Washington, DC — Donald Trump is running the most vicious anti-immigrant presidential campaign of any major party nominee in modern U.S. history, making his closing argument all about the ugliest of lies about immigrants. Yet despite the relentless focus on anti-immigration themes, including Trump’s promise for the “largest” deportation operation in U.S. history, Trump, JD Vance, and Republican allies have refused to provide specific details about those “bloody” and unsparing deportations. Two important new columns remind us that the details of Trump’s proposed mass deportations are unpopular – among Latino voters and all Americans – when learning the details –, something that we at America’s Voice have noted for the last several months.
In his widely read Substack, former AFL-CIO political director Michael Podhorzer writes, “Poll-Washing Trump’s Fascist Plans: What Voters Don’t Know About ‘Mass Deportation’ Can Hurt Us All,” taking a specific look at how Latino voters are strongly opposed to details of the mass deportation agenda despite some reporting to the contrary:
“Trump and his allies have described their intentions toward immigrants in openly fascist terms – acknowledging that implementing their plans would be “bloody,” but justified in order to cleanse those who are “poisoning the blood of our country.” Yet we are told that a substantial segment of the Latino population supports Trump’s “mass deportations.” What’s going on?
As I’ll explain in this post, there is abundant evidence, often in the same surveys, that there is much less Latino support for the reality of what mass deportation would entail than for what survey respondents think they are being asked … Latinos open to voting for Trump presume that his deportation plans are principally aimed at those crossing the border in the last few years. On the contrary, Trump allies have been open that they can and will sweep up non-citizens – documented or not – who have lived here for decades … The problem is that surveys ask about the abstract idea of “mass deportation” rather than the known particulars of Trump’s intended mass deportation.”
Underscoring the point: Ron Brownstein’s recent CNN column (here) featured a quote from “Carlos Odio, a Democratic pollster who focuses on Latino voters,” who said “surveys show that support for mass deportation plummets among not only Latinos but also other voters when ‘people learn that Trump’s plans are to deport [undocumented] people who have been living and working here for decades.’”
Meanwhile, in an excellent deep-dive in Vox, “Polls say voters back “mass deportation.” That’s misleading,” Christian Paz writes:
“[A]s attention-grabbing as some of the headlines on support for mass deportations have been (and as former President Donald Trump and his allies continue to talk about his plans for such), those polls may not accurately capture the mood of the American electorate … why do voters hold seemingly conflicting views on immigration? Pro-immigrant advocates argue that there isn’t a contradiction here — those competing numbers instead represent people who don’t understand exactly what “mass deportation” means or what a deportation program would look like in practice. Americans might not understand that deportations of all undocumented immigrants would include deportations of DACA recipients and longtime neighbors or friends who have been living normally and are bedrocks of local communities, advocates and researchers say — rather than only recent arrivals, or those few migrants who commit violent crimes yet get outsize media and political attention, who they may view differently.
…Surveys that don’t specify what “mass deportation” means may also be tracking inflated support for the kind of hardline stance the Trump/Vance campaign is offering, Steven Kull, the director of the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland, told me … Kull’s team instead has run surveys of national samples and groups of swing-state voters that provide additional information and arguments in favor and against either mass deportations or pathways to citizenship. The result, again, is complex, but support for mass deportations falls when presented against the option for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants provided they meet specific requirements.”
Underscoring the point: polling conducted by Professor Tom K. Wong of the US Immigration Policy Center at UC San Diego, found that support for mass deportation drops from a net positive for Trump to a net negative when basic context is added to the issue. Providing context about the impact of mass deportation on long-term residents, on family separation and the economy moved voters against mass deportation.
According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“Donald Trump’s drive to grab absolute and unfettered power is based on his propaganda campaign about the alleged threat of immigrants. And yet he and his Republican allies are refusing to engage on the specific details of their promised unsparing mass deportations because they know the specifics are politically unpopular.
In addition to the humanitarian concerns and the envisioning of a police state, mass deportation carries a massive potential cost for every American family. In the homestretch, as Trump spirals in an even darker and more apocalyptic direction on immigration as the centerpiece of his closing argument, we need to separate the simplistic polling results some reporters are trumpeting and the reality of the complexity of the American people’s views on immigration, immigrants, and mass deportation.”
