Explosive survey shows how many voters want lockups and deportations to tackle migrant surge

Fears about America's immigration crisis have been laid bare by a poll that shows broad support for roundups and mass deportations of non-legal migrants.

Fully 56 percent of voters said most or all immigrants in the US illegally should be rounded up and deported, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

That is understood to apply to at least 10 million people, and perhaps many more.

Another 36 percent of registered voters supported the use of detention camps to hold undocumented migrants before they're kicked out of the country.

More than half of Americans want to see mass roundups and deportations of undocumented immigrants

Haitian migrants cross the Rio Grande river from Mexico in the US

Still, 54 percent of respondents were opposed to such camps; and 10 percent said they were not sure.

The poll shows widespread concern over massive people flows across the southern border since Joe Biden became president in 2021.

Voters' views on immigration align more with his predecessor, Donald Trump, who vows to crack down on migrants if he beats Biden in the 2024 presidential contest.

Trump has spoken of plans to build large camps to hold immigrants pending deportations.

In an interview with Time Magazine in April, Trump said he would consider using camps but that 'there wouldn't be that much of a need for them' because people would be rapidly deported.

Tom Homan, a Trump ally and former official, said tents would be needed as more immigrants in the US illegally are arrested and held for deportation, exceeding existing detention space.

'We're going to have to hold them someplace,' Homan said in an interview.

The tents would meet detention standards set by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement and would not amount to 'concentration camps,' he added.

Homan said National Guard troops could support deportation operations, but that law enforcement officers would need to make arrests.

Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Trump would 'marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation in American history.'

Biden defeated Trump in 2020 vowing to reverse many of Trump's hard-line immigration policies.

But the 81-year-old president has struggled with record numbers of migrants caught crossing the US-Mexico border illegally.

Asylum seekers take water and socks that were donated by a charity as they wait to surrender to US immigration officials at the California-Mexico border 

Migrants arrive to Bajo Chiquito village in Panama, part of an exodus through Central America and Mexico and into the US 

Texas National Guard agents use pepper spray shots to deter migrants at a barbed-wire fence installed along the Rio Grande

He has toughened his approach to the border in the run-up to the election.

ICE stepped up deportations at the end of last year, with 66,000 people removed from October 1 through December 31, 2023, agency statistics show

That's more aggressive pace than at the start of Biden's presidency.

Biden campaign spokesperson Maca Casado said in a statement that Americans 'want border security and immigration solutions, not the cruel, ineffective chaos Donald Trump is offering.'

Former president Donald Trump

It's not clear how many people are in the US illegally.

For the first two decades of the century, there were between about 10-12 million undocumented migrants in the US.

Some Republican politicians and conservative monitoring groups say this has shot up since Biden took the White House, thanks to surging arrivals and lax border policies, and could be closer to 20 million nowadays.

Republican Florida Senator Marco Rubio says there could be as many as '30 million people who entered this country illegally.'

Some 85 percent of Republican voters in the poll said most or all immigrants in the US illegally should be deported, compared to 26 percent of Democrats and 61 percent of independents.

But fewer voters agreed with a statement that immigrants in the country illegally should be arrested and put in detention camps while awaiting deportation hearings.

Some 62 percent of registered Republican said they agreed, compared to 12 percent of Democrats and 35 percent of independents.

The poll, conducted online, surveyed 3,208 registered voters nationwide.

It had margins of error of about 2 percentage points for responses from all registered voters, about 3 points for registered Republicans and Democrats and about 4 points for independents.

With agencies.