Fears about America’s immigration crisis have been laid bare by a poll showing widespread support for roundups and mass deportations of illegal migrants.
More than 56 percent of voters said most or all immigrants in the U.S. illegally should be rounded up and deported, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.
It is believed that this applies to at least 10 million people, and perhaps many more.
Another 36 percent of registered voters supported the use of detention camps to hold undocumented immigrants before deporting them.
More than half of Americans want to see mass roundups and deportations of undocumented immigrants
Haitian migrants cross the Rio Grande River from Mexico into the US
Yet 54 percent of respondents were against such camps; and 10 percent said they weren’t sure.
The poll shows widespread concern about massive flows of people across the southern border since Joe Biden became president in 2021.
Voters’ views on immigration are more in line with those of his predecessor, Donald Trump, who promises to crack down on migrants if he defeats Biden in the 2024 presidential election.
Trump has spoken of plans to build large camps to hold immigrants awaiting deportations.
In an interview with Time Magazine in April, Trump said he would consider using camps, but that “there wouldn’t be much need for that” because people would be deported quickly.
Tom Homan, a Trump ally and former official, said tents would be needed as more immigrants in the U.S. illegally are arrested and held for deportation, expanding existing detention space.
“We’re going to have to hold them somewhere,” Homan said in an interview.
The tents would meet U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention standards and would not be “concentration camps,” he added.
Homan said National Guard troops could support deportation operations, but law enforcement would have to make arrests.
Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Trump would “assemble whatever federal and state power is necessary to launch the largest deportation operation in American history.”
Biden defeated Trump in 2020 and promised to reverse many of Trump’s hardline immigration policies.
But the 81-year-old president has had to contend with record numbers of migrants caught illegally crossing the US-Mexico border.
Asylum seekers bring water and socks donated by charity as they wait to surrender to US immigration officials at the California-Mexico border
Migrants arrive in the village of Bajo Chiquito in Panama, part of an exodus through Central America and Mexico to the US.
Texas National Guard officers use pepper spray to deter migrants at a barbed wire fence along the Rio Grande
In the run-up to the elections, he has tightened his approach to the border.
ICE ramped up deportations late last year, removing 66,000 people from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31, 2023, agency statistics show
That’s a more aggressive pace than at the start of Biden’s presidency.
Biden campaign spokesperson Maca Casado said in a statement that Americans want “border security and immigration solutions, not the cruel, ineffective chaos that Donald Trump offers.”
Former President Donald Trump
It is not clear how many people are living in the US illegally.
During the first two decades of this century, there were between 10 and 12 million undocumented immigrants in the US.
Some Republican politicians and conservative watch groups say that has risen since Biden took over the White House, thanks to rising immigration and lax border policies, and could be closer to 20 million today.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida says as many as “30 million people could enter this country illegally.”
About 85 percent of Republican voters in the poll said most or all immigrants in the U.S. illegally should be deported, compared to 26 percent of Democrats and 61 percent of independents.
But fewer voters agreed with the statement that immigrants in the country illegally should be arrested and placed in detention camps pending deportation hearings.
About 62 percent of registered Republicans said they agreed, compared with 12 percent of Democrats and 35 percent of independents.
The poll, which was conducted online, surveyed 3,208 registered voters across the country.
It had a margin of error of about 2 percentage points for the responses of all registered voters, about 3 points for registered Republicans and Democrats and about 4 points for independents.
With agencies.