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ABSTRACT
A number of homeland security measures have been implemented or proposed since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. While public opinion polls suggest that some of these measures (e.g., universal security checks) have received widespread support, security policies advanced by President Donald Trump that target Muslims and other immigrant groups are more controversial. These polices have conflated immigration with terrorism and have generated anti–immigrant sentiment in some segments of the American public. In this paper, we utilize national survey data to examine the social sources of public support for national security measures, with a focus on policies that emphasize border control, universal security, reduced civil liberties, discriminatory surveillance, and exclusion. We also determine the extent to which support for policies specific to the Trump administration is driven by Trump’s voter base – White, male, older, southern, Christian, and conservative and assess the influence of anti–immigrant attitudes. Our analyses reveal that the American public favors security measures that are applied universally, and characteristics of Trump’s voter base further predict policy support. Our findings also suggest that support of discriminatory security policies is largely explained by the perception that immigrants are dangerous. We discuss the implications of the anti–immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric that has stemmed from Trump’s presidential campaign and subsequent administration for national security policies.
Notes
1 Although polling data also show that Americans who earn over $50,000 tended to support Trump over Clinton, we exclude income from our analyses to prevent issues with missing data.
2 YouGov employs a sophisticated matching approach when choosing who to invite and then include in any given survey; the procedures are described in YouGov (Citation2018c, p. 1).
3 We examined the issue of religiosity in a number of ways. In a separate analysis (not reported), we ran our models with non-Christian excluded and found the same results reported in the tables. We also created a measure of born-again Christian identity and found associations similar to those between Christian religiosity and the dependent measures. The limited number of non-Christian respondents in the sample prevents us from a more specific sub-group analysis. However, bivariate analyses indicated only Muslims and Agnostic participants showed no significant association with the dependent measures.
4 We recognize that not all Muslims are immigrants to the United States but choose to keep this statement in our measure due to Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric and conflation of religious outsiders, immigrants, and terrorism. Analyses using the single item “Immigrants are more likely to commit crime than U.S. citizens” shows the same results as those reported in this paper.
5 In this analysis, indirect effects are significant when the 95% confidence interval does not contain zero. The estimated indirect effect of conservative on Trump policies through dangerous immigrant is.550; the confidence interval lower limit is.458 and the upper limit is.646. The normal theory-based Sobel test indicates that this indirect effect is statistically (Z=12.17, p <.000). Significant indirect effects are also found for Republican on Trump policies through dangerous immigrant (effect =.149, Lower Limit Confidence Interval =.051; Upper Limit Confidence Interval =.248; Z = 3.31; p <.000), for conservative on security policies through dangerous immigrant (effect =.418; LLCI =.338; ULCI =.500; Z = 11.01; p <.000), and for Republican on security policies through dangerous immigrant (effect =.111; LLCI =.037; ULCI =.186; Z = 3.20; p <.01). The direct effects of conservative/Republican on Trump policies and of conservative on security policies are not significant, which suggest complete mediation. A significant direct effect of Republican on security policies remains, as suggested by the OLS models reported in .
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Murat Haner
Murat Haner is a research administration faculty fellow, Criminology Program coordinator, and instructor in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of South Florida Sarasota- Manatee. He is author of The Freedom Fighter: A Terrorist’s Own Story. His current research focuses on public opinion on policy issues, including gun control, police use of force, and terrorism.
Melissa M. Sloan
Melissa M. Sloan is an associate professor of sociology and interdisciplinary social sciences in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee. Her research interests include the sociology of emotion, mental health and illness, and work and occupations.
Francis T. Cullen
Francis T. Cullen is Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Associate in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati. He is a past president of the American Society of Criminology and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences. His current research interests include redemption as a correctional policy, social support theory of crime, the impact of racial beliefs on public punitiveness, and the criminology of Donald Trump.
Amanda Graham
Amanda Graham is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Georgia Southern University. Her research interests focus on policing, police legitimacy, scale development, and measurement. Recently, she has written on the impact of race on procedural justice and support for body-worn cameras.
Cheryl Lero Jonson
Cheryl Lero Jonson is an associate professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Xavier University. Her research interests include correctional policy, offender reentry, and the prevention of gun violence. She is completing work on Shooter in the School: Preventing, Responding, and Surviving.
Teresa C. Kulig
Teresa C. Kulig is an assistant professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Her current interests are in the nature and control of human trafficking, rape myth acceptance in India, sources of school victimization, and assessing the crime policies of the Trump administration.
Ömer Aydın
Ömer Aydın is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Political Science at Ankara Haci Bayram Veli University. His research interests focus on counter terrorism, public safety, and criminological theory testing