Most Americans do not support the deportation of all undocumented migrants, a survey has found.
Data for Progress, a progressive polling group, surveyed 1,195 likely voters between October 23 and 25, asking about nine possible deportation scenarios to gauge support for the idea of "mass deportation" that Donald Trump has touted throughout the campaign.
Only two scenarios had the support of more than half of respondents. "Deporting a person who recently crossed the border without legal status" was backed by 70 percent of respondents; "deporting a person who crossed the border without legal status and has a criminal record for a non-violent offense" received support of 67 percent.
The next most popular scenario was "deporting a person with a doctoral degree from a U.S. university who overstayed their visa and has been living in the U.S. for several years without legal status," which was supported by just 31 percent of respondents.
The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Donald Trump has said he wishes to deport 15 to 20 million people as part of a plan for "mass deportation" if he becomes president. CNN reported that the exact number of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. is unclear, but it's likely smaller than Trump's figure. A Pew Research estimate from 2021 put it at around 10.5 million. In the 2023 fiscal year, there were reportedly 2.5 million "encounters" at the border.
Trump's mass deportation plans could lead to one in three Latinos in the U.S. being targetted, and bring back family separations, according to research by the immigration and criminal justice advocacy group FWD.us. Trump also plans to target Haitian migrants, telling NewsNation he would revoke Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and "bring them back to their country."
Research from the American Immigration Council (AIC) found that mass deportation will likely also affect the 1 million undocumented business owners and entrepreneurs living in the United States.
The New York Times reported that Stephen Miller, an adviser for Trump during his first term expected to serve again if Trump were to win, told the outlet that if elected Trump would once again try to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an Obama-era policy which protects people who were unlawfully brought to the U.S. as children from deportation.
While various polls have found that respondents tend to support the idea of "mass deportation," the Data for Progress poll suggests that some of these specific policies are less popular.
It found that only 19 percent support deporting people who were brought to the U.S. as children and have lived in the country for over 20 years, and 21 percent supported deporting people in the U.S. under TPS visas.
Less than one in four respondents (24 percent) supported deporting people who live in the U.S. without legal status under the following three circumstances: have lived in the U.S. for over 10 years and own a business employing American workers; have lived in the U.S. for 10 years and are a community volunteer with no criminal record but face deportation under "expanded enforcement criteria"; or have lived in the U.S. for 15 years and have U.S.-born children.
When approached for comment via email, the Trump campaign pointed Newsweek to the Data for Progress website, highlighting its description as a "progressive think tank."
Nayna Gupta, the policy director at the AIC, told Newsweek she believes Trump's "mass deportation" policy will likely affect the groups listed in the poll.
"Our experience with immigration law is that you don't typically have candidates saying we'll initiate workplace raids and deport millions of people who have had low-level contact with the legal system and separate children from their mothers and father," Gupta said. However, "It is absolutely a realistic expectation that any group talking about mass deportation would target people like that."
Gupta believes that something else that people may find unappealing about the practical of mass deportation is how expensive it is.
Per AIC findings, the cost of deporting just one million people a year would be $88 billion, not only because of the costs towards law enforcement but also because of the losses in the economy from migrant laborors and entrepreneurs.
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