How Ugly Images On TV Shape Immigration Politics

If there’s one key rule to American politics, it’s this: Americans do not like ugly pictures on their television.

There’s a lot Americans will tolerate, so long as they don’t have to see it on their televisions. Bad things happen constantly, both around the world and here at home. In a country of 340 million people, that’s inevitable. But when bad things elevate to television on a consistent basis, people tend not to like it. And that’s what has happened with ICE activity in major cities.

Who gets blamed for those ugly pictures on the television becomes the question, but it is not typically good for the elevation of an issue when raised under a particular president. If there are tons of pictures of people crossing the border en masse on our television under Joe Biden, it is not going to redound to his benefit. If there are a lot of ugly pictures on television of ICE agents confronting illegal immigrants or people who are attempting to block and tackle on behalf of illegal immigrants, it turns out that Americans aren’t going to like that either.

Americans generally like the idea of Immigration and Customs Enforcement doing immigration enforcement, finding people who are here illegally and deporting them, particularly if those people are criminals.

But what they do not like are pictures on their television screens of mass mobilization in the streets. They don’t like images of people being shot in their cars, even under disputed circumstances like Renee Good.

Fifty-six percent of Americans thought ICE was being too tough in November; today, that number is 61%. Only about 15% say they’re not being tough enough. Among independents, only 35% say that the protesters have gone too far.

The Trump administration would like to believe that Americans believe that the people being prioritized for deportation are criminal illegal immigrants, because that is who is generally being prioritized: criminal illegal immigrants. But increasingly, Americans are not feeling that.

In November, 48% of Americans said that it was largely dangerous criminals who were being prioritized for deportation. Today, that number is 44%. Approval for the Trump administration’s program to deport immigrants illegally in the United States has dropped from 51% in December, down to 46% today.

It isn’t about the goals; it is about the pictures. Fifty-three percent of Americans apparently say that ICE operations in the United States should be decreased. Those are not great numbers for the president on an issue where, generally, he is quite popular.

But that doesn’t mean people trust Democrats.

A recent poll out from the Wall Street Journal looked at which party in Congress is best able to handle border security. Since Democrats are not trusted on this issue, the Republican numbers look good.

Ugly pictures on the television do make a difference. This is likely why Democrats are sending protesters into the streets now.

But Democrats can overplay their hand. Right now, people are attributing the ugly images to the activities of ICE. But what happens when, for example, chaos breaks out at a church, which is what happened over the weekend, when a chaotic mob stormed through and shut down a Minnesota church over a pastor’s alleged ties to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The First Amendment does not mean that you get to walk on private property and start shouting in the middle of somebody’s business or in the middle of a church service.

The FACE Act prohibits desecrating houses of worship or interfering with Christian worshipers. The DHS says they will investigate. “All of the civil DOJ agitators aren’t just targeting our officers,” said the DHS in a post. “Now they’re targeting churches to then going from hotel to hotel, church to church, hunting for federal law enforcement who are risking their lives to protect Americans.”

This sort of activity by Democrats is likely to backfire.

The most recent ugly image people have in their heads is the image of Renee Good.

But that image can be replaced by a series of ugly images from Democrats, including, for example, storming churches.

There’s a fascinating piece by Roland Fryer in The Wall Street Journal talking about the effect of protests. And one of the points Roland Fryer makes is that a nonviolent protest that does not disrupt things like church services is likely to work out better for you than being absolutely confrontational, violent, or chaotic.

He writes, “When I was young, I mistook restraint for weakness and anger for honesty. What I failed to see — and what we still fail to teach students—was that Martin Luther King wasn’t avoiding conflict. He was engineering it, on terms that made progress possible.”

In other words, don’t run into a church, start screaming at the top of your lungs, and hope that Americans are going to like that sort of thing — because they very likely will not.

Many things are less about the policy than about the implementation.

And ugly pictures, more often than not, make the difference.