Fears about the US immigration crisis have been laid bare thanks to a poll showing broad support for mass raids and deportations of illegal immigrants.
Fifty-six percent of voters said most or all illegal immigrants in the United States should be detained and deported, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
This is understood to apply to at least 10 million people, and perhaps many more.
Another 36 percent of registered voters supported using detention camps to hold undocumented immigrants before they are removed from the country.
More than half of Americans want to see mass roundups and deportations of undocumented immigrants.
Haitian migrants cross the Rio Grande from Mexico into the US
Still, 54 percent of respondents opposed such camps; and 10 percent said they were not sure.
The survey 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 aligned with those of his predecessor, Donald Trump, who promises to crack down on immigrants if he defeats Biden in the 2024 presidential election.
Trump has talked about plans to build large camps to hold immigrants awaiting deportation.
In an interview with Time magazine in April, Trump said he would consider using camps, but that “they wouldn’t be as necessary” because people would be deported quickly.
Tom Homan, a former official and Trump ally, said tents would be needed as more illegal immigrants in the United States are arrested and held for deportation, exceeding existing detention space.
“We’ll have to hold them somewhere,” Homan said in an interview.
The tents would meet detention standards set by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and would not constitute “concentration camps,” he added.
Homan said National Guard troops could support deportation operations, but law enforcement officials would have to make arrests.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Trump would “marshal all necessary federal and state powers to institute the largest deportation operation in United States history.”
Biden defeated Trump in 2020 by promising to reverse many of Trump’s hardline immigration policies.
But the 81-year-old president has struggled with a record number of immigrants caught illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
Asylum seekers drink water and socks donated by a 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, Mexico and the United States.
Texas National Guard agents use pepper spray to deter migrants at a barbed wire fence installed along the Rio Grande.
It has hardened its attitude toward the border in the run-up to the election.
ICE increased deportations late last year, with 66,000 people removed between Oct. 1 and Dec. 31, 2023, agency statistics show.
This is a more aggressive pace than at the beginning of Biden’s presidency.
Biden campaign spokeswoman Maca Casado said in a statement that Americans “want immigration and border security solutions, not the cruel and ineffective chaos that Donald Trump offers.”
Former President Donald Trump
It is unclear how many people are in the United States illegally.
During the first two decades of the century, there were between 10 and 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.
Some Republican politicians and conservative monitoring groups say this number has skyrocketed since Biden took office, thanks to increased arrivals and lax border policies, and could be closer to 20 million today.
Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio says there could be as many as “30 million people who entered this country illegally.”
About 85 percent of Republican voters in the survey said most or all illegal immigrants in the United States 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 sent to detention camps while they await deportation hearings.
About 62 percent of registered Republicans said they agreed, compared to 12 percent of Democrats and 35 percent of independents.
The survey, conducted online, surveyed 3,208 registered voters nationwide.
It had margins of error of about 2 percentage points for responses from all registered voters, about 3 points for registered Republicans and Democrats, and about 4 points for independents.
With agencies.