More than half of Americans—including 42 percent of Democrats—said they would support mass deportations of illegal immigrants, according to a new Axios Vibes poll released on April 25, 2024.
Share of Americans who say they support mass deportations of undocumented immigrants:
The unauthorized immigrant population in the United States grew to 11.0 million in 2022, according to new Pew Research Center estimates based on the 2022 American Community Survey, the most recent year available.
Their final estimate of the U.S. unauthorized immigrant population includes an upward adjustment, because censuses and surveys tend to miss some people. Especially unauthorized immigrants, which tend to be higher than for other groups.
During the June 27th presidential debate, Trump claimed there were 18 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
According to NBC News, “one of the two former Trump officials said it could be as high as 30 million.”
Pew Research finds encounters with migrants at U.S. borders reached record levels throughout 2022-23, and the number of applicants waiting for decisions on asylum claims increased by about 1 million by the end of 2023.
This Axios Poll expresses a dissatisfaction of U.S. Citizens on how Democrats and Republicans have been handling the issue of illegal immigration. Americans are sending a very clear message to politicians: “Get this under control”.
Between Kamala and Trump, it seems Trump is the one who is going to address the issue of illegal immigration. Hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants are flooding our borders every year, and the Biden-Harris administration has done nothing to fix it.
Many on the Left claim that illegal border crossings at the southern border are at their lowest levels in five years due to a series of executive actions passed by the Biden Administration.
In an interview with NBC News, Republican Vice President Nominee JD Vance responded to this by saying, “border crossings at the southern border are lower because the Harris Administration is sending more immigrants through the ports of entry. So, instead of coming through the southern border, they’re now being flown, at taxpayer expense, to the ports of entry all over our country.”
He goes on to say, “the number of illegal crossings—they’re not any lower. They are just shuffling how the people are coming into the country in the first place.”
In the interview, NBC News responded by saying “they are able to process them more efficiently.”
“I don’t want a border czar who makes it more efficient for illegal immigrants to come into this country. That’s why we have the problem that we have,” responded JD Vance.
Referring to his plans on Mass Deportation of Illegal Immigrants, Mr. Trump told a crowd in Iowa in September, “We will carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history.”
On the subject of asylum seekers, Mr. Trump would also negotiate with other nations to share the load, including by making cooperation a condition of any other bilateral engagement, Mr. Miller said. For example, a second Trump administration will seek to re-establish an agreement with Mexico that ensures asylum seekers remain there while their claims are processed, instead of letting stay in the United States.
According to New York Times, “Mr. Trump would also push to revive ‘safe third country’ agreements with several nations in Central America, and try to expand them to Africa, Asia and South America. Under such deals, countries agree to take would-be asylum seekers from specific other nations and let them apply for asylum there instead.”
The Axios online survey also found that 46 percent of Republicans and 30 percent of Democrats said they would end birthright citizenship guaranteed under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. The Harris Poll conducted for Axios surveyed 6,251 adults between March and April 2024.
The New York Times also reports that “Mr. Trump would try to end birthright citizenship for babies born in the United States to undocumented parents — by proclaiming that policy to be the new position of the government and by ordering agencies to cease issuing citizenship-affirming documents like Social Security cards and passports to them. That policy’s legal legitimacy, like nearly all of Mr. Trump’s plans, would be virtually certain to end up before the Supreme Court.”
Participants included Republicans, Democrats, and independents across multiple generations, from Baby Boomers to Generation Z. The poll has a margin of error of 1.5 percentage points.