A record high of 79 percent of US respondents in a Gallup survey say immigration is a ‘good thing’ for the country.
A new poll shows support for immigration in the United States has increased since last year, while backing for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants has gone down.
The survey, released on Friday from the research firm Gallup, suggests a shift in public opinion as President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown concludes its sixth month.
Gallup found that 79 percent of respondents say immigration is a “good thing” for the country — a record high that represents a 15-point increase from last year.
Among supporters of Trump’s Republican Party, the number rose sharply to 64 percent, up from 39 percent in 2024.
Only 38 percent of respondents said they back “deporting all immigrants who are living in the United States illegally back to their home country”, down from 47 percent last year.
Support for expanding the US-Mexico border wall also went down to 45 percent, a drop of eight percentage points. The survey, conducted in June, featured interviews with 1,402 US adults.
“Americans have grown markedly more positive toward immigration over the past year, with the share wanting immigration reduced dropping from 55 percent in 2024 to 30 percent today,” Gallup said.
Trump made mass deportations a key promise of his 2024 re-election campaign, often using language to demonise migrants, including by using a poem to compare them to poisonous snakes.
He seized on the public concern over the uptick in the number of undocumented immigrants who crossed into the US from Mexico in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, under Democratic President Joe Biden.
Since returning to the White House in January, he has launched an all-out campaign on immigration, including by gutting the refugee resettlement programme, unleashing agents to round up undocumented migrants and sending suspected gang members to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador without due process.
The Trump administration also ended protected status for nationals of several countries, including Venezuela and Haiti, who had been shielded from deportation due to dangerous conditions in their homelands.
Meanwhile, it has been pushing to remove foreign students critical of Israel from the US.
But while the crossings have sharply decreased this year, it appears that the US public may have soured on the anti-immigration campaign.
“With illegal border crossings down sharply this year, fewer Americans than in June 2024 back hard-line border enforcement measures, while more favor offering pathways to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already in the US,” Gallup said.
Trump’s immigration policies have sparked outrage and lawsuits, as well as accusations of executive overreach and violations of the US Constitution.
A majority of respondents in the Gallup survey — 62 percent — said they disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration, while 36 percent said they approve.
David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, described the findings of the survey as an “absolute bloodbath” for Trump.
“Support for cuts to immigration has plummeted 25 points since last year,” he wrote in a social media post. “Deporting ‘all illegal immigrants’ has gone back to a right-wing only view.”
