54 percent of Americans back mass deportation of immigrants: Poll

More than half of all Americans, including a quarter of Democrats, support the mass deportation of immigrants who are living in the country illegally, a new poll found.

The Scripps News/Ipsos survey’s findings come as former President Trump and his allies have intensely focused on immigration in the 2024 election cycle.

About 54 percent of respondents — 86 percent of Republicans, 58 percent of independents and 25 percent of Democrats — said they “strongly” or “somewhat” support a wide-scale effort to deport millions of immigrants, and 59 percent said they are closely following the “immigration situation at the U.S.-Mexico border.”

The survey also found that 39 percent of respondents named immigration a top issue for them this election year — second only to inflation.

While more respondents in the Ipsos poll had a favorable view of Harris (45 percent) than of Trump (38 percent), the numbers were nearly flipped when asked specifically about who they believed would do a better job handling immigration: 44 percent said Trump would do a better job, while 34 percent said Harris. Another 12 percent said they didn’t think either candidate could get a handle on immigration.

Trump’s Republican running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, railed against Harris over immigration and public safety during rally in Wisconsin on Tuesday, arguing illegal immigration has devastated communities across the country — including those far from the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Every community is a border state,” Vance told the crowd in Eau Claire, nearly 1,500 miles north of the border in Texas. “Every community is a border community.”

He said Harris, as part of the Biden administration, has taken away an American “birthright” to public safety.

Harris has tried to fend off attacks related to immigration. Her campaign recently launched an ad touting her record on immigration and her work as a prosecutor in California, and she has hammered Trump and House Republicans over their tanking of a bipartisan border bill that the Biden administration backed. The campaign ad vows she’ll support the hiring of “thousands” of more Border Patrol agents to tackle illegal immigration.

“Fixing the border is tough. So is Kamala Harris,” the ad ends.

A third of respondents in the poll said securing the U.S.-Mexico border should be the first priority on immigration, while 18 percent said mass deportation should be at the top.

The Scripps News/Ipsos poll was conducted Sept. 13-15 based on a nationally representative probability sample of 1,027 adults. The margin of error is 3.6 percentage points.