....and throw away the key

Five months into Trump II, roughly a third of Americans have come to favor deportation policies that would have seemed unthinkably harsh not long ago.

The Trump administration’s leadership can change the views of its followers, and sometimes radicalize them.

The question respondents were asked in this new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) is worded in such an extreme way I’d almost thought it was meant to elicit a "no": do you favor "The U.S. government deporting undocumented immigrants to foreign prisons in El Salvador, Rwanda, or Libya, without allowing them to challenge their deportation in court?"

In other words, this was not just measuring willingness to deport every illegal alien, no matter what extenuating circumstances attend their presence -- brought here as a toddler, squeaky-clean record of staying out of trouble otherwise, connections with military service, spouse, parent and grandparent of American citizens, flawless assimilation, English mastery -- and dropping them off at the capital airport in the country where they had been born. It *also* measured willingness to 1) deport them into a prison, rather than liberty abroad; 2) into a prison in a country different from than that of their birth, with which they have no ties and whose language they may not speak; 3) into prison systems known for cruelty and persecution; 4) not let them get before a judge to challenge any of this, even though all nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this spring that some due process before deportation is necessary to satisfy the Constitution.

With the question seemingly stacked to get a "no," how high do you think the "yeses" were? The answer: 37 percent of Americans favored, 17 percent strongly and 20 percent otherwise. 61 percent opposed, 36 percent strongly and 25 percent otherwise.

As for the party gap, it was a chasm. Identified Republicans supported it 78-22, with 41 percent "strongly" favoring it. Independents split 35-63 against, and Democrats 10-89 against. (PRRI's interest is in religion, so it also looked at how persons of different religious views split. Its breakdown of demographic support -- by region, age, sex, race, and so forth -- is worth a close look and is for me quite depressing).

To make clear my own views, I think snatching off the street persons who may have been beloved members of American families and communities for decades, and who have neither been charged with nor convicted of any crime, and popping them into a prison in Libya or Rwanda, all without according them any due process along the way, is a hideous, unconscionable course of action. I don't believe 37 percent of Americans somehow approved of this in 2023 and Stephen Miller et al. just came along to put their wishes into effect. I think Miller, Trump & co. have radicalized a large share of their followers, who are now willing to follow them down paths that would not long ago have been seen as far over the line.

If I'm right, then we must expect the process to continue, and a third or so of Americans to support cruel or atrocious new things that may be proposed tomorrow. One straw in the wind may be the growing demands to de-naturalize persons who have achieved citizenship but are seen as undeserving politically or otherwise. Since Zohran Mamdani's upset win in the primary for New York City mayor, a cry has already begun, led by figures like U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), for the federal government to begin proceedings to de-naturalize Mamdani, that is, strip him of his U.S. citizenship. For now it's a laughable fringe view -- but then I would have said the same thing about deporting Venezuelans to an El Salvador prison without due process.

The PRRI survey can be found here.