New guidelines under the Trump administration have rescinded guidance that restricted immigration authorities from entering schools, healthcare facilities and places of worship to conduct arrests. But, how might the Arizona public respond, should these policies be carried out?
Samara Klar, a political science professor at the University of Arizona, has conducted polling on immigration in our state for years. Klar says while Arizonans might have voted Trump into office on the promise of mass deportations, they’re not anti-immigrant.
In fact, she says, according to her polling, Arizona is a relatively pro-immigrant state. Klar joined The Show to discuss what she has found — and why most Arizonans seem to separate immigrants from border security.
Full conversation
SAMARA KLAR: So in the polling that I’ve done throughout Arizona — and this has really been going on for several years now, maybe almost five years. I do polls at least once a year on a random sample of Arizonans. And I find pretty open attitudes towards immigration. What I mean when I say there: an appreciation for immigration; support for, for example, paths to citizenship, particularly for immigrants who arrived here as young children; a general skepticism or opposition to deportation.
Now, of course, that’s not to say people aren’t concerned about the border. Absolutely they are. But Arizonans, I think, really rely on immigration economically within their communities. I think a lot of Arizonans know immigrants if they’re not themselves immigrants. So yeah, the population here, at least in the polling that I’ve done, seems to be fairly supportive of having a diverse population with lots of immigrants.
LAUREN GILGER: Interesting. So, yes, people will say good things in general about immigration. You said they will report that immigrants make the state better. But there are concerns that people have, right? Like what’s the differentiation there? What are the concerns?
KLAR: Well, this year in particular — and this increased throughout the year — when I would ask, “How concerned are you about security at the US-Mexico border?”, there was very high levels of concern among both Republicans and Democrats.
So the support for immigration doesn’t mean that people are fine with what’s going on at the border. In fact, they’re very concerned at the border.
And I would break that down a little bit and I would say, “What about the border concerns, you? Is it the fact that people are coming through? Is it the fact that drugs and weapons are coming through?” And of course, as you might expect, the greatest concern that we see among Arizonans has to do with fentanyl, drugs, weapons. When it comes to individuals themselves immigrating across the border, then there’s significantly less concern.
GILGER: That’s really interesting. So if somebody says, “I’m concerned about the border, yes,” it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re anti immigrant or against the people themselves.
KLAR: Absolutely. And I think it’s something that really gets lost a lot kind of in the media narrative about it. If you ask this question, “Are you concerned about immigration? Are you concerned at the border?”, you’re going to have maybe 80-85% of Americans will say yes. And then you can sort of interpret that however you want to interpret it.
So I think it’s really important in these surveys to have detailed follow up questions. What about the border is concerning to you? For most people, the idea that we’re going to have people immigrating from other countries — from South America, from Central America — that in and of itself is not concerning.
But there is a very high level of concern about this idea that dangerous drugs are coming through. There’s human trafficking. There’s weapons coming in from the southern border or even from the northern border, as we’ve seen Trump talking about. That’s a kind of a different situation altogether.
GILGER: Yeah. Yeah. So let’s then talk about the immigrants who are here. We we are watching a new Trump administration come into office right now, and we’re expecting, as he has promised, mass deportations of people who are presumably already in the country. Where do Arizonans stand on that?
KLAR: Well, if you ask a broad question, “Do you believe that undocumented immigrants should be deported back to their country of origin?,” Arizonans are not very supportive of that as a concept. I find upwards of 60% of Arizonans, to a certain degree, oppose that idea. Really only about a third will say “Yes, I support deportation.”
Now, of course, once again, once you dig in with a little more detail: “OK, what about an unauthorized immigrant who has committed a heinous crime?” Well then, yes, support is going to go up exponentially. So it kind of depends on the context that you’re laying out.
When we’re talking about immigrants who came as children, who came when they were younger, there’s overwhelming support for allowing those Arizonans to stay in what is really, truly their home.

GILGER: Yeah. Okay. So I want to talk about Proposition 314 that just passed a few months ago here in Arizona, pretty overwhelmingly by voters here. It was compared to the very controversial SB 1070, the notorious “Show me your papers” law of 2010. But there was massive outrage and protests in the street. A lot of negative reaction to SB 1070 when it was passed by the state Legislature 15 years ago. But not to this. Why not?
KLAR: You know, it was fascinating. When this ballot measure was first presented, I initially thought, as you said, that we were going to see sort of a repeat of the 1070 outrage. This was going to become a real focal point for the election. Not at all what happened.
First of all, the Democrats barely talked about it. We didn’t really hear a lot of opposition. There wasn’t really a lot of movement, a lot of activism around it. And almost immediately, especially in polling, I started to see really high support for it.
So in the polls that I was doing in the summer and the fall before the election, over two thirds of my respondents said that they supported this law, and that’s about the same percentage that ultimately did vote for it in November.
So I think there was a couple things going on. One of the biggest differences, I think, is part of me really felt as though the Republicans were maybe getting it on the ballot, almost as bait for Democratic candidates to come out and oppose it and then appear weaker on the border, because the border was such a contentious issue and there were so many Arizonans who were really, genuinely very concerned about the border.
And the Democrats didn’t do that. If anything, what we saw in 2024 were Democratic candidates like Gallego and Harris taking very strong stances on border security. Another reason I think we saw so much support for this ballot measure — which, by the way, may never even go into effect — the wording brought in all these different concerns that we just talked about.
As I was just saying, some people are concerned about people coming across the border. Others are concerned about guns and fentanyl and trafficking. (Prop.) 314 was just like a word soup of all of these things. They talked about fentanyl. They talked about weapons. So no matter what you’re concerned about, whether you’re concerned about the guns or the people or the fentanyl, it appeals to you.
And there was a lot for people to hold onto. Liberals supporters, Harris supporters, Democratic supporters really showed very high support for it. In the polling that I was doing, I was finding that both Trump and Harris supporters said that they were going to vote for it. In my polls, 40% of people who said that they planned to vote for Harris also planned to support this ballot measure.
GILGER: Interesting. Wow. OK, so last question for you then. Looking forward, there’s a lot of uncertainty right now as to how these mass deportations might be carried out, but what are you watching for going forward as all of this plays out? Do you anticipate a backlash if we start to see families separated, if we start to see people swept up in workplace raids, things like that?
KLAR: It’s always hard to know with any administration — and I think maybe especially with the Trump administration — how much of the rhetoric is real promises that will come true and how much of it is maybe negotiation tactics with other countries or an attempt to kind of push the agenda a little further to one direction or another.
I know in Arizona — and I think probably a lot of people who live in Arizona feel this way — there’s a lot of nervousness and anxiety about it. We don’t know if this is actually going to be ever enforced. I think there may have been an assumption among Democratic candidates that opposing this bill would make them seem weak, and the bill will never actually go into effect anyway.
So maybe that was part of the strategy. So I think we just don’t know. And it’s going to be interesting to see what happens.