Americans less welcoming of immigrants without legal status, finds Reuters/IPSOS poll 

Americans have grown less welcoming toward immigrants living in the US illegally since Donald Trump’s first presidency, but remain wary of harsh measures like using detention camps for Trump’s promised mass deportation effort, a Reuters/IPSOS poll has found.

Some 33 per cent of respondents in the poll, conducted between 5 to 10 December, said that most or all immigrants without legal status should be allowed to stay in the United States, down from 39 per cent in a similar poll conducted in 2017, early in Republican President-elect Trump’s first four-year term.

The share of respondents who said that most or all immigrants in the US illegally should be deported was largely stable at 53 per cent, compared with 51 per cent in 2017. The share of people who said they weren’t sure whether they should be allowed to stay rose to 14 per cent from 9 per cent.

The poll showed a modest hardening of views on immigration among many Americans, but also points to potential political risks for Trump depending on how aggressively he implements his deportation campaign after he takes office on 20 January.

Only 30 per cent of respondents agreed with the statement that, “Illegal immigrants should be arrested and put in detention camps while awaiting deportation hearings,” while 53 per cent disagreed. Another 17 per cent said that they didn’t know where they stood or declined to answer the question.

Republican pollster Whit Ayres said that Trump could lose support if he splits apart families, puts immigrants into World War Two-style internment camps or deports people who were brought to the US illegally as children, a group known as “Dreamers”. “Most Americans are not going to support deporting a father who is a sole breadwinner of a family of American citizens,” said Ayres.

Trump recaptured the White House in November after vowing to crack down on legal and illegal immigration, including a pledge to deport record numbers of immigrants in the US illegally. Some 27 per cent of respondents in the new Reuters/Ipsos poll said that immigration should be the top priority during Trump’s first 100 days in office, higher than any other policy area.

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In an interview with NBC News that aired on Sunday, Trump said that he aimed to deport all immigrants who are in the US illegally. “I don’t want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back,” he pointed out.

The less welcoming stance towards people in the US illegally comes as the immigrant share of the population has surged to 14 per cent, the highest level in over a century, according to 2023 US Census population estimates. That percentage includes immigrants living in the US illegally, a number that the US Department of Homeland Security estimated at 11 million in January 2022.

The incoming Trump administration plans to tap resources from across government for the deportation initiative, which Vice President-elect JD Vance has signalled could target one million people per year.

The American Immigration Council estimated that deporting all immigrants in the US illegally would cost an average of $88 billion annually. In a Fox News interview on Sunday, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan cited a similar sum.

In an April interview, Trump declined to rule out building detention camps, but said that there “wouldn’t be that much of a need for them” because immigrants would be deported quickly.

During this year’s election campaign, Trump railed against Democratic President Joe Biden for allowing what Trump falsely depicted as a wave of violent crimes committed by immigrants in the country illegally. Numerous studies have found that immigrants — both with and without legal status — do not commit crimes at higher rates than native-born Americans.

The political rhetoric might be shaping the views of some Americans, though. Among those in the poll that picked immigration as one of the top problems facing the country, some 20 per cent said that immigrants committing crimes was their top immigration concern. The share of people focused on migrant crime was slightly higher among minority respondents — at 24 per cent — compared with respondents who identified as white — at 18 per cent.

Surveys in past years found fewer than one in 10 people focused on immigration were particularly concerned about migrant crime.

The decline in the share of people who welcome immigrants in the country illegally was particularly strong among Republicans, where support for allowing people to stay fell to 9 per cent, from 18 per cent in 2017. Among Democrats, support for letting people stay was largely unchanged at 61 per cent.

Among Hispanics, a group that exit polls showed swung heavily towards Trump in November relative to the 2020 election, support for letting immigrants stay even if they lack legal status fell to 47 per cent, from 54 per cent in 2017. Among Black respondents, who continued to oppose Trump overwhelmingly in November according to exit polls, the share that backed letting people stay fell to 36% from 58% in 2017. Some 29% of white respondents backed allowing people to stay, down from 33% in 2017.

Brett Buerck, CEO of the Republican-focused consulting firm Majority Strategies, said in an email that voters want Trump to take action with immigration enforcement. “They are tired of endless talk without real progress,” insisted Buerck. “The immediate agenda is clear: secure the border, deport criminals, and sort out the rest from there.”

The Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted nationwide and online, surveyed 4,183 people and had margins of error of about two percentage points for questions answered by all respondents. The figures on Black and Hispanic views were based on smaller samples in the survey and had margins of error of about four or five percentage points.

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