Nearly half of Republicans support President-elect Donald Trump deploying U.S. military forces to detain undocumented immigrants in internment camps until they can be deported, according to a new poll.
The findings suggest that Trump’s controversial mass deportation program – which he has acknowledged includes plans to declare a national emergency and use “military assets” to support operations – has the backing of his base even as the program is still unpopular with most Americans.
The survey from the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute found that 46 percent of Republicans support using the military to lock up immigrants in internment camps before their deportations. Nearly a fifth of independents said the same, while just 8 percent of Democrats responded positively to the proposal touted by the incoming president.
Other findings included 82 percent of “voters who score very high or high on the Right-Wing Authoritarianism Scale (RWAS) report strongly supporting Trump,” while “voters who score very low or low overwhelmingly supported Harris (79%).”
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The survey’s results seemed to come as a surprise to PRRI president and founder Robert Jones.
“There have been questions in the Trump era where I’ve thought … I can’t believe that we need to know the answer to this question,” Jones told Axios. “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.”
Other notable poll findings include 63% of Republican voters expressing the most confidence "that Trump will not use government power to exact political revenge, compared with 34% of independent voters, and just 6% of Democratic voters.”
