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

Muzaffar Chishti, Sarah Pierce, and Jessica Bolter, Migration Policy Institute, Mar. 22, 2017 - "Even as three executive orders on immigration signed by President Trump during his first weeks in office have received extensive scrutiny, far less attention has been devoted to the public relations machinery set into motion by these orders. They mandate sweeping data collection and reporting on immigrants and refugees in ways that seek to underscore societal and economic costs with no countervailing attention to positive effects from immigration.

The three executive orders — spanning immigration enforcement at the border and in the U.S. interior, and temporarily suspending refugee resettlement and travel for certain noncitizens from six Muslim-majority countries — include requirements for federal agencies to issue dozens of reports annually on everything from the cost of the refugee resettlement program at federal, state, and local levels to how much federal money has gone to Mexico over the past five years, how many noncitizens have been charged in terrorism-related investigations, and how many are detained in state and local prisons and jails.

Beyond representing down-payments on key Trump campaign promises such as building a border wall or implementing “extreme” vetting, the executive orders — especially the one on interior enforcement and its companion implementation memo — seem particularly designed to gather information that can be used to turn public opinion against unauthorized immigrants and to shame states and localities that are perceived to protect them."