Public Deportation Attitudes in the United States

Mass deportation has become a defining feature of the current American immigration debate. Support for mass deportation among the American public has steadily risen over the past two decades, climbing from 21-percent in 2006 to 47-percent in 2024. A large body of scholarship examines public attitudes toward immigration admissions (i.e. what kind of immigrants Americans want to let in), however, we know comparatively little about attitudes towards removals. Political scientists César Vargas-Núñez, Gabriele Magni, and Hans Ludens will examine the factors that shape public support for and opposition to mass deportation policies in the United States. They will conduct a series of survey experiments, with oversamples of Latinos, for their study.