Poll after poll is indicating that Americans are increasingly adopting hardline positions on border enforcement, with a majority of Americans supporting positions historically aligned with former President Donald Trump.
Surveys in recent months indicate American voters are increasingly receptive to the idea of mass deportations, a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico, detention camps for illegal aliens awaiting removal and even the use of military troops to help with deportation efforts. These shifts come as federal immigration officials continue to deal with an unprecedented crisis at the southern border.
A CNN survey found that 48% of Americans favored the idea of detaining and deporting millions of illegal aliens. When a Reuters/Ipsos poll asked Americans if illegal aliens “should be arrested and put in detention camps while awaiting deportation hearings,” 42% of respondents answered affirmatively.
For the first time in the poll’s history, a Monmouth University survey in February found that a majority of Americans now support building a border wall.
In one of the most notable recent surveys, an Economist/YouGov poll found that 56% of Americans favor “using military troops to arrest and deport people who are in the U.S. unlawfully,” as opposed to only 31% who were against the idea. Sixty percent of respondents also agreed it was a “good idea” to use military troops to assist Border Patrol in securing the southern border with Mexico.
The shift in public perception comes as the country continues to deal with the impact of the immigration crisis. Under President Joe Biden, federal immigration authorities have witnessed record levels of encounters at the southern border, putting a strain on national and local resources.
Immigration experts have suggested that the crisis could spell trouble for the current administration.
“In November, the American people will have a clear choice in front of them: catch and release or detain and deport. Based on recent polls and countless preventable crimes, it’s clear who they’ll side with — President Trump. Law and order will be restored,” RJ Hauman, president of the National Immigration Center for Enforcement (NICE) stated to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The momentum behind public opinion for stronger enforcement does not appear to be slowing down.
An outright majority of Americans now say they support the mass deportation of illegal aliens, including 42% of Democrats, according to a poll released earlier this month by Axios. Roughly two-thirds of respondents believed illegal immigration to be a legitimate crisis, not a politically-driven narrative as many Democrats have suggested in the past.
Trump was elected to the White House in 2016 on the promise to erect a massive border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. The Republican president went on to declare a national emergency at the border in order to secure more wall funding, and deployed troops to the border — strategies that more Americans now support.
