WASHINGTON: Americans are divided over President Donald Trump’s decision to activate the military to respond to protests against his crackdown on migrants, with about half supportive of the move, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Thursday.
Some 48 percent of respondents in the two-day poll agreed with a statement that the president should “deploy the military to bring order to the streets” when protests turn violent, while 41 percent disagreed. Views on the matter split sharply along partisan lines, with members of Trump’s Republican Party overwhelmingly backing the idea of calling in troops while Democrats were firmly opposed.
At the same time, just 35 percent of respondents said they approved of Trump’s response to the protests in Los Angeles, which has included sending National Guard troops and US Marines to the city and also threatening to arrest Democratic officials, including the governor of California. Some 50 percent of people in the poll said they disapproved of Trump’s response.
Trump has argued the military deployment in Los Angeles was needed due to protests there following a series of immigration raids in the city. Some of the demonstrations in Los Angeles have turned violent — leaving burned out cars on city streets — and 46 percent of respondents in the Reuters/Ipsos poll said protesters opposing Trump’s immigration policies had gone too far, compared to 38 percent who disagreed with that view.
The protests have spread to other US cities including New York, Chicago, Washington and San Antonio, Texas — all of which have large immigrant populations and tend to vote for Democrats rather than Republicans.
Trump campaigned and won last year’s election on a promise to increase deportations of undocumented immigrants and Reuters/Ipsos polls have shown that his support on immigration policy has been consistently higher than on other matters, such as his stewardship of the US economy.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll, which surveyed 1,136 Americans nationwide and has a margin of error of about 3 percentage points, showed wide support for increased deportations. Some 52 percent of respondents — including one in five Democrats and nine in 10 Republicans — backed ramping up deportations of people in the country illegally. Still, 49 percent of people in the poll said Trump had gone too far with his arrests of immigrants, compared to 40 percent who said he had not done so.
The most heated protests have taken place in Los Angeles County, where one in three residents are immigrants and about half of people born abroad are naturalized US citizens, according to US Census estimates.
Nationwide, Americans took a generally dim view of Trump’s threats to arrest Democratic officials like California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat. Just 35 percent of respondents said Trump should order arrests of state and local officials who try to stop federal immigration enforcement.