50 Percent Say Trump Should Return Abrego Garcia: Poll

Fifty percent of Americans in a new poll say President Trump should bring the wrongly deported Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the U.S.

The Economist/YouGov poll released Thursday found that 50 percent of respondents, including 53 percent of the registered voters surveyed, said Abrego Garcia, the 29-year-old man who had been living in Maryland until his deportation last month, should be returned to the U.S., while 28 percent said he should not. Twenty-two percent said they were not sure.

Abrego Garcia's case has drawn widespread attention and prompted sweeping efforts from Democratic lawmakers, Abrego Garcia's wife and others to press for his return, though Trump and his allies repeatedly have defended his deportation to a Salvadorian prison, arguing an informant linked him to the MS-13 gang.

Abrego Garcia's wife and lawyers have pushed back hard on that argument, and the Supreme Court ruled on April 10 that the government must "facilitate" his release from custody in El Salvador.

Respondents in the Economist/YouGov poll who identified as supporters of Trump were overwhelmingly more likely to say Abrego Garcia should remain in El Salvador, where he is being held at the Centro Industrial penitentiary facility.

Just 4 percent of respondents who identified as having voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election said they support leaving Abrego Garcia in El Salvador, while 59 percent of Trump voters said they do.

Fewer than 20 percent of Trump voters said he should be returned to the U.S., while 90 percent of Harris voters said he should be brought back.

Asked whether they believe that Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, as the Trump administration has claimed, 43 percent of the poll's respondents said they were not sure, while 27 percent said they think he is and 30 percent said they do not think he is.

The Economist/YouGov poll surveyed 1,625 U.S. adult citizens April 19-20. It has a margin of error of 3.3 percentage points.