46% of Voters Approved of Trump's Family Detention, 19% Preferred Catch & Release
Amid widespread media hysteria over the separation of children from their parents after illegal border crossings, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that will keep the families together as much as possible during their processing.
“The President has taken action to address the immediate issue by detaining families together for as long as he can legally do so,” Trump’s order said.
Liberals weren’t satisfied, of course. They don’t think illegal immigrant families should be detained at all.
The establishment media and open borders crowd would like you to believe that the vast majority of Americans agree that the families should go free, while only a tiny fraction are in favor of detaining them.
Unfortunately for the left, a new poll throws cold water on that notion.
In an Economist/YouGov poll, Americans were asked, “Which policy do you prefer for how to handle families that are stopped for crossing the border into the United States without proper documentation?”
The most popular answer by far, with 44 percent of respondents, was Trump’s plan: “Hold families together in family detention centers until an immigration hearing at a later date.”
Surprisingly, Hispanics selected that option more than any other racial group, at 48 percent.
The 44 percent is more than double the number in favor of letting the illegal immigrants go: Only 19 percent chose “Release the families and have them report back for an immigration hearing at a later date.”
Twelve percent of respondents voted for, “Arrest the adults, send them to jail to await a criminal trial and send any minor children to shelters run by the Department of Health and Human Services.”
The fourth option — “Arrest both the adults and minor children, send the adults to jail and the minor children to juvenile detention centers to await a criminal trial” — received only 8 percent of the vote.
Seventeen percent weren’t sure of their preference.
In response to a question about whether crossing the border without documentation should be handled as a civil or criminal matter, the majority (43 percent to 36 percent) chose criminal.
The poll was conducted via the internet Sunday through Tuesday with a random sample of 1,500 Americans, including 1,272 registered voters. The results were weighted based on gender, age, race, education and 2012 and 2016 presidential votes, and the poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.
With its weighting, sample size and margin of error, the poll is a pretty good representation of Americans’ current views on the subject.
As frustrating as it has to be for liberals, Americans clearly prefer Trump’s policy of detaining illegal immigrants with their children rather than letting them all go free.
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