How Trump’s immigration crackdown plays into misperceptions

When the first migrant detainees arrived at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay on military planes, the Trump administration described them as hardened criminals.

“It is holding those that are the worst of the worst,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told Fox News earlier this month.

That was the public message. But in response to a lawsuit, the administration later conceded that nearly 30% of the Venezuelan migrants sent to Guantánamo were considered “low-threat illegal aliens,” and did not have serious criminal records.

The White House portrays its crackdown on illegal immigration as an unqualified success. But critics worry that its high-profile removal flights and arrests of migrants may be prioritizing optics ahead of results, playing into longstanding misperceptions about immigrants and crime.

“I worry about this model where Trump almost acts like a reality show producer,” said Brendan Nyhan, a professor at Dartmouth College, where he studies political communication and misperceptions.

Over the few weeks of the Trump administration, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials carried out similar actions across the country targeting what they call “criminal aliens.” And the TV cameras were never far behind.

A Fox News camera crew embedded with ICE in Aurora, Colorado. But that operation yielded only about 30 arrests, far fewer than the hundred members of the Tren de Aragua gang that ICE leaders said they were targeting.

ICE has conducted enforcement operations like this under previous administrations. And there have been media ride-alongs, too, going back years.

But Nyhan says this level of integration between law enforcement and media feels different.

“You worry about the tail wagging the dog,” Nyhan said. “The extent to which the Trump administration is almost performing what it does for the benefit of Fox and other allied media sources is quite striking.”

These videos and images of arrests and deportations allow the Trump administration to look tough on immigration, Nyhan says, even as the enforcement numbers have so far fallen short of the White House’s stated goals.

Arrests of immigrants without legal status climbed during the first weeks of the Trump administration. But in the first week of February, ICE was arresting fewer than 600 people per day on average nationwide — far short of the minimum 1200 to 1500 arrests per day that administration officials have said they want.

“It may seem like he’s acting on his goals,” Nyhan said, “even though the deportation numbers are tiny fractions of what Trump promised during the campaign.”

This new emphasis on optics is also concerning, experts say, because it’s reinforcing misperceptions about immigration and crime.

Those statements are both false. But our poll shows that people who get their news from Fox and conservative media were twice as likely to believe them as those who don’t.

“What they’re hearing is a drumbeat of the language of this administration,” said Jane Hall, a journalism professor at American University and a former panelist on Fox News.

“You repeat over and over and over again, these are criminals, this is a crime spree,” Hall said. “That kind of narrative and symbolism is very powerful for people. Fear is very powerful.”

In a way, these are versions of the same claims Trump has been making since he first announced he was running for president back in 2015.

Young cautions against reading too much into a single poll because it’s impossible to say which comes first — the media echo chamber, or the misperceptions. Still, she says, there is an effect.

“It’s not about learning this false information as much as it is having that false information sewn into your identity, becoming more and more of a part of who you are and how you see the world,” Young said.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment. But administration officials argue that images of immigrants being detained and deported send a strong deterrent message.

And Homeland Security Secretary Kirsti Noem pushed back on concerns that these immigration operations are more quote “spectacle” than substance during an interview with CBS

“It’s not a spectacle,” Noem said. “This is our nation’s law enforcement judicial process. The scales of justice are equally applied to everybody. We want transparency on this.”

Still, media experts say there’s more going on here than transparency.

“Trump has a very strong, intuitive sense and he understands how people think. And I think he’s often right, said Young. She believes the Trump administration is using the techniques of reality TV that the president honed for decades in real estate, and as the star and co-producer of The Apprentice for 14 seasons.

“By casting himself as the decider and the boss for however many years on that show, he made it so. He performatively made it so,” Young said. “He does know what he’s doing in his construction of reality.”

Trump has brought that same deliberate construction of reality to immigration, Young says. And for a big share of the country, it’s working.