Nearly half of Republicans support Donald Trump’s plan to use the U.S. military to forcibly round up undocumented immigrants into camps and deport them en masse.
A post-election survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that 46 percent of Republicans supported using the military to enact sweeping deportation raids and widespread internment.
Meanwhile, only 9 percent of Democrats and 19 percent of independents endorsed the idea. Twenty-six percent of all voters surveyed endorsed the plan.
PRRI surveyed 5,772 U.S. adults between November 8 to December 2.
Robert P. Jones, PRRI’s president and founder, told Axios on Monday that there was good news and bad news.
“I guess the good news is that three-quarters of the country rejects this idea that we should be putting immigrants in the country illegally into internment camps guarded by the military,” Jones said. The bad news is that support for Trump’s extreme plot is apparently supported by nearly half the members of a mainstream political party.
Trump has claimed he will use the military to carry out mass deportations, and has promised to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1789 to expel suspected members of drug cartels from the country without due process. Trump’s extreme immigration views suggest that his administration would plan to target more than violent criminals, undermining protections for legal immigrants as well.
Trump’s new “border czar” Tom Homan previously said that he expected support from the U.S. military and special operations to carry out their immigration blitz.
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