Polls: Majorities Of Americans Support Trump’s Mass Deportations

Throughout his first administration, Democrats always acted as if they had the wind in their sails when they assailed President Donald Trump’s policies. That was particularly true when it came to his stand against illegal immigration.

The ease with which they whipped up outrage against Trump’s efforts to stem the flow of migrants across the southern border was rooted in their confidence that most Americans shared their revulsion against his attempts to make an unwieldy federal immigration apparatus enforce the law.

His “zero tolerance” plan to shut down the flood of illegals was essentially derailed by a storm of criticism manufactured by the left that played upon public sympathy for those who were caught entering the country illegally. The argument behind it was illogical. Anyone who is arrested for any crime is going to be separated from his family regardless of the circumstances. And the claim that this practice was unique to Trump is false since the “children in cages” was something that began during the Obama administration.

Yet there is no denying that the force of public sentiment against it was such that Trump and his deputies had to surrender. Polls showed that most Americans opposed deporting illegals.

But no more.

To the consternation of Democrats and their corporate media cheerleaders, public opinion has shifted in Trump’s direction on a host of issues. A New York Times article about a new poll the paper had commissioned from Ipsos sought to cushion the blow to their left-wing readers’ already shattered morale by claiming that, “Support for Trump’s Policies Exceeds Support for Trump.” But even that is false. As the Real Clear Politics average of polls clearly shows, Trump’s personal favorability ratings are higher now than they ever were during his first term. His current standing of 51.3 percent job approval rating to 43.3 percent disapproval is a stark contrast to President Joe Biden’s final results of 57.1 percent disapproving to 38 percent approving.

But on illegal immigration, the numbers are staggering across the board. Polls conducted by ABC News, CBS News, Marquette University, and Times/Ipsos show that when respondents favor deporting all illegal immigrants by decisive majorities, ranging from 55 percent to 64 percent. These numbers exceed the 49.91 percent of the vote that Trump received in November against former Vice President Kamala Harris. That contrasts with the numbers from eight years ago that showed that only 36 percent to 42 percent were in favor. It amounts to a national consensus in favor of enforcing the law and gives Trump and Tom Homan, his border czar, a mandate.

The support for Trump’s efforts on a wide range of issues, including immigration enforcement and abolishing racist and discriminatory “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) programs is a shock to the system for the left. Yet most Democrats seem to be too dazed by Trump’s victory to go down the “resistance” rabbit hole the way they did in 2017 and as hard-core leftists as well as embittered and isolated Never Trumpers like Bill Kristol and former Washington Post columnist Jen Rubin would like them to do. 

Out of Touch

But while Democrats can read the poll numbers and sense the confidence with which the new GOP administration is carrying out the will of the voters, what’s lacking from them is any real understanding of why Trump’s policies are so popular. That’s very much the case with illegal immigration, since Democrats assumed that ordinary Americans felt the same way about the issue as their credentialed elites.

Perhaps the American people’s position came about after Biden’s open border policies, which allowed as many as 10 million illegals to enter the country — the approximately 8 million “encounters” with those entering without permission tabulated by the government and perhaps 2 million more “gotaways” who evaded apprehension. This has led to a situation where the number of illegals currently in the country is far higher than the 11 million figure that has been used by the left-wing media for the past decade. It could be as high as 30 million if one considers that a 2016 Yale University study estimated that there were at least 22 million illegals in the United States.

But the building of a consensus about the need to deport illegals is more than a function of non-enforcement. The flood of migrants into the United States has had a devastating impact on working-class Americans.

Starting in the 1990s, globalist economic policies meant more competition for U.S.-made goods depressed wages for the working class, who had to compete against cheap foreign labor. The NAFTA trade agreement also wiped out an estimated 700,000 American manufacturing jobs. The entry of China into the World Trade Organization further accelerated the decline of American manufacturing and wages. 

That was the context for the impact of the massive surge in illegal immigration that has taken place over the last two decades and culminated under Biden. The presence of so many people willing to work for low wages and no benefits delighted corporate America but also further drove down wages for working-class Americans and contributed to rising costs in health care, housing, and education.

The left still labors under the delusion that the working poor and the middle class are their natural constituency. But the fact that real wages for the working class dropped at least 5 percent over the last four decades while the highest earners got richer created a constituency for Trump that now crosses racial and ethnic lines.

Over the last several years, outrage about the Democrats’ erasure of the border has grown along with the understanding that this virtual invasion has come at a high cost to many working people, as well as communities that have been forced to deal with the needs of so many migrants.

Contrary to the assumptions of the left, those who support deportation orders for illegals are neither racist (most Hispanics favor enforcement of the law) nor xenophobic. But they do understand that an open border policy is a gift to the credentialed elites and large corporations who want a steady supply of migrant serfs to work for them at slave-labor wages that Americans won’t tolerate.

‘Dreamers’ and Birthright Citizenship

Some poll numbers show that this consensus doesn’t extend to deporting the so-called “dreamers” who were brought to the U.S. illegally when they were children or to Trump’s effort to end birthright citizenship for those who are born in the United States to illegal immigrant parents. Though as the debate about this heats up, those numbers may shift toward a position that, as Trump rightly asserts, is how many nations deal with the question.

Outrage is building within the left-wing media bubble about Trump’s determination to expel those that Biden let in or to resume the raids of those evading deportation orders. But the belief that this view is shared by most Americans is a myth. The American people elected Trump to enforce the law and to start deporting illegals. While leftist outlets will scream as he keeps his word and does exactly that, most Americans will be cheering.

Jonathan S. Tobin is a senior contributor to The Federalist, editor in chief of JNS.org, and a columnist for Newsweek. Follow him on Twitter at @jonathans_tobin.