadoran man should remain in prison.

The issue has also broken through at GOP lawmaker town halls, on Trump-friendly podcasts and in other spaces where the president has generally enjoyed support.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been repeatedly pressed by constituents to bring back Abrego García; some jeered his initial attempts to sidestep the question. Grassley said in an interview with an Iowa news outlet this week that it would be “a good thing” for the Trump administration to “make entreaties” to El Salvador to return Abrego García but that the decision rested with El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele.

Joe Rogan, a popular podcaster who hosted Trump for a nearly three-hour interview in October and endorsed him shortly afterward, also warned the Trump administration about sending U.S. residents directly to a prison abroad. That is a template for a future president to circumvent the legal system and punish perceived enemies, he said.

“We got to be careful that we don’t become monsters while we’re fighting monsters,” Rogan said on an episode last week. Even undocumented immigrants who are alleged gang members deserve due process, he added.

The shift in public opinion comes after Democrats and Abrego García’s lawyers mounted their own media campaigns, saying they are focused on legal principles and not the person at the center of the case. They have been joined by some right-leaning media outlets and conservative legal experts, who have warned that the White House is threatening fundamental rights granted to all residents of the United States and have called on other conservatives to speak out.

“Even if you assume the worst about Mr. Abrego García, he still is entitled to the protection of the law and due process,” said Gregg Nunziata, executive director of the Society for the Rule of Law, a right-of-center legal organization. “We should not accept the president narrowing our rights and liberties simply because it appears useful in the moment.”

The bipartisan rebukes to Trump have given his opponents hope that there is a limit to the president’s grip on half the country.

“The obvious lesson here for Democrats is stop overthinking everything,” Tommy Vietor, a co-host of the liberal podcast “Pod Save America,” wrote in a text message. “The election is a lifetime away. You can’t win an argument if you never join the conversation, so fight.”

The Abrego García case first received national attention after a March 31 article in the Atlantic magazine detailed how he was swept up in Trump’s mass deportation efforts. He was subject to removal proceedings because he crossed the southern border illegally as a 16-year-old in about 2011.

After Abrego García was detained by police in 2019 and questioned about gang activity – which he denied – a U.S. immigration judge shielded him from deportation to El Salvador, concluding that he was likely to face persecution there by a local gang that tried to extort his family and then recruit him into its ranks before he fled the country.

Trump and his allies have ignored those legal facts in favor of an emotional appeal to Americans’ fears – in this case, concern about the risks of violent crime and anxiety about undocumented immigrants. The administration released additional details about a protective order that Abrego García’s wife sought several years ago after a domestic dispute and shared photos of Abrego García’s knuckle tattoos, arguing that the symbols further signify his membership in MS-13. Criminal justice experts have acknowledged that the tattoos could carry gang-related meanings but warned against viewing them as definitive proof.

The administration and its allies have also attacked media outlets for using the term “Maryland man” to describe Abrego García, insisting instead that he be labeled an illegal immigrant or gang member, while boosting access for friendly platforms.

The White House last week added Gateway Pundit, which has mentioned Abrego García alongside MS-13 in more than 150 social media posts this month, to its press pool ahead of a briefing with the mother of Rachel Morin, a Maryland woman who was killed in 2023. A Salvadoran fugitive was convicted in Morin’s death, and the White House has sought to link the case with its separate efforts to crack down on Abrego García.

“WATCH: White House Holds Emergency Press Conference with Patty Morin, Angel Mother of Rachel Morin, as Media and Democrats Fawn Over Violent El Salvadorian MS-13 Gangster Kilmar Abrego Garcia,” one post on the Gateway Pundit website reads.

Tim Pool, a conservative influencer who has echoed the White House’s attacks on Abrego García, was given the “new media seat” at a White House press briefing Tuesday and invited to ask the first question. Pool used the moment to lambast how media organizations were describing Abrego García as a “Maryland man,” calling it a media “hoax” and drawing strong agreement from Leavitt.

“We were always right. The president was always on the right side of this issue, to deport this illegal criminal from our community,” Leavitt said, chastising much of the mainstream media coverage of Abrego García as “despicable.”

Within the pro-Trump media bubble, the president’s message has been successfully amplified. A Post analysis found that more than 40% of the social media posts or podcasts by right-wing influencers mentioning Abrego García also reference MS-13, gangs or terrorism, compared with about 8% of the posts by left-wing influencers. Meanwhile, about 17% of posts mentioning Abrego García by left-wing influencers reference “due process” or the “rule of law,” compared with 4% of the posts on the right, according to the Post’s analysis.

The Trump administration has also successfully shaped some of the headlines and cable chyrons. Conservative media outlets such as Newsmax and Fox News, which last week uncritically referred to Abrego García as a “Maryland man” in their news coverage, are now featuring hosts and guests who mock the idea of doing so.

The issue is a “huge winner,” said Stephen K. Bannon, a longtime Trump adviser and his former chief strategist in the White House, calling to “double down” in the wake of Friday’s polling data. He invoked a 2022 Tennessee traffic stop that led a highway patrol officer to suspect Abrego García of being involved in human trafficking and suggested a possible cable news chyron: “Democrats Defend MS-13 Human Trafficker.”

But as some conservative media outlets raise their own questions, new cracks have appeared in the right’s support for Trump.

“Why is Trump so dead set on denying due process to the wrongly deported El Salvadoran migrant?” the Wall Street Journal editorial board asked last week.

YouGov polling conducted Monday found that 45% of adults said everyone in the United States is entitled to due process under the law, while 23% said due process extends only to legal residents of the United States, and 18% said it was only for Americans. In fact, most constitutional rights, excluding voting, apply to anyone on U.S. soil – including the right to a hearing and an opportunity to defend oneself in legal matters.

In interviews, Democrats said they are digging in on the Abrego García case because it is emblematic of the Trump administration’s approach to the legal system – and the White House’s attempt to change a narrative.

“They believe in the philosophy of ‘you keep saying something, and you keep asserting strength’ – that people reward you and praise you for being strong,” said Rep. Gabe Amo, D-Rhode Island, who previously worked as a White House liaison in the Obama and Biden administrations. “They have existed in an alternate reality as it relates to the checks and balances and the rule of law since Day One.”

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Scott Clement and Matt Viser contributed to this report.