Despite the myth of the United States as a nation that welcomes immigrants, historically most migrant groups have been greeted by racialized nativism in a process that constructs immigrants as fearsome racial others. Imputing dubious moral character to immigrants and tying it to “race” permits white, native-born Americans to maintain an advantageous position within the social and economic order, and historically occurs more frequently during times when they experience insecurity about that position. The process by which whites use an ideology of nonwhite criminality to maintain their advantage can take various forms, such as terroristic violence via lynching, or the systemic criminalization and imprisonment of African Americans following the gains of the civil rights movement.

During Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, he mobilized fallacious racist/nativist claims that immigrants—and in particular Mexican immigrants—have a propensity toward criminality beyond that of native-born Americans, and are a threat to Americans’ personal safety and to national security, and he vowed to stem the tide of criminal immigrants. These claims were effective among many voters, especially white voters, because they promised the reestablishment of white supremacy at a time when whites will soon no longer constitute the majority and when many confront severe inequality and economic precariousness in a neoliberal economic order. This chapter examines Trump's statements regarding immigrant criminality, his proposals regarding border security and deportation, and how the statistical data in fact belie a link between immigration and crime, and takes up the question of why falsehoods about immigrant crime were appealing in 2016.

Immigrant Crime: Discourse and Policy in the Trump Campaign

Throughout his campaign, Trump engaged in racialized nativism to garner votes, seeking to link immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, to crime in his speeches, interviews, and policy proposals. In the June 16, 2015, speech in which he announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination, he offered a glimpse of what would become a major theme of his campaign, stating, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best… . They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”