Trump-supportive Republicans have harder-line views on immigration

Given the shifts and reversals and changes that have reshaped Donald Trump’s rhetoric over the past eight years, you would be forgiven for forgetting that his 2016 presidential campaign was constructed on a foundation of targeting immigrants.

It wasn’t just that some of his first words when announcing his candidacy in June 2015 centered on disparaging immigrants as criminals. It was that the backlash to those comments, including from his business partners, helped drive attention to the comments and, in short order, push up his numbers in primary polling.