Should illegal migrants get legal status? Views shifted in past year, poll finds
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
www.miamiherald.com /news/nation-world/national/article309552280.html
Should illegal migrants get legal status? Views shifted in past year, poll finds
Brendan Rascius 4-5 minutes 6/27/2025
Nearly two-thirds of Americans, 64%, prefer giving most undocumented immigrants a pathway to legal status, while 31% say they prefer deporting them, according to a new poll. This marks a significant shift from six months ago. Photo from Immigration And Customs Enforcement (ICE)
When it comes to undocumented immigrants, public opinion has shifted significantly in recent months, with a growing share of Americans favoring a pathway to citizenship, according to new polling.
In the latest Quinnipiac University poll released June 26, respondents were asked whether most undocumented immigrants in
Nearly two-thirds of respondents, 64%, said that most should be granted a path to citizenship, while 31% said they should be deported.
These results mark a sizable change from a December poll, conducted shortly before President Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
In that poll, 55% of respondents preferred a pathway to legal status, while 36% preferred deportations, resulting in a 14-point swing.
“Keep a path open for undocumented immigrants to stay in the U.S. legally, say voters, who are unhappy with the way deportations are being handled,” Quinnipiac polling analyst Tim Malloy said in a statement.
In the latest survey — fielded June 22-24 with 979 registered voters — a major partisan divide also emerged.
Majorities of Democrats and independents — 89% and 71%, respectively — said they favored a route to legal status, while most Republicans, 61%, favored deportations.
The survey also found that Trump is underwater on his handling of deportations and immigration.
When it comes to deportations, 59% of respondents disapproved of the president’s actions — the highest disapproval rating across seven issues surveyed. Meanwhile, 39% said they approve.
The results were similar for immigration, with 57% of respondents signaling their disapproval with the president and 41% expressing approval.
The poll, which has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, comes as Trump has made deporting undocumented immigrants one of his administration’s top policy priorities.
As of late June, the administration had deported more than 207,000 people from the country, the Department of Homeland Security told Time. For context, during fiscal year 2024, the government deported 271,484 people.
On June 26, Trump vowed to “dramatically increase deportations to a bare minimum of one million illegal aliens per year,” adding, “what we’re doing is we’re really going after the criminal aliens, of which we have plenty to work with.”
However, government data indicates the administration has also targeted immigrants with no criminal charges.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) records reveal that “the number of people arrested by ICE with no other criminal charges or convictions and then detained rose from about 860 in January to 7,800 this month - an increase of more than 800%,” according to Reuters.
Some immigrants without criminal records were among those deported to a maximum security prison in El Salvador , according to the Texas Tribune, which led to numerous legal challenges .
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Brendan Rascius is a McClatchy national real-time reporter covering politics and international news. He has a master’s in journalism from Columbia University and a bachelor’s in political science from Southern Connecticut State University.
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"But Trump won the election" - yes with less than half of the votes.
This poll says 71% of independents are against deportation for most migrants.
This result should not be ignored, particularly as we ramp up for "ICE on steroids".
Unlike the democrat party, America isn't run by polls, that's why we don't have a democrat President. remember the mindless sheep bleating nobody is above the law? I guess their integrity is fungible based on "who" who is.
Votes?? You really wanna go there???
Popular vote - Trump - 77,302,580 - Biden - 75,017,613
Electoral votes - Trump - 312 (57.99256%) - Biden - 226 (42.00743%).
Uhhh - don't see a "less that half the votes" - kinda looks like 49.8% for Trump versus 48.3% for Biden on the Popular vote side..
How 'bout a source for that "ICE on steroids" comment.
anything under 50% is by definition less than half the votes
Please - and also please explain to your associates - Presidents are elected based on ELECTORAL VOTES - not Popular Votes. 312 Electoral Votes got Trump in office and it was/is 62 more votes than the losing candidate received.
Oh - and your source for the ICE comment as was requested????
One aspect of the Republicans’ big, ugly bill that didn’t get enough attention until Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez elevated it over the last few days is the massive amounts of money it directs to the apprehension and detention of immigrants. On Thursday, right after the bill passed the House, AOC posted on Bluesky:
The next day—the Fourth of July, as fate would have it, when President Trump signed the bill into law—historian Timothy Snyder posted a column on Substack under the blunt headline “Concentration Camp Labor.” If AOC’s post and Snyder’s headline sound hyperbolic to you, consider what’s actually in this new law.
It includes $170 billion for immigration enforcement: about $50 billion to build a wall on the Southern border; $30 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); and $45 billion for detention camps.
A little perspective: ICE’s existing annual budget has been around $8 billion , so $30 billion is nearly quadruple. As AOC noted, it will make ICE into a huge police force that will indeed be larger than the FBI ($11.3 billion ), the Bureau of Prisons ($9 billion ), and the Drug Enforcement Administration ($3.3 billion ) combined.
What is ICE going to do with all that money? One thing, obviously, is that it will try to hire enough people to hit MAGA apparatchik Stephen Miller’s target of rounding up 3,000 people a day. That’s a target it apparently still hasn’t even hit. On June 5, NBC News reported that ICE hit a then-record of 2,200 detentions that day. That included hundreds of people who showed up at regional ICE offices to check in as required by the release program they were enrolled in—a program under which these people were deemed not to be threats to public safety and whose movements were already monitored by ankle bracelets or geo-locator apps.
In other words, ICE has already been detaining thousands of people who, yes, entered the United States illegally, but ever since just lived, worked, and even paid taxes. Some may have gotten into some trouble with the law, but they’re wearing monitors and showing up for their appointments. Others have had no scrapes with the law at all. And now ICE is going to have the resources to detain thousands more such people.
And no—the American public emphatically does not support this. A late June Quinnipiac poll found that 64 percent of respondents said undocumented people should be given a path to citizenship, and only 31 percent said they should be deported. And that 64 percent is up from 55 percent last December, meaning that people have watched six months of Trump’s immigration policies in action and turned even more strongly against deporting everyone.
So that’s what ICE is going to do with its $30 billion. Now think about $45 billion for detention camps. Alligator Alcatraz is expected to cost $450 million a year . Right now, a reported 5,000 detainees are being held there. The Trump administration says the new $45 billion will pay for 100,000 beds. So that’s 20 more Alligator Alcatrazes out around the country. But it’s probably even going to be worse than that, because the state of Florida, not the federal government, is footing the bill for that center. If the Trump administration can convince other states to do the same, or pay part of the freight, we’re looking at essentially a string of concentration camps across the United States. Besides, there’s something odd about that $450 million a year price tag. (Here’s an interesting Daily Kos community post asking some good questions about that astronomical cost. The math doesn’t add up.)
Forty-five billion will build a lot of stuff. As a point of comparison: In 2023, the United States budgeted $12.8 billion to build new affordable housing. We’re about to spend nearly four times on detention centers what we spend on housing.
Now let’s turn to Snyder’s thesis. It was, as he acknowledged, mostly conjecture on his part. But think about it. If you’re the type of person who wants to round up thousands upon thousands of people and detain them in inhumane conditions and give them four or five square feet of private space and feed them slop and treat them like animals, isn’t there inevitably going to come a time when you think: Why should these people be sitting around doing nothing all day?
Snyder’s answer to that question goes like this:
He then notes that Trump himself has discussed something like this. On his July 1 visit to the Everglades camp with Governor Ron DeSantis and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Trump was asked about detainees participating in some kind of work program. The question starts at 5:43 of this video . As ever with Trump, he starts and stops sentences midway and it’s hard to follow. But he talks about “farmer responsibility” and “owner responsibility.” He seems to be describing a system whereby farmworkers and others would live in detention camps but be released to work on farms or in hotels. “They’re not getting citizenship,” he said, “but they get other things.” He didn’t specify what those “things” were. So something is in the works.
And this is where we are, in the United States of America, in the year 2025: We’re looking at the very real possibility of a string of labor camps across the country. Am I overstating things? First of all, I’d rather err by overstating things than understating them. And second, a lot of people once upon a time thought it was overstating things to say that Trump might lead an insurrection against the United States government, or that he’d force media companies and law firms to pay him bribes, or that he’d try to dictate what they teach at American universities, or that he’d do 15 other things he’s turned around and done.
So no, I’m not overstating things at all. The time to start opposing this is right now. Snyder writes that U.S. employers should be made to sign a pledge that they won’t use camp labor. A fine idea. But someone has to write the pledge and circulate it and make noise about it. Democrats, any takers?
NO, does idiot who wrote that article have any other stupid questions?
Follow the law - the "sky is not falling" as many on the opposing side are boo-hoping about.
You're here, voluntarily and openly as an Illegal Alien, violating Fed law and you wanna get special dispensation????
What kind of favoritism do you get when you "take early withdrawals" from a bank????
BS.
The article is about 2/3 of Americans saying there should be a path to citizenship instead of deportation.
That's not what they voted for, so who gives a fuck about a poll?
John - there is a "path to citizenship" - it's called the Immigration and Nationality Act (1952 - PL 82-414)) and deportation is a major part of that Act.
Take it up with your Dem leaders - they want the cheap labor and giving freebies to all illegal sorts, including Illegal Aliens - for the votes.
Sure, all these illegals should be set on a path to citizenship.
The first step is to self deport or be deported. Go back to where you came from and start the legal process. No fair cutting in line and breaking the law.
That was the perfect answer. You beat me to it.
In today’s episode, Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg makes a crucial point: During months of debate about President Trump’s now-signed budget bill, there was very little public debate about what its explosion in Immigration and Customs Enforcement funding will inflict on America. Rosenberg chalks this up in part to Democrats’ failure to engage on the matter. We discuss the bill’s extraordinarily large health care cuts and its massive upward redistribution of wealth — and how Democrats should attack that. But now that it has passed, it’s also sinking in that the tens of billion of dollars the bill pours into expanding Trump’s detention complex will supercharge those masked, unidentified “secret police” that keep snatching migrants and legally present immigrants off the streets. The whole project just got much darker. Rosenberg also discusses the intense civil conflict that this is already starting to unleash , and why it will get much worse. He reflects on how Democrats can campaign against the “shocking” darkness that Trump is inflicting on the country. Listen to this episode here .
I see the attempt to demonize ICE agents continues. They are a necessary part of law enforcement assisting local and state police and other agencies. Legitimate attempts to enforce immigration laws have been hampered by violent protests organized and financed by Soros and others: Antifa, BLM, and antisemitic low life leftists of all sorts, masked and unidentified. These destructive rioters are the ones who we should be worried about
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NOTHING on this article comes from the Daily Beast.
Agree - Google Search brought up the info on the "Daily Beast" and not the "Daily Blast".
But,
Daily Blast Journalist Bias Rating
2.0 John Russell - How 'bout -
Are We About to Have Labor Camps in the United States of America?
And -
5.0 John Russell
whatever
Was ICE the "secret police" when the "deporter in chief" deported all those illegals during his reign?
and now for the libertarian view
www.cato.org /news-releases/65-people-taken-ice-had-no-convictions-93-no-violent-convictions
65% of People Taken by ICE Had No Convictions, 93% No Violent Convictions
2-2 minutes 6/20/2025
Cato Institute Director of Immigration Studies David Bier has a new piece titled “65% of People Taken by ICE Had No Convictions, 93% No Violent Convictions.”
New nonpublic data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) indicate that the government is primarily detaining individuals with no criminal convictions of any kind. ICE has shared this data with people outside the agency, who shared the numbers with the Cato Institute.
As of June 14, ICE had booked into detention 204,297 individuals (since October 1, 2024, the start of fiscal year 2025). Of those book-ins, 65 percent, or 133,687 individuals, had no criminal convictions. Moreover, more than 93 percent of ICE book-ins were never convicted of any violent offenses. About nine in ten had no convictions for violent or property offenses. Most convictions (53 percent) fell into three main categories: immigration, traffic, or nonviolent vice crimes.
ICE’s deportation agenda is not what is being advertised to the American public. Congress should mandate more transparent reporting from ICE and require that it target only those who pose genuine threats to public safety, Bier concludes.
You can read the full piece here . If you would like to speak with Bier, please contact pr@cato.org to set up an interview.
If they are here illegally, they are criminals.
What is it most on the left does not understand about this?
This should be the new Trump administration policy,
When an illegal is picked up, if said illegal was working then the trump administration should hold a lottery of everyone on public assistance, if you are able bodied, when your name is called you take that illegals job or you lose your benefits.