Trump’s Harder Line on Immigration Appears to Resonate With Many Americans

Former President Donald J. Trump has described his plans to remove large numbers of unauthorized immigrants from the country if elected to a second term by citing the mass deportations under President Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s.

In that initiative, federal agents and law enforcement officers used military techniques such as sweeps, raids and surveillance checkpoints — as well as a blunt form of racial profiling — to round up undocumented workers and load them onto buses and boats. As many as 1.3 million people were expelled, mostly Mexican and Mexican American workers, some of whom were U.S. citizens. Critical to the initiative — named Operation Wetback, for the racial slur — was intense anti-immigrant sentiment. Officials at the time used that sentiment to justify family separations and overcrowded and unsanitary detention conditions — practices that the Trump administration would deploy decades later in its own immigration enforcement.

As the 2024 presidential election heats up, some Latino advocacy and immigrant-rights groups are sounding the alarm that Mr. Trump’s tactics could amount to a repetition of a sordid chapter of American history. But recent polling shows that Mr. Trump’s position on immigration appears to be resonating. About half of Americans have said they would support mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, according to a CNN poll conducted by the research firm SSRS in January.

Authorities have reported record numbers of migrant apprehensions at the southern border for three straight years, including 2.4 million apprehensions in the fiscal year that ended in September 2023. Although the numbers have dropped sharply in recent months, immigration remains an albatross for President Biden: Even some Democratic mayors have complained that they need help from the federal government to contend with the migrant populations in their cities.

Americans’ views on immigration are complex and constantly changing. Here is a snapshot of where public attitudes on immigration stand now.

Public support for more immigration has ebbed after rising under Trump.

Mr. Trump’s restrictive approach to immigration, both legal and illegal, helped push Americans of various political stripes to support more permissive policies.