CNN
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There is an emerging conventional wisdom about the increasingly aggressive Trump administration deportations and troop mobilizations that underlie the scenes in Los Angeles.
It holds that people really want to deport undocumented immigrants. And that means they don’t sympathize with the demonstrators and won’t care that Trump is taking extraordinary steps – i.e., calling in the National Guard without gubernatorial approval for the first time in 60 years and mobilizing the Marines – to address the unrest.
“America voted for mass deportations,” White House adviser Stephen Miller posted Wednesday on X. He added that the demonstrators in Los Angeles are “trying to overthrow the results of the election.”
It’s worth questioning this premise.
In fact, it seems the deportation operations that set off the protests could alienate many Americans – as could Trump’s latest move to apparently involve troops in Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.
Americans voted for deportations when a plurality backed Donald Trump – who’d spoken openly about his plans on the trail – last November. But they didn’t necessarily vote for this.
We saw something quite interesting on Tuesday. Amid all the discussion of Trump’s actions to quell the protests, a handful of House Republicans – all of them Hispanic – stepped forward to suggest Trump was going too far with his deportations.
The administration seems to have moved from focusing on undocumented immigrants who they allege have committed crimes to a much broader campaign, including targeting workplaces like Home Depot. The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that the White House, frustrated by its lower-than-hoped deportation numbers, has pushed to – in Miller’s words – “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens.” The Journal reports this has meant setting aside the longstanding practice of developing target lists for deportations.
But at least four House Republicans cautioned against that approach:
Rep. David Valadao of California said the administration should “prioritize the removal of known criminals over the hardworking people who have lived peacefully in the Valley for years.”
Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida cautioned against deporting people “that have been here for a while.”
Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida suggested some of the people being rounded up could have legitimate asylum claims about the dangers of returning to their home countries.
And Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas told CNN’s Jake Tapper that he worried about deportations targeting “the milker of cows who’s, you know, in 103-degree weather.” He added: “If you’re going down where, you know, you’re just picking up everyone who’s here illegally … that takes you away from tackling the biggest problem in our country, which in my eyes is the convicted criminal that makes all of us unsafe.”
The fact that these are Hispanic Republicans certainly stands out, given Hispanics are often the targets of Trump’s deportations. But the issue they’re highlighting is a valid one.
While Americans strongly favor the broad concept of deporting undocumented immigrants, that comes with some real caveats.
People love the idea of deporting criminals and recent border-crossers. Polls suggest they do not like the idea of deporting the kinds of people these lawmakers mentioned.
A Pew Research Center poll earlier this year showed that Americans opposed deporting people “who have a job,” 56% to 41%. They also strongly opposed deporting people who came here as children (68-30%), the parents of US citizen children (60-37%), and undocumented immigrants who married citizens (78-20%).
A March Marquette Law School poll was similar. While 68% broadly favored deportations, that number dropped to 41% for people who have been here for years, have jobs and have no criminal record.
And a February Washington Post/Ipsos poll showed Americans opposed deporting people who haven’t broken non-immigration laws (57-39%), those who arrived as children (70-26%) and those who have been here for more than 10 years (67-30%).
The problem for the administration is that these groups cover large swaths of people who would likely – and indeed already are – getting swept up in its deportations. The broader you go in your effort to make good on the “mass deportation” promise, the more likely you go after sympathetic targets.
A case in point: A huge proportion of undocumented migrants in this country have US citizen children, due to birthright citizenship. Pew last year estimated 4.4 million citizen children have at least one undocumented parent.
Given Pew estimated there are about 11 million undocumented immigrants in total, you can do the math. A very large number of that 11 million, if deported, would leave behind citizen children and result in separated families.
(The administration has in some cases sent the citizen children with their deported parents, but that too has created problems.)
Similarly, the new move to apparently involve the National Guard in ICE operations could rub people the wrong way.
While Americans have in recent years warmed to harsher deportation methods – especially during the border influx under the Biden administration – getting the military involved is taking things to another level. A CBS News/YouGov poll in November showed Americans opposed involving the military, 60-40%.
(CNN polling in 2020 showed Americans opposed deploying the military to protests by a similar margin: 60-36%.)
One of the big unknowns in all of this is how much people really care. Maybe they say these things to pollsters because they like to sound compassionate to at least some undocumented immigrants. Maybe they truly believe them, but it’s just not that important to them.
Trump seems to be banking on people wanting undocumented migrants out – and believing his often-exaggerated claims about Los Angeles – and not worrying too much about the details.
But we’ve already seen how Trump’s often haphazard and aggressive approach to this subject has rubbed people the wrong way. Despite historically low border-crossing numbers early in his second term, his numbers on immigration have often turned negative, and people have had real problems with things like the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and sending people without due process to a brutal prison in El Salvador.
The danger for Trump, as it often is, is that he goes too hard, too fast, without taking care in the way that US presidents and politicians should.
If his administration is going to pursue a much broader mass-deportation effort, it will test the tolerance of not just the protesters in Los Angeles, but lots of Americans.
