Before winning the presidential election last month, Donald Trump made immigration and border issues—and particularly his promise to carry out the “largest deportation operation in American history”—a centerpiece of his campaign.
News coverage of polling on mass deportation indicated that large shares of Americans were on board with Trump’s plan, which could target between 15 million and 20 million people, per the president-elect’s count. Trump’s reelection represents a “mandate” from voters “to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail, like deporting migrant criminals,” said Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokesperson, last month. Media interpretations of polling could very well play into the perception of a mandate to conduct large-scale deportations.
But a new survey suggests that Americans’ support for mass deportation comes with important—and overlooked—caveats. Sixty percent of Republicans believe that “immigration enforcement should prioritize violent criminals and those with final orders of removal rather than ‘all individuals without legal status,'” per a survey from the Bullfinch Group and the National Immigration Forum. Three-quarters of Republicans agreed that “family unity, respect for human dignity, and protection for the persecuted” must be “key priorities” as the government ramps up border security and immigration enforcement.
Overall, “significant majorities of groups” that voted for Trump “want his administration to focus immigration enforcement on threats to public safety rather than cast an unlimited net,” the National Immigration Forum observed. The survey was conducted earlier this month among 1,200 adults, including 1,000 registered voters, and found similarly high support for that idea among Democrats, independents, liberals, and moderates.
“We are working with Republicans and Democrats in Congress who understand what Americans are saying here: yes to safety and security, yes to order, and also yes to family unity and compassion,” says Jennie Murray, president and CEO of the National Immigration Forum.
When Americans are presented with more nuanced questions about mass deportation than binary yes-or-no ones, and when faced with the potential consequences of that policy, support tends to slip. Fifty-two percent of respondents said they support mass deportation in a postelection survey conducted by Scripps News and Ipsos last month, but that number dropped to 38 percent if it means separating families.
Americans also “remain wary of harsh measures like using detention camps for Trump’s promised mass deportation effort,” reported Reuters last week. Just 30 percent of respondents to a Reuters/Ipsos poll felt that undocumented immigrants should be kept in detention camps while awaiting deportation hearings. Fifty-three percent disagreed.
It’s true that polling on mass deportation sometimes yields seemingly contradictory results. An August 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that while 56 percent of registered voters supported “enforcing mass deportations,” 61 percent supported allowing undocumented immigrants to remain in the country legally “if certain requirements are met.”
In practice, “mass deportation, yes or no?” isn’t a terribly useful question. It misses all sorts of important details. How many people should that operation target? Should the U.S. deport longtime nonviolent residents? What about undocumented people supporting U.S. citizen children? What financial and ethical costs would Americans be willing to tolerate?
It’s important to tease out those distinctions as a new administration and new Congress prepare to get to work in January. Americans have much more nuanced views on mass deportation than some surveys suggest, and politicians should take note.
“Republican lawmakers have an opportunity to be a voice of reason and lead the conversation on solutions we so clearly need,” says Murray. “For the border, on asylum, and for immigrants who are part of our families and communities.”
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