WASHINGTON — President Trump’s immigration policies remain broadly popular with Americans, though a majority now oppose efforts to deport migrants to jails in other nations or without court hearings, a new poll shows.
The Wall Street Journal survey released Monday found that 58% of US registered voters don’t support the administration’s so-called “third country” removals to prisons.
The same percentage of voters also disapprove of deportations occurring without a US immigration hearing or an appearance before a judge, the poll found.
Still, 62% back Trump’s larger push to remove migrants who entered the US illegally, it said.
“President Trump was elected based on his promise to close the border and deport criminal illegal aliens,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement about the survey.
“Just over six months into his administration, the border is the most secure it’s ever been in history and deportations are ramping up — it’s no surprise that Americans overwhelmingly approve of the President’s successful efforts.
“And despite lies from the fake news, every single illegal alien receives due process prior to deportation,” she said.
“The Trump Administration will continue carrying out the largest mass deportation operation in history, and communicating our wins directly to the American people so they don’t have to sift through the mainstream media lies about our efforts.”
Critics of Trump’s approach have claimed it is akin to “disappearing” the migrants — in a reference to Soviet-era tactics against dissidents — without due process.
At least 60% of independents view current US immigration policies as going “too far,” the Journal poll showed, while 90% of Republicans are in favor of them. Meanwhile, 90% of Democrats said the policies had crossed a line.
Nearly 40% of all voters surveyed said deportations should occur without an immigration hearing of some kind.
The Trump administration has faced legal challenges for rounding up more than 250 alleged migrant gangbangers and flying them to a notorious Salvadoran mega-prison in March, as well as for deporting others convicted of armed robbery, drug trafficking, sex assault and murder to South Sudan.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a purported MS-13 gang member, was among the deportees famously sent to El Salvador’s Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT) prison — despite an immigration judge having determined in 2019 he couldn’t be sent to the Central American nation because of the risk of retaliation from a rival gang, Barrio 18.
The US Supreme Court eventually ruled that the administration had wrongfully deported Abrego Garcia. He was returned to the US in June and charged with trafficking thousands of illegal immigrants into the country.
In June, the high court did permit Trump officials to remove convicted criminal migrants to third countries with limited notice.
Lawyers for the convicted migrants tried in two jurisdictions to halt the flight to South Sudan, arguing their deportation would violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition against “cruel and unusual” punishments.
Trump admin officials said the eight men committed crimes so “monstrous and barbaric” that no other country would take them.
They had already been given final removal orders or failed to appeal their deportation order after their convictions, a DHS source previously told The Post.
The White House touted 140,000 deportations in the administration’s first 100 days — and border czar Tom Homan has said a recent funding boost from Congress could lead to as many as 1.2 million removals by year’s end.
About 700,000 migrants with known criminal charges are living in the US, according to Homan.
The Journal polled 1,500 registered voters between July 15 and 20 through phone, cellphone and online surveys. The margin of error was plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
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