Poll Shows Shocking Majority Of Republicans Want Migrants Rounded Up And Put In Camps

Donald Trump has suggested that he would round up immigrants, possibly using the military, and put them in internment camps while they await deportation. That part isn’t surprising at all, but what is surprising is that a new poll has found that nearly half the country is on board with this insane idea. Furthermore, nearly 80% of Republicans want to see this happen, or at least they would be ok if it did happen. It never stops with just one group, as Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins explains.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

A disturbing new poll has been released showing that roughly half of the country is okay with or actively supporting the idea of taking undocumented immigrants in the United States, rounding them up and putting them in internment camps. The poll, which was conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute in partnership with the Brookings Institution, found that 50%, so right at half of Americans said, no, absolutely not. You cannot round up undocumented immigrants and put them in internment camps. That would be very bad. History has taught us that, but 47% of the country just slightly under half, said, yeah, that sounds about right. And the reason you have such a large number of Americans saying that it's okay is because a shocking majority of Republicans want this to happen. 80%, 80% of Republicans polled said yes, round them up and put 'em in the camps. Now, that is not necessarily the shocking part. What is shocking, however, you know, to those who've never paid attention to the religious right is the fact that an overwhelming number of self-described Christians believe that we should just be rounding up migrants and locking them up in camps.

White evangelical Protestants are most likely to favor militarized encampments for undocumented immigrants. 75% of white evangelical Protestants. You know, we live our lives by the Bible. We do what Jesus would do. We've got our little bracelets still 75% of those religious hypocrites say, round them up and put 'em in the camps. 61% of white Catholics say, round them up and put 'em in the camps. No other ethnicity by religion has a majority of people saying, round them up. Nope, it's the white people. It's the white Republicans, the white religious people saying, round them up and lock 'em up. And the, uh, the president of PRRI, who again conducted the survey said, I was pretty stunned at how many Americans, particularly Republicans and white evangelicals supported this. Well, you shouldn't be. I mean, really, there is nothing shocking about this. It is shocking at first to see it. But then when you think about the hypocritical stances of the religious right, when you think about how horrible Republicans have become, you know, totally makes sense. Like, I'm actually shocked these numbers weren't higher for Republicans, that there

Were still 20% of Republicans that said, nah, maybe it's not a good idea. But the big question of course is why are you even polling people on this? I mean, who's talking about rounding up migrants and putting them in camps? Donald Trump is using the Alien Enemies Act of 19, uh, or excuse me, 1798, which of course was also used 80 years ago to round up Japanese Americans and stick them in internment camps. But Donald Trump has suggested using that as part of his plan for mass deportations. Now, obviously these mass deportation plans that Donald Trump has laid out, you can't just immediately slap everybody on a bus or stick 'em in an airplane and send them back. No, you gotta hold 'em somewhere for a while as transportation becomes available. And that's where the camps come in.

History is repeating itself. And the problem is those majorities of Republicans, majorities of those white evangelicals, they don't know their history. It's not just that it happened, right, that people were rounded up and put in camps. It's that it never ends with just that group of people you don't like. No, eventually they run out of those people to round up. And who do you think is gonna be running the internment camps? It's not gonna be the federal government. No, it's gonna be the for-profit prison industry running these camps.