Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) claimed in an interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday that President-elect Donald Trump’s immigration policy “ideas are out of step with what most Americans want.” But the latest polling doesn’t seem to back him up.

A Scripps News/Ipsos survey published in September found that, contrary to Garcia’s opinion, a large sum of Americans support Trump’s immigration policies. Roughly 54% of respondents across the political spectrum said they “strongly” or “somewhat” agree with Trump’s plan to conduct a mass deportation of illegal immigrants. While the majority (86%) who felt that way were Republicans, it’s noteworthy that 58% were Independents and at least 25% were Democrats. Additionally, several polls throughout the 2024 presidential cycle revealed that most Americans had the topic of immigration as one of their primary concerns. For many, this issue ranked just below inflation and the economy.

The September poll also demonstrated that, on immigration, 44% believed Trump would do a better job at tackling the problem, as opposed to the 34% who favored Vice President Kamala Harris. Based on those statistics, Garcia seems to be the one who is “out of step” on both how Americans feel and what the president-elect’s agenda includes. 

For instance, the representative said that Trump “wants to separate families.” However, Trump sat down with “Meet the Press” on Sunday and stated, “I don’t want to be breaking up families. So, the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back.” He added, “Look … when somebody comes here illegally, they’re going out. It’s very simple. … Now if they come here illegally, but their family is here legally, then the family has a choice. The person that came in illegally can go out or they can all go out together.”

Later in the interview, the congressman stated that if an immigrant is “undocumented or causing crimes, of course they shouldn’t be here.” Notably, Trump has explained on numerous occasions that a primary goal for his immigration policies is to secure America by getting people who came here illegally out of the country — especially those who have committed violent crimes.

Democrats seem to be pushing for the policies with public opposition. A recent example would be the Democrats in Colorado responsible for approving the “Cover All Coloradans” program, which will extend free Medicaid coverage to illegals.

The new law goes into effect on January 1, and with it comes a roughly $51 million dollar cost to Colorado taxpayers. State Rep. Matt Soper (R) expressed his concerns about how Colorado will afford such an expense. Additionally, he took issue with the fact that illegals, through this program, would receive benefits that citizens aren’t even getting. “We shouldn’t be giving programs and services to undocumented immigrants that we aren’t giving to citizens who are within Colorado.”

Colorado is not the first state to hand out benefits to illegal immigrants. Throughout the ongoing border crisis, several cities have given illegals what many consider special treatment. In Chicago, teachers were allegedly instructed to give migrant students passing grades despite “severe academic deficiencies.” In January, California extended free taxpayer-funded health care to illegals, including free gender transition surgeries and hormone therapy. Indeed, most cities across the U.S. have watched as illegals have “overrun” free buildings and resources.

As a part of the upcoming Trump administration, the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is already working to determine where government money is going and what can be cut. As it relates to immigration, DOGE found that over $150 billion of taxpayer money had been spent on illegals in 2023 alone. As Family Research Council’s Matt Carpenter told The Washington Stand, “For Rep. Garcia to claim a majority of Americans actually oppose Trump’s immigration plans, when almost without exception all the polling shows the opposite, is yet another instance in which we can see progressives live in an information bubble.”

Because of this “bubble,” he explained, “information they don’t want to accept as true is [often] simply dismissed and falsehoods are instead repeated. If they want to continue losing elections, they can deny the mandate President Trump won on the immigration issue, just as they deny they were rejected by voters in large part to their insane gender ideology agenda.” According to Carpenter, who serves as director of FRC Action, if Democrats “want to be competitive in the future, they will have to accept the truth.”

This truth, he concluded, is that “they lost the 2024 election because too many Americans rejected the Democratic Party and its agenda of open borders, lowered standard of living, and wildly out-of-step social policies.”