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Mass deportation ’very unpopular’: Survey
DATA FOR PROGRESS – Immigration is among the top issues for voters in this election, and previous Data for Progress polling has found that former President Donald Trump has a trust advantage on the issue. Trump has pledged to carry out “the largest deportation operation in American history,” and surveys from the Pew Research Center and Ipsos have found that a majority of voters support “mass deportation”. However, as Vox suggests, these poll questions could be misleading, as voters may have different interpretations of what “mass deportation” means and what types of undocumented immigrants would actually be affected.
However, for the seven other examples tested, most voters think immigrants should not be deported. Only 31% of voters think a person with a doctoral degree from a US university who overstayed their visa should be deported. Additionally, less than 1 in 4 voters think the following people should be deported: an undocumented community volunteer who has lived in the US for 10 years and has no criminal record (24%), an undocumented person who has lived in the US for 15 years and has US-born children (24%), and an undocumented person who has lived in the US for more than 10 years and owns a small business employing American workers (24%).
Even smaller percentages of voters think a person residing in the US under Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from an ongoing conflict (21%), a person who has been awaiting a decision on their asylum application for three years (20%), and a person brought to the US without legal status as a child 20 years ago (19%) should be deported.
Broadly, these findings indicate that voters do not support mass deportation. They are aligned in supporting deportations of criminals and new arrivals — but do not think that immigrants with other cases, including those who have US-born children, own a small business, are covered by TPS, or are seeking asylum should be deported.