More Than Half of U.S. Voters Say They Support ICE's Immigration Raids

While the largescale raids expected to be carried out across the country by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents over the weekend did not unfold as many communities feared, a new poll has suggested that a slim majority of voters were in favor of the planned action.

In a new poll by Morning Consult/Politico, 51 percent of registered voters said they supported ICE raids "targeting undocumented immigrants with outstanding court orders to be deported," compared to 35 percent who were opposed and 13 percent who said they had no opinion.

The survey, which was undertaken between July 12 and 14 and saw 1,984 voters polled, found overwhelming support among Republicans for the raids, with 65 "strongly" in favor of the raids, while 20 percent were somewhat supportive. Meanwhile, 46 percent of Independents said they were either strongly or somewhat in support of the plans.

Among Democrats, 11 percent said they were "strongly" in favor of the planned raids, while 18 percent said they were "somewhat" supportive of them.

The Trump administration has repeatedly dangled the threat of widespread raids across the U.S., with the government delaying the planned operation in June at the request of Democratic leaders.

However, last week reports suggested that the raids were expected to begin on Sunday.

While President Donald Trump said on Monday that raids were carried out and described them as "very successful," only a number of incidents were reported, with ICE agents appearing to show up at individual homes.

Speaking to The New York Times, one El Paraiso resident, Kaylin Garcia, described how she had been sitting in her car at around 7 a.m. on Sunday when she noticed ICE agents walking around her building complex and knocking on doors.

The 19-year-old said she started snapping photos of the agents and posted them to Facebook, hoping to alert her neighbors and friends.

In one case, Garcia saw the agents knock on the door of an undocumented Honduran couple with American-born children. She said the couple never opened the door, however.

"I wasn't scared," Garcia said."I was scared for my neighbors. Nobody opened the door."

In another case, a teenage girl told The Times of how she was awoken by a knock at the door at 1 a.m.

"They said, 'We need to talk to you, can you come outside, can you open the door?' I said, 'Do you have permission to come inside my house, do you have a paper?'" the girl relayed. "They said, 'We're not trying to come inside your house, we just want to speak with you.' And I said, 'No I'm not coming outside'."

The girl said that whoever was at her door left, but later on in the morning, at around 5 a.m., she heard knocking at her door once again. At that point, she ran upstairs to be with her parents and the family shut off the lights and hid, too afraid to even look out the windows for fear of being spotted by ICE.

The small-scale operations paled in comparison to the thousands of arrests immigration advocacy groups anticipated could start taking place over the weekend, with the Trump administration having planned mass operations across at least 10 major cities.

Speaking to Fox News Sunday ICE Acting Director Matthew Albence said over the weekend that the agency was "doing targeted enforcement actions against specific individuals who have had their day in immigration court and have been ordered to be removed by an immigration judge."

"We are merely executing those judges' orders," Albence said.