Just over half of U.S. Catholics say they support the broad-scale deportation of unauthorized immigrants, and a similar number hold a favorable view of President Donald Trump, according to an EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research poll of 1,000 people.
Support is higher among weekly Massgoers than infrequent Mass attendees. Of the former group, 58% back broad deportations and 60% view Trump favorably.
White Catholics are more supportive of deportations than Latino Catholics, with 60% of white Catholics backing mass deportations versus 41% of Latino Catholics. Additionally, 58% of white Catholics have favorable views of Trump, compared with 41% of Latino Catholics.
The results contrast with the U.S. bishops’ opposition to “indiscriminate mass deportation.” Only 15% of Catholics surveyed named immigration as their top issue, while 40% cited inflation as their primary concern.
Majorities of U.S. Catholics approve of President Donald Trump and his stance on immigration even though the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has explicitly opposed mass deportations, a new EWTN News/RealClear Opinion Research poll has found.
The poll, conducted among 1,000 self-identified Catholics from Nov. 9 to Nov. 11, showed roughly 54% of respondents supporting “the detention and deportation of unauthorized immigrants on a broad scale,” Catholic News Agency (CNA) reported Dec. 11. Thirty percent said they do not support Trump’s approach to deportations. The poll also discovered that roughly 52% of Catholics say they have favorable opinions of Trump and 37% say they do not.
Weekly Massgoers are more likely than those who attend Mass infrequently to approve of broad-scale deportations (58% vs. 50%). Just 23% of weekly Massgoers oppose the deportations, while 36% of infrequent Massgoers do not approve of them. Those who regularly go to Mass are also more likely than infrequent Massgoers to have a favorable opinion of Trump (60% vs. 45%).
The poll also found that white Catholics are more likely than Latino Catholics to support mass deportations and Trump. Sixty percent of white Catholics support the deportations and 26% oppose them, while 41% of Latino Catholics support them and 39% do not. Fifty-eight percent of white Catholics said they have a favorable opinion of Trump and nearly 35% said they do not, while Latino Catholics have a more polarized view of the president: 41% approve and 40% do not.
According to CNA, White House Assistant Press Secretary Taylor Rogers reacted to the poll by stating that Trump “won in a landslide victory with historic support from patriotic Catholics across the country because he promised to fight for people of faith, and he has delivered in record time.”
The poll’s results highlight a disparity between U.S. Catholics and the USCCB’s views on immigration and deportations, as the bishops said in a Nov. 12 Special Pastoral Message that they are opposed to “the indiscriminate mass deportation of people,” Zeale previously reported. The bishops said that respect for human dignity must inform the nation’s approach to immigration and called for “safe and legal pathways” to citizenship.
The National Catholic Register reported that Catholics in the poll said that immigration is not their top priority, as only 15% considered it the most important issue to them. Respondents were more likely to say that they care most about bringing down inflation (40%), ranking the issue above every other concern.