Ipsos Poll: 42 Percent of Hispanic Americans Want Border Wall

(Cedar Attanasio/AP)

The share of Hispanic Americans in favor of building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border has climbed to 42% amid illegal immigration crisis at the southern border, a new Axios/Ipsos poll found.

According to the survey, the number of Hispanic Americans who want a border wall has jumped 12 percentage points since December 2021. Another 38% supported returning migrants to their home countries — a 10-percentage point increase from three years ago.

A 64% majority of Hispanic Americans also said they would support the president shutting down the southern border if too many migrants cross into the U.S., the poll found.

Immigration is now the third-biggest concern for Latino voters, according to the survey, behind inflation and crime/gun violence.

If the federal government begins mass deportations of illegal immigrants, 52% of those polled said they worry that it would target all Latinos in the United States, including legal residents. This fear was greatest among respondents who speak only Spanish, at 59%, and among first-generation respondents, at 57%.

Roughly two in three Latinos, or 65%, said they support providing migrants with a path to U.S. citizenship, while 59% said they support people fleeing crime and violence in Latin America claiming asylum in the U.S.

According to figures from Customs and Border Protection (CBP), more than 7 million illegal migrants have entered the United States at the southern border since President Joe Biden took office in 2021, not including an estimated 1.8 million known gotaways.

CBP data shows there were 189,922 migrant encounters in February alone — a new monthly record.

The flood of migrants at the border has turned immigration into a top-of-mind issue for voters ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

According to the New York Post, a bipartisan group of county leaders in New York called on Biden to immediately take action on the southern border, which they described as a “war zone.”

“The situation is dire,” New York State Association of Counties President Daniel McCoy, a Democrat, wrote in a letter to Biden sent Tuesday and obtained by the Post.

Biden signaled on Tuesday he would take executive action to reduce the number of migrants coming into the country via the U.S.-Mexico border.

“We’re examining whether or not I have that power,” Biden told Univision in an interview taped last week. “Some are suggesting that I should just go ahead and try it. And if I get shut down by the court, I get shut down by the court.”

The poll was conducted March 22-28 and surveyed 1,012 Hispanic-Americans age 18 and older. The margin of error is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.