Most Texans Support Military Involvement at Southern Border: Poll

Share
Southern Border

Nearly six-in-10 Texans support the deployment of local and state law enforcement, as well as U.S. military troops, to the U.S.-Mexico border to combat illegal immigration, according to a new statewide poll.

Combating illegal immigration was one of President Donald Trump’s biggest campaign promises, with a larger southern border presence leading to dramatically decreased crossing numbers throughout the first roughly nine months of his second term. Methodologies enforced by the administration, however, such as employing masked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to detain suspected illegal aliens at places including schools and places of employment.

The Trump administration’s deployment of the National Guard, or efforts to deploy, to Democrat-run cities like Portland, Oregon, Memphis, Tennessee, and Chicago, Illinois, have also drawn blowback and resulted in legal battles. On Monday, a federal appeals court cleared Trump to for now send Oregon National Guard troops to Portland, lifting a previous lower court ruling.

Texans Embrace Military Use at U.S.-Mexico Border

In red Texas, where the state has voted for Trump throughout all three of his campaigns, voters encourage the current administration to utilize military might as a method to further minimize illegal border crossings and the potential for crime to be committed in the U.S.

Roughly 58% of Texans support and 42% disapprove the sending of the U.S. military to the southern border, while another 54% back the use of state and local law enforcement to help with immigration detention, according to a survey conducted by the University of Houston and Texas Southern University that was published Wednesday, Oct. 22.

The survey was conducted in English and Spanish between Sept. 19 and Oct. 1 and polled about 1,650 YouGov respondents aged 18 years and older. The poll has a margin of error of plus-minus 2.41%.

A U.S. Army Reserve soldier watches over the Rio Grande river separating Mexico, rear, from the U.S., in Laredo, Texas, Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2025. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

Broader questions regarding the Trump administration’s approach on other immigration-related policies resulted in more varied results.

Overall, about 51% approve of current policies and enforcement actions undertaken by the Trump administration while 49% disapprove. Numbers fall along party lines, as 90% of Republicans while just 13% of Democrats approve. Another 39 percent of independents approved.

When spread across races and ethnicities, 62% of White Texans, 42% of Latino Texans, and 23% of Black Texans approve of immigration policies.

Trump's Catch-22

Mark P. Jones, political science fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and senior research fellow at the Hobby School, told Military.com that overall support for the Trump administration’s approach to illegal immigration is down since his inauguration in January, with support curtailing from the low 60's to now being in low 50's.

Jones attributes that to the job the administration has done in drastically reducing unauthorized border crossings, exceeding numbers of previous administrations. In turn, however, he noted that the administration has become a “victim of its own success” as more Americans view the overall negative presence of criminal undocumented immigrants as less of a concern.

So, as the problem becomes less of one, some Americans simply care less and have turned their attention to other related issues, such as the deportation of immigrants with U.S.-born children, immigrants who have American spouses, immigrants’ impacts on local communities, ICE workplace raids, and changing asylum rules that have been put in place for many years, he said.

“Initially, the spotlight of the Trump admin was on individuals with criminal records who posed an implicit or explicit threat to Americans, public safety,” Jones said. “There's overwhelming support for that, even among most Democrats.

“But over time, the target for deportations has widened...to pretty much anyone who is in the country illegally or without authorization. As the net has been broadened, some individuals have begun to rethink their sort of blanket support for some of the Trump administration’s policies.”

Crime and Finances

In terms of crime, 46% of surveyed Texans said the Trump administration’s immigration policies will lead to a reduction, 29% said it will have no impact, and 25% said it will increase it.

Financially, the immigration policies do not bode well for the state as a whole according to respondents. Approximately 47% of them said the policies will weaken the Texas economy, while 41% believe they will make it stronger. Another 12% find no impact either way.

“On one hand, crime is a significant problem in Memphis, Chicago or D.C.,” Jones said. “But there is the risk for the Trump administration, the urgency the crime problem will start to fade away. The only real way to rethink that position is to pull out the National Guard and let crime come back.”

That largely depends on what residents in those cities and others like them think of having a military presence in their communities and neighborhoods, and whether issues like safety and security see positive results or are viewed with dubious concern.

“If locals complain and see it as more negative than positive, it will open the floodgates,” he added.

Diverse Feedback

The survey also found differing results across gender, ethnic and racial lines, as well as by age and partisan affiliation.

That included men, by 13 percentage points, being more likely than women to approve of Trump’s immigration policies. White voters were similarly more likely to approve of them than Latino or Black voters.

“As residents of a border state, Texans are long familiar with immigration as a political and law enforcement issue,” Renée Cross, researcher and senior executive director of the Hobby School, said in a statement. “It has been a priority for Gov. Greg Abbott and the Legislature, with more than $11 billion of Texas taxpayer money spent to cover the cost of Operation Lone Star, the state initiative to secure the border, since 2021.

“And while a sizable number of voters disapprove of some of the federal government’s efforts to staunch illegal entry, overall, we found strong support for actions to limit immigration.”

This was the fifth survey as part of a five-year project started by the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston, and the Executive Master of Public Administration Program in the Barbara Jordan–Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University, in 2021 to study Texas’s changing population.

 

 

 

 

 

Story Continues
Share