The Left is desperate to believe mass deportations are backfiring. They’re not
Opinion by Paul du Quenoy
Donald Trump’s pledges to close the US southern border and deport millions of illegal immigrants have outraged Leftists ever since the 2024 presidential campaign made those concerns leading issues in US politics. Then and since, opponents of the president have disingenuously denied there was any immigration or border problem at all, while curiously also claiming there was no way to fix it.
Now that Trump’s policies have cut illegal border crossings by 95 per cent over the Biden administration average and removed more than two million illegals, they have a new argument. It was encapsulated by a hopeful headline on the Washington Post’s editorial page this week: “The mass deportation campaign is already backfiring”.
The Post editorial gives undue weight to a supposed decline in popular support for Trump’s overall approach to illegal immigration. Citing a Harvard-Harris poll conducted earlier this month, it claims that public approval of Trump’s immigration agenda appears to have fallen by nine percentage points since February, the biggest drop in any category. The writers have seized on this underwhelming evidence to declare that the “American people” as a whole are starting to object to Trump’s policies, especially when they result in the deportation of what the Post says are “women and children whose only crime is being in the country illegally”.
But are the American public truly turning on Trump? A deeper examination reveals that Trump’s critics are grasping at straws. Despite the single-digit decline in popular support for the president’s general immigration policies, Americans still overwhelmingly approve when asked about them individually. The same poll that yielded the decline in support nevertheless found that 79 per cent of all Americans – including 69 per cent of Democrats – still favour the deportation of illegal immigrants who commit additional crimes while present in the US. In February, a statistically similar 81 per cent of Americans thought so.
In the recent poll, 68 per cent of Americans – including half of Democrats – felt that the southern border should remain closed, which for all practical purposes it now is. Majorities of 54 per cent continue to believe that all illegal immigrants should be deported and that the US military should be used to prevent further illegal immigration. In both cases, even three in 10 Democrats agree.
The president’s critics aren’t bothered about those details, however. The likes of JB Pritzker, the Illinois governor, Gavin Newsom, the California governor, Brandon Johnson, the Chicago mayor, and Michelle Wu, the Boston mayor, have decided to defy public opinion, attempting to disrupt the activities of immigration enforcement. Zohran Mamdani, the mayor-elect of New York, has promised to join these desperadoes and pledged $100m in legal assistance from his city’s impoverished coffers to help migrants resist deportation.
The Democrats are still smarting from their loss of the presidency and both houses of Congress in 2024. They are now settling into a battle for the soul of their troubled, discredited, and leaderless party as its progressive and moderate wings vie for control. They may comfort themselves with the delusion that the country is rallying to them, but it very clearly is not.
Despite some bruising concerns over the state of the economy, which is now emerging as the leading issue in US politics, more Americans still believe the country is on the right track than at almost any time during Biden’s term in office, while Republicans continue to outscore Democrats in favourability ratings. And on immigration policy, the US is still decidedly Trump country.
The liberal Democrats own this. If they were to regain power in Congress do you think they would open the border again? You know they would!