More than half of all Americans, including a quarter of Democrats, support the mass deportation of immigrants who are living in the country illegally, a new poll found.
The Scripps News/Ipsos survey’s findings come as former President Trump and his allies have intensely focused on immigration in the 2024 election cycle.
About 54 percent of respondents — 86 percent of Republicans, 58 percent of independents and 25 percent of Democrats — said they “strongly” or “somewhat” support a wide-scale effort to deport millions of immigrants, and 59 percent said they are closely following the “immigration situation at the U.S.-Mexico border.”
That is fucking terrifying.
Very sensationalistic title. “Somewhat supporting the deportation of illegal immigrants” is broad enough that most people can make it compatible with whatever their more specific worldview is. Deporting illegal immigrants who commit violent crimes, for example, would fall under that.
I was about to say, “somewhat” is doing some heavy lifting here.
The mass deportation of undocumented immigrants:
30% - Strongly support
24% - Somewhat support
68% also support a path for citizenship for undocumented immigrants who came here as children. Really, the only thing this says is 54% of Americans don’t support mass amnesty - which, while unfortunate, should not be surprising to anyone who hasn’t bought into the “99% of the electorate is secretly far-left!” shite sometimes peddled by the deluded.
If anything, I’m very surprised that 46% effectively support mass amnesty. That’s much higher than I’d have guessed. If the question were posed to me as “would you deport known cartel members who are actively operating while in the country illegally” I’d say yes. That of course would be a vanishingly small percentage of illegals, but it shows how easily the answers can be manipulated.
I don’t support deporting cartel members. If we do that, then they’re free to continue operating. If we try to prosecute them, it puts the prosecutor, witnesses, jury, judges, all in danger. We should declare them terrorists and ship them to gitmo.
Let’s not. In fact, let’s not abuse US and international law with Gitmo ever again, please.
They’re already doing that, though.
I’m going to assume you’re just being facetious here, but I’m strongly against facilities like Guantanamo. Human rights have to be universal, otherwise they’re only suggestions.
Let me ask you a nuanced question:
What type of punishment would you be in favor of for high level cartel members who have significant pull with prison gangs in the US?
If I put it another way. Are you okay with the type of supermax confinement that El Chapo is under at the moment as an example?
I’m asking because this is something that I personally wrestle with as I think it is a gray area within my own ethical boundaries as they relate to human rights.
You mean if they’re in the US legally? I’m not against prisons in general, so long as people are treated humanely and they are focused on rehabilitation rather than punishment.
The actual phrasing in the poll was, “The mass deportation of undocumented immigrants”. I kind of doubt most people would think targeted deportation like for criminals would count as “mass deportation of undocumented immigrants”.