but there wasn't a wide anti-ICE sentiment in 2017-2020

Sincere question because I've seen this sentiment on a few different topics recently: is the expectation for US politicians to follow popular sentiment? I understand the concept of representing your constituents but I have never taken that to mean making decisions based on the opinions of non experts.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding and what comments like this mean is that these things were not on the minds of the voters so politicians were not campaigning on it.