Americans support mass deportations but don’t support Trump’s methods

Americans are in favor of deporting undocumented migrants but their support for one of Donald Trump’s key campaign promises will likely hinge on how the program is handled according to a new survey from Axios and Reuters. 

President Donald Trump promised voters his administration would initiate the largest mass deportation in the country’s history. This is a policy that Americans on both sides of the political aisle seem to favor according to polling. 

Ipsos and Axios found that two-thirds of the U.S. adults they surveyed between January 10th and 12th support mass deportations of immigrants. However, the way in which the deportations are handled will affect that support. 

According to the polling results, 93% of Republicans, 67% of independents, and 43% of Democrats support Trump’s mass deportation policy. Yet most Americans don’t support how Trump plans to deport immigrants from the country. 

Only 38% of Americans supported using the active-duty military to both find and detain undocumented migrants in the United States. Moreover, just 28% supported using money that was allocated to the military to cover the cost of deportations. 

Family separation was another key Trump deportation policy that Americans didn’t support. Axios noted that one in three backed the idea. Americans also weren’t keen on sending people to countries other than the one of their origin to speed up deportations.

Only 34% of Americans said they supported the idea of deporting immigrants to other countries, which was the same level of support those surveyed had for deporting any illegal immigrant who came to the United States as a child. 

“There's essentially broad agreement with Trump's position on these topics, but as soon as you start pushing into specifics, a lot of that dissipates," explained Ipsos pollster and senior vice president Chris Jackson according to Axios. 

"Immigration, in reality, is complicated, messy, and difficult,” Jackson added. "The real question is going to be... does that level of support maintain or fragment as they confront the reality of what it means."

The survey also revealed that there was little appetite among Americans to see those who immigrated to the country legally deported. Only 11% of those surveyed supported the idea of deporting legal immigrants. 

The new polling broadly confirms earlier findings from Syracuse University and Ipsos made in November 2024. Those results showed slightly higher support for the use of the military and military funding in deporting illegal immigrants.   

Axios and Ipsos’ new polling results were published just one day before Trump was sworn back in as President of the United States, within hours of reassuming power, Trump outlined his broad plan for tighter border security and the process of mass deportations. 

Reuters reported Trump kicked off his “sweeping immigration crackdown” by tasking the US military with helping border security, issuing a broad ban on asylum, and even taking steps to restrict birthright citizenship. 

Trump declared illegal immigration a national emergency and empowered the Pentagon to support the border wall, detention spades, and migrant transport according to Reuters. He also authorized the Secretary of Defense to send troops to the border. 

"As commander-in-chief, I have no higher responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions, and that is exactly what I am going to do," Trump explained in his inaugural address in the Capitol Rotunda. 

What will happen next remains to be seen, but the country could be moving toward the mass deportation of illegal immigrants, a process that the military could aid despite the American public’s general lack of support for that policy. 

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