Democrats have so far failed to convince American voters that President Donald Trump’s illegal migrant deportation effort is a net loss for the country, a new survey suggests.
A majority of voters support deporting “immigrants who are living in the United States illegally,” according to a Marquette Law School national poll released Wednesday. The survey found that a total of 66% of respondents either strongly favored or somewhat favored the position, with only 34% of respondents strongly or somewhat opposed to it.
The survey noted a relative steadiness in support for deportations over the past year-and-a-half. In eight of the nine surveys conducted by Marquette Law School between February 2024 to May 2025, 60% or more of respondents have favored such removals, according to the poll’s authors.
The results come in spite of incredible pushback by Democratic leaders opposed to President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda.
“Donald Trump’s modern-day Gestapo is scooping folks up off the streets,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the failed 2024 vice presidential candidate, said about Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during a Saturday commencement speech. “They’re in unmarked vans, wearing masks, being shipped off to foreign torture dungeons — no chance to mount a defense, not even a chance to kiss a loved one goodbye, just grabbed up by masked agents, shoved into those vans, and disappeared.”
Walz’s scathing comments — which were strongly rebuked by the Department of Homeland Security — were just the latest in Democrats’ vocal opposition to the hawkish immigration enforcement strategy taking place under the Trump administration.
Maryland Democrat Sen. Chris Van Hollen went so far as to travel to El Salvador and demand a meeting with a deported illegal migrant previously held in the Central American country’s most notorious mega-prison. Growing evidence that the individual in question may have been an MS-13 gang member involved in human smuggling did not deter Trump’s naysayers — four Democrat House lawmakers soon followed Van Hollen to El Salvador and demanded the illegal migrant be returned to the U.S.
The president was already earning high marks on his immigration record before Democrats began their trips to El Salvador.
A CNBC survey released in April showed Trump with a net +7 approval on his policy of deporting illegal aliens and a net +12 approval on his handling of the southern border. A CNN poll cited that month found 56% of Americans in support of mass deportation of illegal migrants.
Liberal groups have successfully blocked the Trump administration in court from using the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime authority, to deport Tren de Aragua gang members. Other left-wing groups and activists have turned to the court system repeatedly in an ongoing effort to stymie the president’s immigration enforcement agenda, but Trump did earn a temporary victory Monday when the Supreme Court allowed him to continue stripping deportation protections from certain Venezuelan nationals.
Despite the opposition from Democrats, the new Marquette poll found Americans are still largely in support of Trump’s border policies. Fifty-six of respondents said they approve of the president’s handling of border security and only 44% voiced disapproval, according to the poll.
The survey found his overall approval to be slightly underwater, with 46% approving of his job performance and 54% disapproving.
The president’s high marks on immigration issues follows an incredible drop in unlawful border crossings. Daily border encounters have fallen 93% and migrant crossings are down by 99.99%, while fewer than 7,200 encounters were recorded at the border in March 2025, according to a 100-day fact sheet released by the White House in April.
The steep drop in illegal immigration comes in strong contrast to the Biden-era, which oversaw record-breaking encounters with illegal migrants.
Under the Biden administration, the average number of monthly border encounters was nearly 160,000 and the daily average of border encounters peaked at 15,000, according to the White House. In total, around 11 million border encounters occurred during the four years of the Biden administration.
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