Opposition to immigration has emerged as a key issue in Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Masha Krupenkin writes that Trump’s negative rhetoric about immigrants can have real consequences for their daily lives. Americans who are exposed to negative rhetoric about immigrants are more likely to report suspected undocumented immigrants to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, are and more likely to hold negative views of immigrants as criminal and dependent on government. 

Sergio Carrillo never saw it coming. The 39-year-old landscaper, who had been a US citizen since 1994, recalled his arrest and detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “I started getting real scared: How long was I going to be in here? How could this be happening?” Carrillo was detained for four days before an attorney intervened and presented ICE with his US passport. “For ICE, it’s like, ‘Oops, we made a mistake,’” Carrillo said. “But for me on the other end, it tears up your life.” Carrillo was lucky: ICE has sometimes unlawfully held citizens in custody for years and has regularly deported citizens by mistake.

For people who are undocumented, the stakes can be even higher. Those deported back to their country of origin are often targeted by criminals, as they are presumed to have money from living abroad. Constantino Morales had been a police officer in Mexico until he tried to break up a drug cartel. Fearing violence, he escaped to the US. After being denied asylum, Morales was deported back to Mexico, where he was shot and killed seven months later.

How do immigrants come into contact with ICE? Sometimes, they are referred to ICE by local law enforcement. Other times, ICE raids their workplaces. And sometimes, they are reported by other Americans.

How Trump’s rhetoric shapes interest in deporting immigrants 

To test the link between anti-immigrant rhetoric and Americans’ interest in deporting immigrants, I examined the frequency of Google searches for terms such as “how to report someone to ICE” and “report illegal aliens”, along with media coverage of immigration between 2014 and 2019. These types of searches indicate that someone is actively thinking about how to report immigrants and looking for the next step, making them a good indicator of genuine interest in reporting immigrants. I also looked for searches relating to immigrant crime and immigrant reliance on government benefits to have a clearer picture of how searchers viewed immigrants.

I found a clear relationship between negative rhetoric about immigrants and searches for how to deport them. On days when cable news spent more time talking about immigration and crime, search interest in reporting immigrants also rose. Search interest in immigrant crime and immigrant reliance on government benefits also spiked on days when those topics had more coverage on cable news. 

Finally, I also looked at Google searches for reporting immigrants during Trump’s televised addresses, such as his State of the Union Address and his 2019 Oval Office Address about immigration. I find large spikes in searches for reporting immigrants, as well as searches about immigrant crime and receipt of government benefits, during Trump’s televised addresses. I also looked at searches during Obama’s State of the Union addresses and found no such pattern. Trump’s rhetoric about immigrants directly leads some Americans to consider reporting immigrants to ICE. 

“Operation Cross Check – Fugitive Arrests” (Public Domain) by usicegov 

Anti-immigrant Rhetoric and the 2016 Campaign 

In my cable news transcript data, I find that negative rhetoric about immigrants increased substantially during the 2016 campaign. In general, cable news paid more attention to immigration after Trump announced his candidacy, and once again increased its’ attention to immigration after Trump took office. Furthermore, the proportion of news coverage of immigrants dedicated to focusing on crimes committed by immigrants also rose after Trump was elected (data shows that immigrants commit fewer crimes per capita than do native-born Americans), as did the proportion focusing on immigrant use of government services.

Searches for how to report immigrants were highest immediately after Trump took office in 2017. Even after accounting for the increase in negative news coverage of immigrants during this period, searches for reporting immigrants are unusually high in the few weeks following the inauguration. This may be because of Trump’s 2016 pledge to create a “deportation force” to forcibly remove undocumented immigrants. As Trump took office in 2017, Americans who were excited to deport immigrants took to their computers in search of actionable advice.

Trump and Immigration in 2024 

Trump’s rhetoric about immigrants has taken on an even darker tone in recent months. In December last year Trump stated that, “[Immigrants are] destroying the blood of our country, they’re destroying the fabric of our country,”. Trump’s 2024 campaign promises include what he has dubbed “the Largest Domestic Deportation Operation in History”. Trump is not the only Republican to focus on opposing immigration in 2024. In February, Republicans in the US House of Representatives voted to impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for allegedly failing “to maintain operational control of the [Southern] border”. Some states with Republican governors, like Texas and Florida, have regularly bused or flown newly arrived immigrants to northern cities like New York and Chicago, falsely promising them that housing and financial help awaited in these cities.

In this environment, it is not surprising that hate crimes against Latinos are on the rise. Anti-Latino hate crimes have risen consistently in 2021 and 2022, as negative rhetoric about immigrants has continued in the media. As we near the 2024 election, with immigration as a key issue, interest in deporting immigrants (or worse) is likely to continue to rise.

• This article is based on the paper, ‘Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric and ICE Reporting Interest: Evidence from a Large-Scale Study of Web Search Data’, in the British Journal of Political Science. 
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• Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics. 
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