Another surprise: Hispanic, Democratic voters backed Trump immigration limits

President Trump’s policies limiting immigration, decried by liberals and the Biden-Harris ticket, won broad bipartisan and Hispanic support in the election and even turned several border towns red for the first time in years.

According to two reviews, majorities of Hispanics and Democrats supported the administration’s curbs on immigration to stop the coronavirus, protect jobs, and maintain the current population mix.

And in several heavily immigrant border counties, voters rejected the demonization of Trump’s policies and agents of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In a voter exit survey for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, 78% said immigration was an “important” issue for them and was key to who they voted for. Support for Trump’s border closings to block further COVID-19 exposure won 80% support.

Significantly, said the Zogby Analytics survey shared with Secrets, 60% of Hispanics and 54% of Democrats backed Trump’s immigration cuts to protect U.S. jobs. And similar numbers agreed that the cuts were good to “maintain our nation’s population.”

[Read more: Trump flipped five overwhelmingly Hispanic border counties despite bipartisan claims his rhetoric would alienate them]

And a review of border voting by the Center for Immigration Studies found that several historically Democratic Texas border counties switched to Republican in the election.

FAIR President Dan Stein said that the election results should be a warning to Joe Biden and his plans to open the borders and grant amnesty to illegal immigrants in the country.

“The election results clearly do not indicate that President-elect Biden has a mandate to institute radical immigration policies being promoted by his party’s far-left wing that include erasing borders and flooding the country with millions of new legal and illegal immigrants,” he said, citing an overall 76% supermajority backing immigration reductions.

And while Trump himself appears to have lost reelection, he said Trump’s policies won and have coattails for future elections. “Standing firm against policy agendas of the radical left, like mass amnesty and open borders, is one of the reasons Republicans did better than expected in down-ballot races this year, and will likely to be an important factor in 2022 when control of the Senate, a newly reapportioned House, and many state legislatures are up for grabs,” said Stein.

Biden, meanwhile, appears to be pushing ahead with his pro-immigration policies, including embracing some 800,000 so-called Dreamers. He has named several pro-immigration officials to his Homeland Security review team.

But, warned Stein, “While unchecked immigration may be a high priority for a loud and radical fringe of his party, it is not how the vast majority of voters believe the new administration should be spending their time and political capital.”

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