I think most Americans would have been happy with just removing criminals and calling a spade a spade. I think many Americans are completely ignorant to what mass deportation would look like. It would 100% crush the homebuilding economy. My guess is that this year it gets way worse, and Trump finally pulls back once all his rich friends shoot him a call to stop the madness. That would be my guess. Really hoping it doesn't get to that point but its sickening watching hardworking Americans get taken off job sites they are building for LEGAL Americans. Its hypocritical for Americans to want mass deportation as they live in their homes which were built off illegals. If not hypocritical we could call it extremely ignorant.
That's actually a conceptual polling failure. Years ago I read a story about Israelis polled about whether they wanted peace with the Palestinians, nearly 100% responded that yes, they were entirely behind a peace deal with the Palestinians. But when they actually started asking questions about what concrete things they would be willing to give up as part of that deal, the majority of the population was only willing to make extremely minor compromises or no compromises at all in order to secure that peace - they like the abstract idea of peace but only on their own winner-take-all terms. Conceptually and theoretically people don't like the idea of illegal immigrants. Actually being willing to "make the sausage" is something else entirely, and good polsters should be very aware of that in asking such questions, but often aren't, intentionally or not. (I'm sure some biased polsters utilise this to try and shift opinion.) You get a distorted vision of what the public is ACTUALLY willing to tolerate if you don't ask questions with tangible and concrete details. Asking non-concrete questions, you are basically only asking about what you'd like in a perfect, theoretical, Platonic world.
NOW we have the details on why the federal prosecutors resigned. This is clear political interference in law enforcement. Senior officials pressured prosecutors to drop a civil rights investigation because it contradicted Trump's public statements. Potentially obstruction of justice? In normal times, this would be a major scandal. The orders, they said, came from senior officials, including Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, several of whom worried that pursuing a civil rights investigation — by using a warrant obtained on that basis — would contradict President Trump’s claim that Ms. Good “violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer” who fired at her as she drove her vehicle. Over the next few days, top Department of Justice officials presented alternative approaches. First, they suggested prosecutors ask a judge to sign a new search warrant for the vehicle, predicated on a criminal investigation into whether the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who shot Ms. Good, Jonathan Ross, had been assaulted by her. Later, they urged the prosecutors to instead investigate Ms. Good’s partner, who had been with Ms. Good on the morning of the shooting, confronting immigration agents in their Minneapolis neighborhood. Several of the career federal prosecutors in Minnesota, including Mr. Thompson, balked at the new approach, which they viewed as legally dubious and incendiary in a state where anger over a federal immigration crackdown was already boiling over. Mr. Thompson and five others left the office in protest, setting off a broader wave of resignations that has left Minnesota’s U.S. attorney’s office severely understaffed and in crisis. Officials have not said whether they ultimately obtained a new warrant to search the vehicle.
Polls aren't that inconsistent. When asked a SIMPLE yes/no question, a small majority (50-60%) said yes to deporting all undocumented immigrants. But when asked about specifics, the answer is very different. Much less support for workplace raids, military involvement, detention camps, family separations, community disruption, economic impacts, anything involving children, and so on. People only heard about the simple yes/no question and that's what Republicans ran on (and Democrats folded and conceded completely on). But the polls, even before the election, already showed how UNPOPULAR all these current methods and impacts were back then. It's not a surprise. It just wasn't fully covered or debated.
