Utahns split down the middle on deporting unauthorized immigrants who have not committed a crime, aligning almost precisely with national averages, according to a Deseret News and Hinckley Institute of Politics poll.
The poll, conducted by Morning Consult, found that 50% of Utahns support deporting immigrants living in the country illegally, compared to 48% nationwide. Support climbs to roughly 80% in both groups when an immigrant has committed a crime.
Men and women differ sharply across party lines on whether to deport non-criminal unauthorized immigrants. Among Republicans, 75% of men support the measure, compared to 66% of women. The gap widens among Democrats, where 38% of men favor deportations, while only 16% of Democratic women agree.
Susan Madsen, founding director of the Utah Women & Leadership Project at Utah State University, noted that women often approach safety nets and social issues with a distinct perspective rooted in caretaking roles. “This doesn’t really surprise me,” Madsen told the Deseret News, explaining that women tend to see the value in avoiding overly rigid policy stances.
Carolyn Phippen, president of the Women’s Republican Club of Salt Lake, offered a different view on the data. Phippen told the Deseret News that the divide reflects differing perspectives on accountability and the rule of law, arguing that a functioning society requires strict adherence to established rules.
The Deseret News poll also revealed that Latter-day Saint voters in Utah express higher support for strict deportation policies than both the state and national averages. When asked about unauthorized immigrants who have committed a crime, Latter-day Saint Utahns registered 10 percentage points higher support than the national average. For non-criminal unauthorized immigrants, their support ran 15 points higher, subject to a 4.6 percentage point margin of error.
David Campbell, a professor at the University of Notre Dame and author of Seeking the Promised Land: Mormons and American Politics, told the Deseret News that political affiliations increasingly shape religious interpretations rather than the reverse.
Emma Petty Addams, co-executive director of Mormon Women for Ethical Government, questioned the framing of the debate. “We reject the notion that those two are binary,” Addams told the Deseret News, pushing back against the idea that communities must choose solely between strict legality and compassion.
The debate unfolds against a backdrop of historic federal enforcement data. The Pew Research Center recorded 53.3 million immigrants living in the U.S. in January 2025, with roughly 14 million considered unauthorized.
The New York Times reported that 540,000 deportations have occurred since President Donald Trump took office for his second term in early 2025. That follows the removal of 775,000 unauthorized migrants between May 11, 2023 and January 20, 2025, alongside 1.5 million formal removals recorded between 2013 and 2016 under the Obama administration.
