In an increasingly polarized America, one public policy issue with decades of unresolved and widely divergent opinions has been southern border immigration into America.
On one side are those who feel strongly that deportations of every immigrant who has not followed long established, but not enforced immigration laws, are long overdue, necessary, and proper.
On the other side are those who feel strongly that mass deportations of southern border immigrants who have not earned legal immigration status is not feasible, needed, or proper.
One thing is irrefutable.
Southern border immigration was a huge issue, if not THE issue in the 2024 presidential and congressional elections, when Donald Trump won the Presidency for a second nonconsecutive term and Republicans secured majorities in both houses of Congress.
Recently, Harry Enten, chief data analyst at left of center CNN did a deep dive on the current state of this issue during the height of the protests in Los Angeles.
The Columbia Journalism Review calls Enten “a new generation of political journalists focusing on data-driven journalism instead of reporting from the campaign trail.”
Enten has reported that no group has moved more sharply to the right on immigration than southern border immigrants who went through the long and arduous process to become an American citizen.
They followed the rules and waited patiently for the process to be done. They filled out forms, took citizenship tests, paid fees, and often spent years separated from family while following U.S. immigration law to the letter.
According to Enten, since 2020 this group of immigrants have shifted their partisan allegiance toward Republicans by a large margin.
In 2020, Democrats held a 32-point lead among these voters on the issue of who best to address southern border immigration issues.
Today, Republicans are up by a 40-point lead resulting in Enten concluding bluntly, “This group of voters in the American electorate believes that “the Democrats don’t have a clue on the issue of immigration.”
Enten also suggests, “Trump is begging for a fight on this because he knows what he’s doing so far is working with the American electorate. There is no issue on which Trump is doing so much better than he was in his first term, more than the issue of immigration.”
Enten maintained other polls affirm his conclusions. He cites comparable results from CBS and from Ipsos, a multinational research firm headquartered in Paris.
Enten says, “No matter what poll you look at, no matter which way you cut it, the American public is with the Republicans. The American public is with Trump.”
Not necessarily and certainly not guaranteed for the long term.
In reviewing survey results, one must remember they are a snapshot at a given point in time.
American voters are often inconsistent and are always unpredictable. Their views on any and all public policy issues are subject to change dramatically.
After relatively peaceful nationwide “No King “protests, right of center Fox News engaged Daron Shaw, a Republican pollster, and Chris Anderson, a Democratic pollster, for a survey.
Their survey results included an unexpected shift by unaffiliated (independent) voters on the issue of widely publicized ongoing searches for illegal immigrants led by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Those unaffiliated voters are now expressing concern that ICE efforts are “heavy-handed and cast the deportment net too broadly”.
As I write this, there is breaking news on American military action in Iran.
That will have a profound impact on the results of any future current events polling results, regardless of who conducts the surveys.
For now, the range of issues and their current interest intensity by respondents to the Shaw and Anderson polling are:
85% of the survey respondents were extremely or very concerned about the future of America.
84% of the survey respondents were extremely or very concerned about inflation.
80% of the survey respondents were extremely or very concerned about government spending.
78% of the survey respondents were extremely or very concerned about Iran.
69% of the survey respondents were extremely or very concerned about antisemitism.
67% of the survey respondents were extremely or very concerned about immigration.
The mid-term general elections are less than 18 months from now.
It will be interesting to see which issues if any of the above, or new ones yet to emerge, will have the greatest impact on voter views, turnout, and choices in the midterm elections.
Donald Trump will not be on the ballot, but midterm voters will decide party control of the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate during the last two years of the Trump administration.
David Reel is a public affairs and public relations consultant in Easton.
Bob Parker says
If there is any question regarding how much trump cared about immigration, one only need look no further than his demand the Congressional Republicans kill the bipartisan immigration reform bill supported by both parties. This bill addressed most of the problems faced by those wanting to immigrate and those who wanted a more orderly immigration process. Trump only cares about immigration when he can use it as a political cudgel against Dems. Currently, he is planning on sending Afghanis who supported our troops in the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status back to a “peaceful” Afghanistan apparently forgetting his criticism of the Biden administration for not doing more to get them out of Afghanistan (when Biden carried out the withdrawal of U.S. troops that he [trump] negotiated). Yes, most Americans are concerned about immigration because our system is a mess – a mess trump and his MAGA faithful in Congress refused to even try to fix. However, what your cited statistics don’t indicate is WHY they are concerned. While many do not want immigration, but the concern with our immigration system by many others is because of the heartless and capricious way the current administration is addressing the issue. If the current administration really wanted to “fix” immigration, it would work with both parties in Congress to reach a workable agreement along the lines of the draft bill that had broad support in the Biden administration. This would require hard work, thoughtfulness, compassion and the ability to compromise – characteristics that are lacking in the current administration.
Michael Pullen says
David Reel is a Republican operative who makes a living developing effective media strategies to elect Republican candidates, including stories like this extolling the virtues of Republicans no matter how extreme or destructive their policies.
Readers may remember the bipartisan Immigration Reform Act introduced in Congress in 2024 that was largely written by Republicans and, because of that, had every chance of being passed, until then-candidate Trump ordered Republicans not to support it because Trump wanted immigration as a campaign issue.
Now, Republicans control Congress and the White House, yet they still don’t want to reform immigration by enacting legislation. They prefer to clamor against immigrant farm workers (40% of the field workers) and snatch them off the streets by masked, armed men and deport them to Sudan, for example, or maximum security prisons in Salvador.
This is not normal. Government exists to fix problems. Is it sensible to refuse to reform the system? Then devote billions of taxpayers dollars to seize immigrants one-by-one?
The immigration problem is not “ever changing”. It’s the same problem today as it was in 2024, and the Republicans in Congress refusal to fix it is still the same too.
Mickey Terrone says
Immigration has been the focus of Trump’s grotesquely overstated, racist campaign. He has often referred to it as an invasion, using nearly militaristic references to criminalize desperate Central and South American refugees to promote fear and loathing among his Republican base of white supremacists. Trump has the daily right-wing propaganda machines working on his behalf to the extent that many braindead Republican voters actually believed immigrants in Ohio were eating the dogs (and cats) of the poor, white citizens.
When a thoughtful American considers the depths of Trump’s depravity in making claims like this, and the naivete (or stupidity) of those who believed them, one begins to grasp the vulnerability of our American democracy – and the results of stilted questions of some surveys. That any reasonable person would believe such an absurd claim is bad enough. That FOX News and other radical right wing propaganda outlets continually repeat the lies is even worse because they know they are perpetrating falsehoods designed to stoke fear and hatred among white folks who are told these immigrant vermin are criminals bringing drugs, disease as part of an invasion of our country.
That some local columnists blithely disregard these red alarm signals to our democratic republic and makes them integral parts of the despicable propaganda machine. They are fine with Trump creating a “national emergency” at our southern border, despite the large falloff in immigration in the past 12 months prior to January, 2025. They don’t even raise an eyebrow when Trump charges Canada with being part of the invasion of our country. Never mind the fact that some of the masked men arbitrarily rounding up alleged MS-13 members are themselves convicted January 6th criminals. Somehow, there seems to be no concern among Republicans or our local propagandists that these thugs may begin to resemble the brownshirt Gestapo of the 1930’s in Germany.
Instead, these local propagandists provide worrisome diversions about Governor Moore’s budget issues as if he is threatening the very freedom of Marylanders despite the reality that Trump directly threatens our very constitution with an array of authoritarian challenges to our (formerly) cherished system of government. Meanwhile there isn’t a peep about the US losing its AAA rating by Moody’s, Standard and Poor’s as well as Fitch while Trump utterly blows our budget deficit and national debt up far worse than he did during his first term. And let’s not forget that Maryland may have as many as 40,000 more newly unemployed former government employees because of the DOGE scam (which these people also appear to support) until they or family member loses their job.
Polling Trump’s “public” is almost obscene. Differentiating zealots from zombies is becoming ever more difficult. Trump supporters seem oblivious to losing their Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and/or general civil rights. Many such alleged evangelical Christians (and their pastors) remorselessly support deporting 12 million mostly Christian/Catholic refugees back to the thug dictators from whom they fled in fear. They naively believe the 12 million deportees are all MS-13 members despite the evidence of the vast majority of innocent, hard-working immigrants are willing to provide the cheap labor Americans need to help keep farm crop prices largely under control.
I wonder what % of those polled by Shaw and Anderson who are so deeply concerned about government spending support billions in tax giveaways to the richest 1% of Americans by eliminating Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. I don’t suppose the question was asked that way. I wonder if those Americans concerned about Iran are also concerned about how Trump effectively declared war on Iran without congressional approval and despite the advice from our intelligence community that Iran was nowhere near having effective nuclear weapons. Did the survey ask about Americans concerns that Trump is no closer to ending the Middle East War than he is to ending the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine which he promised to end on Day 1 of his presidency? Did the survey ask how Americans felt about preserving democracy in Ukraine or handing those brave people over to Trump’s hero, Putin? The FOX News survey didn’t ask that one, either.
I wonder how many Trump supporters would be concerned if Trump dropped NATO as an ally (which Trump might do in the immediate future to kiss up to Putin)? Would Congressional Republicans object? Of course not. Lindsey Graham would offer some tortured rationale and Rubio would give some cowardly doubletalk to support their “Strong man” president.
I think Mr. Reel is a sophisticated propagandist providing illusory rationales to excuse or support Trump’s brand of creeping authoritarian fascism into the American psyche. When it comes to the 2026 Congressional elections, propagandists like him will somehow rationalize a Trump decision to cancel the election until after his new “state of emergency” has been lifted or until the fraudulent results can be corrected and Republican control can be ensured.
This is what propagandists do. This is what FOX News (et al) right wing propagandists do. They promote fear of minorities among vulnerable bigots and deceive them into voting against their own best interests and the public interest while waving the stars and stripes, praising the Lord and laying hands on Donald Trump, whom they believe is the only man who God sent to save America from democracy. I wonder what % of Republicans believe that.
Kent Robertson says
The immigration problem exists because Congress has abdicated its responsibility. We need comprehensive immigration reform. In my view that means prioritizing those people with skills that we want and need, and streamlining the process to get them here and become citizens. A limited number of people without those skills could be admitted on other grounds after thorough vetting. We don’t need more people who will commit crimes or become wards of the state.
Sure, Congress tried again and fell short. They quit trying further instead of going back to the table and finding compromises that would garner enough support to pass both houses.
We need representation by people who will do the job they were elected to do, and not concern themselves with reelection. We need Congressional TERM LIMITS.