A recent poll found that the majority of Donald Trump’s supporters in Iowa — 73 percent — believe that the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States should be deported. The amount of support among Republican voters in Iowa was not as high, but still neared the majority at 47 percent.
One Republican voter, 58-year-old Walter Allsup, spoke to the Des Moines Register with a tone that mimicked the rhetoric Donald Trump has been spewing along the campaign trail in order to justify his reasoning for wanting to deport so many illegal immigrants. “That’s what they do when they find Americans that are illegal in their country — they either send them back or throw them in jail. We’re crazy to let people come in and do anything they want like that,” Allsup said. “Race has nothing to do with it. I’m totally blind. I can’t tell what color they are anyway. … I don’t care if they’re from LIechtenstein.”
Allsup’s comments and the polling numbers suggest that Trump’s emphasis on illegal immigration is having an impact on voters throughout the nation. Trump’s immigration policy called for the drastic action of deporting all undocumented immigrants here — which does reach the estimated 11 million mark. Rather than providing a path to citizenship like other candidates have proposed, Trump’s plan would result in the mass deportation of millions of people that have been living here for years. According to the results of this poll, that’s something that almost half of all Republicans and the majority of Trump followers support.
It’s unclear if such drastic measures will ever actually be able to be accomplished by Trump if elected, but it’s clear that his nationalistic, xenophobic anger towards immigrants has struck a chord with many throughout the nation.