Poll: More Hispanics for border controls

The number of Hispanic Americans who endorse building a border wall and deporting illegal migrants has jumped — while the vast majority support the president even shutting down the besieged southern border, according to a new poll.

Four in 10 Hispanic Americans (42%) want a wall along the US-Mexico border, an Axios and Ipsos poll released this week found — a 12-percentagepoint jump from December 2021. Thirty-eight percent also supported sending migrants back to their home countries, up 10 percentage points from three years prior.

A whopping 64% of Hispanic Americans surveyed also said they would support giving the president the authority to shut the border if too many migrants start coming into the country.

The poll surveyed more than 1,000 voting-age Hispanic Americans between March 22 and March 28.

The survey also determined that immigration is now the third-biggest concern among Latino voters.

Still, more than half of the respondents said they worry that if the federal government starts mass deportations, it would target all Latinos living in the United States, including legal residents.

The fear was greatest among first-generation Americans and those who speak only Spanish.

As such, a majority would still prefer that the US provide migrants with a path to citizenship, and nearly 60% said they would support allowing refugees fleeing crime and violence in Latin America to claim asylum in the US.

More than 7 million migrants have illegally crossed the USMexico border since President Biden took office in 2021, US Customs and Border Protection data show.

The total does not include an estimated additional 1.8 million known “gotaways” who evaded law enforcement.