Muscular Public Relations Strategy to Paint Immigrants and Immigration as Negatives Embedded Deep Within Trump Executive Orders

This paper calls attention to an organized effort on the part of the Trump administration to produce and disseminate data designed to stigmatize undocumented immigrants and to discredit those local governments providing "sanctuary" to them. Beginning in the rhetoric of the presidential campaign, this effort took concrete form in a series of presidential executive orders, including one requiring the Department of Homeland Security to provide weekly reports on criminal actions by noncitizens, quarterly reports "studying the effects of victimization by criminal aliens," and quarterly reports on the immigration status of noncitizens in the prison population. Another order requires Immigration and Customs Enforcement to issue a weekly "Declined Detainer Outcome Report," publicizing those states and localities that refuse to hold undocumented prisoners after having served their sentences. According to the authors, "such collection and use of governmental information to disparage other government entities is highly unusual, if not unprecedented." The thrust of this entire effort is to use the "public relations machinery" of the federal government to "build a perpetual news-generation mechanism that showcases instances where immigrants and refugees pose a threat to society or impose costs." The essay includes a table summarizing all of the new reporting, which if implemented, will produce at least 120 reports in the first year. "What use these reports will be put to beyond shaping public opinion remains to be seen."

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