By Manzanita Miller
The pervasive identity politics ideology of the left is being upended with a series of polls showing Hispanic Americans reject President Joe Biden’s Open Borders agenda, trust former President Donald Trump more on immigration, and support a national deportation program of illegal immigrants.
Multiple recent surveys show Latinos who show up in polls – and are arguably more likely to be U.S. citizens – favor strict border security measures and empowering law enforcement to handle illegal aliens. Of course, existing in a voter database is no guarantee of citizenship, but it is fair to conclude a higher share of those responding to polls are citizens.
The sentiment among the Hispanic community is largely frustration with President Joe Biden’s border chaos, and support for what would have been considered drastic measures a few years ago to curb the increasing flood of illegal immigrants that have entered under Biden’s watch.
Latinos now favor not only minimizing asylum-seeking at the border, but deportation for illegals already inside the United States, and empowering local police to identify illegal aliens. These measures, intended to correct for the vast number of illegals that have entered since Biden took office, are also favored by a wide plurality of the public.
A new battleground state poll from Equis Research finds Latino voters now trust Trump or the GOP over Biden and Democrats on immigration by a margin of 41% to 38%. According to the Equis report, “Dems no longer hold advantage on handling immigration”, which the research group labeled a “problem”.
There is heavier-hitting evidence of a nationwide shift among the Hispanic population from a new YouGov survey. The survey reveals Latinos are fully aware that if Biden wins reelection the influx of illegals on the southern border will increase, and a majority of Hispanics support deportation efforts.
There is little ambiguity among Latinos about the ramifications of Biden’s border incompetency, with Latinos saying by a twenty-point margin – 48 percent to 28 percent – if Biden wins reelection the migrant crisis will increase. On the flip side, Latinos say by a sixty-one-point margin – 65 percent to 4 percent – that they believe the influx of illegals will decrease under Trump.
Latinos disapprove of Biden’s border policy by an eighteen-point-margin, 54 percent to 36 percent, and show broad interest in efforts to curb asylum-seeking and remove illegal immigrants.
A plurality of Latinos now support the deportation of all illegal immigrants by a margin of 53 percent to 47 percent. The share of Latinos who favor deportation is just fourteen points shy of the share of whites who do.
This is nearly identical to the share of Latinos in a March 2024 Marist poll (52 percent) who said they favored the deportation of illegal immigrants.
Latinos also widely favor a recent executive order that will diminish the number of illegals allowed into the country by partially shutting down asylum processing. A full 69 percent of Latinos favor partially shutting down asylum processing along the U.S.-Mexico border to reduce migrant entries.
Lastly, Latinos support empowering local police to identify undocumented immigrants by a fourteen-point margin, 57 percent to 43 percent.
YouGov polling from January of this year also drives home the point that Latinos have had enough of Biden’s unsustainable border response. The January survey showed Latinos say by a thirty-seven-point margin – 58 percent to 21 percent – that Biden should be tougher on illegals trying to cross the border.
A plurality of Hispanics (40 percent) in January also said the U.S.-Mexico border is in crisis, and among those who said the border was in crisis, a full 77 percent cited the strain on U.S. resources as a primary concern.
In the YouGov survey, Hispanics also had a bleak outlook for the impact recent migrants will have on the United States. Hispanics said by a ten-point margin – 38 percent to 28 percent – they believe recent migrants will make U.S. society worse in the long run.
While the self-serving Open Borders advocates have pushed a porous border policy as a form of so-called humanitarianism, that message is no longer resonating, including with Hispanic Americans. By wide margins, Hispanics are sharing their concerns about the long-term implications of Open Borders and demanding stronger border security measures.
The idea that “the Hispanic vote” is a monolith in favor of relentless illegal immigration from South America simply because a share of Hispanics are immigrants themselves is far from accurate. According to the data, a plurality of Hispanics support the enforcement of immigration laws, curbing asylum-seeking, and believe the recent migrant crisis will negatively impact society in the long term.
Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
