Vast majority of voters support using existing powers to stop illegal immigration: Poll

According to Gallup, immigration was named as the top problem in the United States for the third straight month. Immigration has been named the top issue in previous months (once in 2014, 2018, and 2019) but never for three months straight. Until now.

Voters’ opinions of President Joe Biden’s immigration policies are also at all-time lows. Harvard has the public’s disapproval of Biden’s handling at 62%, the Economist has it at 63%, and the New York Times has it at 64%. 

Biden’s bad border numbers are well earned. Immediately upon entering office, Biden began dismantling the secure border that existed under President Donald Trump. At first, the Biden White House celebrated their 94 executive actions taken to weaken Trump’s border security policies. 

But as the numbers of migrants caught illegally crossing the southern border (and then subsequently released into the U.S.) began rising, suddenly Biden did not want to talk about the border. 

In Trump’s last full month in office, just 73,994 migrants were encountered crossing the southern border. By March, that number had more than doubled to 173,277, and by July, it hit 215,593. In all, about 2.5 million illegal immigrants have been released into the U.S. by Biden.

And the public is tired of it.

According to a separate poll conducted by YouGov, 56% of voters now support “round[ing] up undocumented immigrants, detain, and deport them to their home countries.” Only 32% oppose.

Considering how expensive and disruptive such an operation would be, those are amazing numbers. Of the demographics identified in the poll, only Hispanics reject such a policy but, even then, by a narrow 40%-43% margin.

Less disruptive and most likely more effective policies, like “us[ing] existing presidential powers to stop illegal migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border,” enjoy even larger and more universal support.

Among all voters, 69% support Biden using his existing powers to stop illegal immigration. Just 16% oppose. Among Hispanics, a strong majority of 60% support Biden using existing powers to stop illegal immigration. Just 18% of Hispanics oppose.

There is a lot Biden can do under current law to stop illegal immigration. In 2019, after Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador followed through on his campaign promise to let migrants freely cross Mexico to the U.S. border, border arrests surged from 58,317 in January 2019 to 144,116 in May.

But unlike Biden, Trump took enforcement action to deter illegal immigration. He threatened Lopez Obrador with tariffs until Lopez Obrador agreed to take migrants who claimed asylum and keep them in Mexico until their cases were adjudicated.

By denying migrants entry into the U.S., Trump successfully ended the 2019 border crisis. Arrests for illegal border crossings fell from that high of 144,116 in May to just 52,546 that September.

And all this was accomplished “using existing presidential powers to stop illegal migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border.”

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Biden could do the same, but he refuses to because the Democratic Party is controlled by radical open borders ideologues. These activists do not care about the sovereignty of the U.S. — in fact, they actively seek to undermine it.

But the rest of America does not share their values. If the election this November comes down to immigration, Biden will lose. Badly.