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SURVEY: Arizonans Oppose Removing Border Security

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Neetu Arnold Contributor
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A survey released Monday found a majority of Arizonans do not want border security dismantled from the state.

Data Orbital, a Phoenix-based political survey research and data analytics agency, conducted the survey between Aug. 7 to Aug. 8 and found nearly 65 percent of likely voters did not want to get rid of current border security procedures.

One of the survey questions asked people’s motivation to vote in Arizona’s upcoming general election. Nearly 82 percent of participants were “extremely motivated,” according to Orbital’s Topline Report.

The other question gauged whether voters wanted to remove the “325 miles of wall, fencing, and other security barriers” along the Arizona- Mexico border, according to the survey. Only 22 percent of participants were in support of doing away with the barriers while another 13 percent were undecided.

Eighty percent of Republicans, 65 percent of Independents and 45 percent of Democrats did not want any of the measures eliminated. Voters aged between 18- to 34-years-old were the only demographic that was highly open or undecided about removing the barriers.

“As we look at the sentiment of likely voters toward border security, we see that across party, gender, and age, voters tend to oppose removing the current security measures, including the existing fencing, walls and other physical barriers,” Orbital’s President George Khalaf said in a statement, according to KTAR News.

The survey comes in light of Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Garcia’s comments about loosening border security. (RELATED: Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate Tells Different Story On Border Security: Imagine ‘No Trump’s Wall In Southern Arizona’)

Garcia asked a progressive audience at the annual Netroots conference to imagine “no wall in southern Arizona,” according to a previous Daily Caller News Foundation report. He later backtracked on his statement, saying he was against Trump’s wall, not border security, according to 12 News.

Immigration is a hot button issue in Arizona where over 1-in-8 residents is an immigrant. Just over 1 million Arizonans, additionally, had at least one parent that was an immigrant and over 25,000 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients resided in the state, the American Immigration Council said, according to an Associated Press report on July 1.

Under President Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance policy to halt illegal immigration, Yuma’s Border Patrol captured close to 10,000 families and 4,500 unaccompanied children at the border, the AP reported on Aug. 7. The area was mostly calm for the past decade, with only 98 families and 222 unaccompanied children being apprehended seven years prior.

Orbital recruited 550 likely voters from across the state. Landlines and cell phones were used to conduct the service, with a 70 landline/ 30 cell phone split.

The margin of error was plus or minus 4.18 percent points with a 95-percent confidence interval.

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