From her beacon-hand

During last year’s U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump repeatedly promised that if elected, he’d deport undocumented immigrants living in America, en masse. There’s a lot of them, too—according to the latest Department of Homeland Security statistics, about 11 million. Since 2005, that number has remained roughly the same. “It’s not a question of a price tag,” Trump told NBC News. “Really, we have no choice.”

Not to be outdone, the Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris travelled to the U.S.’s southern border, where she pitched her own tough-on-immigration policy, promising “to reduce illegal border crossings.” Trump’s efforts, she said, would pale in comparison.

While Trump has long been opposed to immigration, Harris hasn’t. During Barack Obama’s presidency, she criticized his deportation scheme and wanted to make illegal border crossings a civil, not criminal, violation. Perhaps the most important context for Harris having recently shifted her views on immigration is that so, too, has the American public. In May 2020, according to Gallup polls, 28 percent of Americans wanted less immigration; by June 2024, that number had shot up to 55 percent.

In the meantime, the number of illegal crossings of the southern border has fluctuated wildly: In April 2020, there were some 16,000 illegal crossings; in December 2023, a record of nearly 250,000; and in August 2024, 58,000.

Now in the White House again, Trump has launched a series of measures to curb immigration. He’s tried to end birthright citizenship by executive order. He’s removed deportation protections for half a million Haitians, which means they’ll lose their work permits and could be deported late this coming summer. He’s expanded the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s powers to arrest migrants in “sensitive” locations, like churches and schools. And he’s instructed border patrol agents to turn away people without giving them the opportunity to file asylum claims.

In February, the White House published a video with the title “ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight,” referring to “autonomous sensory meridian response,” a tingling sensation people have when hearing soft noises—in this case, the rattling of chains on migrants being forcibly flown out of America. Apparently, the White House believes there’s a real constituency for it in this kind of thing.

If Gallup is right, in any event, most Americans appear to now oppose immigration. Why?

Mara Ostfeld is an associate research professor at the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. Ostfeld says that part of the reason for the recent drop in levels of support for immigration is that they were previously so high. During the Covid-19 pandemic, immigrants featured prominently in essential jobs, convincing many Americans that immigration might be a good thing. But since then, hardening anti-immigrant political rhetoric, coupled with a sudden surge in migrants from the southern border arriving by bus or plane to cities across America, have swung public opinion. With immigration, Ostfeld says, it’s not just a matter of scale but of speed: When they have time to get to know immigrants in their communities, Americans tend to see them more favorably. But when they see news reports of large groups of anonymous migrants coming into their cities and towns, they tend to see it as a threat—that needs a response …

Gustav Jönsson: How would you characterize the ways Americans have traditionally viewed immigration?