A problem that politicians across the board, from both major political parties, consistently have is that they believe what media and political consultants tell them people think, instead of bothering to ask the people themselves. We see another illustration of this with the amnesty debate.
Former Rep. Mayra Flores made an interesting comment on X on August 18. “I don’t know who told Republicans that Hispanic Americans want amnesty. It’s completely false,” she said.
“As someone who came to the United States legally, I’m disappointed to see so many people in Congress pushing for this,” Flores continued. “It’s never a good idea to reward illegal immigration. What’s the incentive to come here legally if illegal immigration is rewarded? Millions of people are waiting patiently in line right now, following all the rules. It’s not fair, and it’s wrong. Don’t use the Hispanic community as an excuse to support amnesty, because we don’t support illegal immigration.” Anecdotally, my experience with legal immigrants from Mexico and South America is likewise that they tend to resent illegal aliens because the latter receive so much for free that the former had to work so hard to obtain.
Just as with the Epstein files debacle, mass deportations, aid for Israel, H-1B visas, and many other topics, what congressmen (and state officials) believe they have to say about amnesty for illegal aliens and what many voters think about amnesty for illegal aliens are two different things. Politicians have a major problem of stereotyping voting blocs based on media propaganda and elitist assumptions. A majority of Hispanic voters do not want to see mass amnesty for illegal aliens. This is consistent across multiple polls in recent years.
For instance, just before the 2024 election, polling on the Prolific platform found that 60% of Latino voters believed there was a migrant crisis, including 91% of Republicans and 46% of Democrats in the demographic. That followed results from a mid-2024 CBS/YouGov poll that found 53% of Hispanic voters wanted mass deportations.
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And as of May 2025, while Donald Trump had lost some of his popularity among Latino voters, their approval of his performance on immigration was still almost 40%, according to Equis, and the opinion shift did not mean that Latinos trusted Democrats more on the border. While over 70% of Latino voters were worried that deportations would separate families unfairly, 50% wanted Congress to focus on border security and 86% wanted deportations of convicted violent criminals.
As of March 2026, a McLauglin & Associates poll found that 58.7% of Hispanic voters supported deporting illegal aliens and 54.7% of them supported deporting visa overstayers.
79.9% (67.2% of Hispanic voters) support escalating penalties for businesses that repeatedly violate immigration hiring laws… 77.9% (72.1% of Hispanic voters) support requiring employers use E-Verify to ensure their new hires are legally authorized to work…69.5% (60.4% of Hispanic voters) support deporting illegal aliens who rely on taxpayer-funded welfare benefits.
Furthermore, 64% of Hispanic voters wanted all federal agencies to assist in immigration enforcement.
Therefore, support for deportations, immigration enforcement, and border security remained relatively consistent over the last couple of years, with somewhere between 50% and 65% of Hispanic voters at any given time backing Trump administration immigration policies. This is not data that indicates a desire for mass amnesty. The GOP needs to figure this out before the midterms and emphasize immigration wins.
