Study says Texans really don't want Trump's border wall

President Donald Trump will have to mess with Texas if he wants to build his "big, beautiful" wall.

According to a new poll from the nonpartisan Texas Lyceum, residents of the Lone Star State overwhelmingly oppose Trump's planned border wall and support a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Of 1,000 Texans surveyed, 90% support a path to citizenship, while 61% oppose the proposed wall and 58% disapprove of the way the president has handled immigration overall. 

While Texas — which comprises 1,254 miles of the country's 1,900 mile border with Mexico — is traditionally deeply conservative, the survey results suggest Republicans and Democrats could find common ground on immigration if they can move past the politics. 

"What you see in immigration reform is that it's very similar to the Affordable Care Act," Texas Lyceum research director Joshua Blank said. "All the partisan predisposition that goes with the health care law comes into play. Republicans are against it and Democrats are for it. But when you look at the actual provisions of what it may entail, Republicans are generally pretty favorable."

During his presidential campaign, Trump promised to crack down on immigration and build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border — and he's spent his first months in office trying to follow through on those promises.

While courts have blocked Trump's attempts to freeze immigration from several majority-Muslim nations, Trump has unveiled an updated immigration policy calling for tightened enforcement and has started planning his costly wall on the southern border.

But Tuesday's poll suggests Trump's hardline immigration policies are out of step with Texans — and national polls don't help Trump's case much, either. A McClatchy-Marist poll conducted in February found that 80% of Americans want undocumented immigrants to have a path to citizenship, and a January Pew poll showed that less than half of Americans support Trump's wall.