Just 10 percent of Americans oppose President Donald Trump’s promise to deport illegal migrants with criminal records, according to an Ipsos poll for the New York Times.
In contrast, 87 percent support the deportations strongly or “somewhat,” so providing a broad consensus for a national enforcement campaign.
And just 19 percent of Americans — fewer than one in five — strongly oppose “deporting all immigrants who are here illegally,” the Ipsos poll also showed. Fifty-six percent support the deportations strongly or somewhat.
The post-election collapse of tolerance for illegal migration was spotlighted Saturday when the newspaper posted its early-January poll of 2,128 citizens and residents that confirmed recent polling trends.
The broad shift in political opinion — dubbed a “preference cascade” by academics — was likely caused when Trump’s campaign and November win showed Americans how many other Americans oppose migration.
The new numbers will help Trump and his deputies begin the careful, low-drama, and gradual removal of millions of wage-cutting, rent-spiking migrants from U.S. society.
A patient and popular enforcement campaign will also help shift the political attention to the even bigger impact of legal migration on Americans.
Already, the rising public demand for less legal migration was spotlighted over Christmas when Twitter erupted in a furious debate over white-collar migration via the H-1B visa program. That drama was ignored by the poll but is expected to rise as the nation draws closer to the 2026 election.
Pro-migration groups, however, hope the Trump enforcement is chaotic and rushed because any tactical mistakes will help their media allies paint the repatriations as cruel and counterproductive.
The newspaper’s coverage of the poll downplays the drama, saying:
Many Americans who otherwise dislike President-elect Donald J. Trump share his bleak assessment of the country’s problems and support some of his most contentious prescriptions to fix them, according to a new poll from The New York Times and Ipsos.
The new poll includes much evidence that GOP voters are leading Democrats away from their politically disastrous support for the quasi-open borders policies put in place by President Joe Biden’s pro-migration, Cuban-born border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas.
For example, only 16 percent of Democrats oppose the deportation of criminal migrants, and only 34 percent of Democrats now “strongly” oppose the deportation of “all immigrants [emphasis added] who are here illegally.”
Overall, 55 percent want all migrants to be deported, and 87 percent want crminal migrants to be deported.
These numbers — the approaching 20256 midterm elections — help to explain why a critical share of Senate Democrats are expected on Monday to support the Laken Riley bill that would allow the detention of criminal migrants.
Similarly, 56 percent said the Mayorkas migration has caused more crime. Just 38 percent — including 63 percent of Democrats, said the migration “doesn’t have much impact on crime.”
The poll said that 41 percent of Americans, including 68 percent of GOP voters — say “immigrants today are a burden on our country because they take our jobs, housing and health care.” However, the “forced choice” question did not offer alternative answers, so it prodded 56 percent of respondents to say immigrants “strengthen our country because of their hard work and talents.”
There is much evidence that legal and illegal migration makes ordinary Americans poor and less productive.
Elsewhere in the poll, Ipsos asked if there were too many or too few legal migrants.
Thirty percent said too many, and just 24 percent said too few. But the plurality of 43 percent picked a middle option — “the right number” — likely because the respondents do not know that Biden’s deputies imported roughly one migrant for every American birth since 2021.
Other recent polls show less support for migration. A January 5-8 survey by YouGov showed a 34 percent plurality believes legal migration makes the nation “worse off,” and a 41 percent plurality favor cuts or ending legal migration. Just 17 percent favor additional legal migration.
Similarly, a January 8 poll by YouGov showed that 27 percent of Americans want the white-collar H-1B migration program to be reduced or eliminated, while only 17 percent want it increased. Among Republicans, 40 percent want to cut or eliminate the program, while only 12 percent want it to be expanded.
