Deconstructing Expertise in Immigration Policy: How nativist populists upended expert knowledge in the Trump White House

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How nativist populists upended

expert knowledge in the Trump White House

By: Jennie van den Boogaard,

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University of Amsterdam

Master of Science in Political Science

Public Policy and Governance Track

Thesis

5 June 2020

Word count: 23,161

Thesis Supervisor: Anne Loeber

Second Reader: Jeroen Doomernik

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VIII.

References—Pages 57-66

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I. Introduction

“In fact, populism is in many ways an illiberal democratic response to undemocratic liberalism” (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser, 2018, p. 1670).

Since President Trump was elected in November 2016, a handful of his nativist populist advisers have worked quickly over the past three and a half years to deconstruct expertise of immigration policy. Caponio, Hunter, and Verbeek (2015) coined the term “deconstructing expertise” to describe the effect of the undermining of the veracity of knowledge and the authority of experts. While the phenomenon of the deconstruction of expertise has been examined, there is no research yet about the process by which expert knowledge is silenced and dismissed. This thesis develops a theoretical framework of the process of deconstructing expertise by analyzing the strategies nativist populists used to change immigration policy during the Trump administration.

We are currently witnessing a surge in populism in many democracies around the world, which leaves many experts and laypersons alike to wonder how has liberalism become endangered? Like many countries, populism in the United States is not a new force, but rather resurgent. Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser define populism as “a set of ideas that not only depicts society as divided between ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, but also claims that politics is about respecting popular sovereignty at any cost” (2018, p. 1669). Starting with the Know-Nothing Party in 1849, many populist parties have arisen throughout U.S. history (Young 2017). Most populist parties in the U.S. found their greatest audiences by promoting restrictions on immigration, culminating in the quota laws of the 1920s which effectively limited immigration for forty years (Streich 2008; Young 2017). This form of nativism, an ideology that favors people who are citizens of a country or who were born in the country over the rights of immigrants, usually emerges in tandem with populism in the United States (Streich 2008; Young 2017).

What is new about populists in the United States today is their success. While many politicians may adopt a few populist policy positions, Donald Trump is the first populist politician to successfully capture the White House. How he wound up so successful is still being debated today, but many academics can agree part of his success lies in his appeal to nationalist and nativist sentiments against immigration (Brubaker 2017; Caliskan and Preston 2017; Young 2017; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2018; Waldinger 2018; Abbas 2019; Giroux 2019). Trump’s populist message rails against the economic and liberal elites who have advocated for greater immigration for years, ignoring public sentiment against immigration (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2018; Waldinger 2018). Hence, Mudde and Rovira

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4 Kaltwasser’s assertion that we are experiencing “an illiberal democratic response to undemocratic liberalism” can be seen by the electorate rebelling against liberal elitism pushing for increased immigration (2018, p. 1670).

This “illiberal democratic response” is facilitated by a discourse that has attacked expert knowledge on migration policy and pushed for unfounded, but popular claims to restrict migration (Caliskan and Preston 2017; Ross and Rivers 2018; Abbas 2019; Christensen 2019). Migration experts generally agree that closed borders and restrictive migration policies actually lead to greater permanent migration (Doomernik 2013; Castles, De Haas, and Miller 2015; Waldinger 2018). Yet, politicians pursue counterintuitive policies to demonstrate national strength and push more immigrants to permanently settle in their countries, while simultaneously creating even more dangerous and exploitative migration tactics, such as human trafficking (Doomernik 2013; Castles, De Haas, and Miller 2015; Waldinger 2018). Most migration experts call for less restrictions on migration, which can result in increased temporary migration for labor or safety, but generally leads to less permanent migration (Doomernik 2013; Castles, De Haas, and Miller 2015). Increased legal migration avenues can create a more circular migration system that achieves what many experts believe a receiving country like the United States needs—labor demand met by temporary economic migrants, as well as gradual population replacement via migrants to combat negative birth rates (Council on Foreign Relations 2009; Vigdor 2019). Many experts

recommend making legal migration easier to cut down on illegal immigration, accepting more skilled and unskilled laborers and refugees (Council on Foreign Relations 2009). However, the U.S. does not currently follow this expert knowledge, which has been so successfully deconstructed by populists.

Now that Trump has moved into the White House, what does that mean practically for the experts who have drafted, consulted, and implemented immigration policy for decades? Trump and his handful of populist advisers have worked quickly over the past three and a half years to deconstruct expertise of immigration policy and implement their own version of effective policy (Hirschfeld Davis and Shear 2019). Caponio, Hunter, and Verbeek coined the term “deconstructing expertise” to describe the effect of the undermining of the veracity of knowledge and the authority of experts (2015; p. 29). The result of deconstructing expertise can result in policy not based on logical, researched conclusions, but the emotion of voters and the political will of policymakers (Caponio, Hunter, and Verbeek 2015; Scholten and Verbeek 2015; Waldinger 2018). While we can see the effect of the deconstruction of expertise, we do not know what the process has been by which expert knowledge has been silenced and excluded. This thesis aims to demonstrate what that process looks like, by specifically analyzing the strategies nativist populists use to accomplish their goals to restrict immigration in the United States.

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5 This overall research question that this thesis aims to answer is what is the process of deconstructing

expertise? It is followed by three sub-questions: 1) How is this wave of nativist populism and shift in immigration policy similar or different from previous iterations in U.S. history?; 2) How do nativist populists within the Trump administration deconstruct expertise of immigration policy?; and 3) How can the process of deconstructing expertise be applied to other cases outside of immigration?

In order to answer these research questions, this thesis explores the intersection of expertise, nativist populism, and immigration policy in the United States to address a research gap of how

deconstruction of expertise occurs. First, I will explain my research methods and case selection, where I focus on three major immigration policies within the larger immigration policy of the Trump

administration over the past three and a half years. Second, I will provide background data to situate U.S. immigration policy and nativist populism in the context of the three sub-cases, which are 1) the travel ban on 13 predominantly Muslim countries, 2) reductions in refugee resettlement and the attempts to terminate the Temporary Protected Status program which benefits refugees from certain countries, and 3) the policy of separating migrant parents from their children when they cross the Mexican-American border. Then, I will examine existing scholarship on the politicization and

deconstruction of expertise, as well as the discursive strategies used by President Trump to undermine reality, in order to provide a launching pad to build a theoretical framework for the process of

deconstructing expertise. I will analyze policy documents, interviews with nativist populists and experts, and journalistic reporting to discuss the causal mechanisms in order to create the theoretical

framework. Further, I will discuss what this research means for scholarship of expertise and populism, before I apply the framework to another case, the Trump administration’s policy response to the Covid-19 pandemic, in order to test its generalizability. Finally, I will conclude with the main findings of this research, and provide overall limitations to this study and subsequent suggestions for policy changes in order to prevent the deconstruction of expertise.

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II. Research Methods

2.1 Research Strategy

In order to understand the process behind deconstructing expertise, I employ process tracing by examining the chronological events that led from policy drafting to policy implementation and the consequences for the policies. According to Beach and Pedersen, there are three purposes to process tracing (2013). I utilize the third purpose, which is explaining-outcome process tracing and is case-centric (Beach and Pedersen 2013). The goal of explaining-outcome process tracing is to “not merely test whether or not one cause (or mechanism) is present; instead the goal is to craft a comprehensive explanation” (Beach and Pedersen 2013, p. 283). The outcome of the Trump administration’s

immigration policies is to deconstruct expertise and replace former policy with policy based on nativist and populist ideologies, not on scientific consensus. This thesis aims to answer the question of what is the process behind that outcome of deconstructing expertise? It’s important to explain the outcome by searching for the various causal mechanisms behind the process.

I follow an abductive path, utilizing a “continual and creative juxtaposition of empirical material and theories” to focus on key immigration policies over the past three and a half years, and tracing how expertise is used or abused in the policymaking process (Beach and Pedersen 2013, p. 286). This thesis is abductive as while it does inductively search for answers, it is deductively building off of theories of the politicization and deconstruction of expertise. It also applies known concepts, such as censorship and retribution, to create a theoretical framework of the process, similar to the scholarship describing discursive tactics that undermine the veracity of expert knowledge. Therefore, it is both deductive and inductive in its approach to describe the process of deconstructing expertise. I take a theory-building, bottom-up approach by analyzing the populists’ strategies on expert knowledge in the three sub-cases of immigration policy within the larger policy. I then construct a theoretical framework for the process of deconstructing expertise from the empirical evidence. I researched available published documents that discuss the three sub-cases and their interaction with experts and expertise. I begin by

chronologically tracing the events that involve the three sub-cases from November 2016 to January 2020. Beach and Pedersen describe this process tracing method as akin to “historical methodology—for example, working backward from the outcome by sifting through empirical evidence as a basis for building a plausible explanation for causal mechanisms” (2013, p. 286).

Yet, a case-centric approach can limit the generalizable aspects of the theory developed in explaining the specific outcome (Beach and Pedersen 2013). However, many scholars have found similar paths for immigration policy across western countries, which means that the process of deconstructing

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7 expertise in the American case might be replicated or adopted by other countries following the Trump administration, and vice versa (Brubaker 2017; Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2018). While

deconstructing expertise has so far been limited to immigration policy research, there is no reason to assume it is also not occurring in other policy areas, which is why this thesis attempts to apply the theoretical framework to another case—the Trump administration’s response to the Covid-19

pandemic, utilizing the same research strategy. The danger of working bottom-up is that there is always more data to be mined (Beach and Pedersen 2013). In order to find a “minimally sufficient explanation”, it is important to create parameters within the case study of what empirical evidence is analyzed (Beach and Pedersen 2013, p. 285), which is why I employ an embedded case strategy.

2.2 Case Selection: Embedded Cases

By selecting the case of immigration policy in the United State, I am highlighting an aspect of policy that impacts millions of immigrants and their families. Despite only three and a half years in office, President Trump’s approach to immigration policy has already involved dozens of changes, which makes studying all of the policies within the administration impossible in one thesis. Therefore, I apply an embedded case strategy within the larger case in order to shed light on the process of deconstructing expertise (Yin 2002). An embedded case strategy analyzes a few subsets of data within the larger data set to reveal the overall picture of the case (Yin 2002). These sub-cases can then be used to compare and contrast the theories discovered and demonstrate whether the theories can apply to the larger case (Yin 2002). A potential problem of the embedded case strategy is not linking the sub-cases back to the larger case, and therefore not explaining the case at hand (Yin 2002).

To ensure that I do explain the larger case, I have selected three large sub-cases of immigration policy that I believe will reveal many of the strategies of the populists within the White House. There have been several policies changed by the Trump administration’s goal to restrict immigration, including the building of the wall along the Mexican-American border, efforts to dismantle the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) that protects unauthorized immigrants brought as children to the U.S. from deportation, efforts to decrease legal migration through denying what qualifies as an

acceptable asylum claim, forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico before immigration court, deporting asylum seekers to Central American countries to claim asylum there, re-instituting a public charge denial system, and increasing restrictions on visas for skilled workers to be sponsored by American companies. While studying those policies could provide an indelible contribution to research, for the purposes of this thesis in analyzing deconstructing expertise, I will focus specifically on three major policies:

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8 1) the travel ban on 13 predominantly Muslim countries,

2) reductions in refugee resettlement and efforts to terminate the Temporary Protected Status program (TPS) that protects refugees from certain countries from deportation,

3) the adoption of a policy of separating adult migrants from their children at the Mexican-American border.

There are several reasons to choose these three sub-cases:

 These three sub-cases are mostly at the discretion of executive authority, meaning they do not need congressional approval and therefore are more controlled by the White House;  These cub-cases involve several government departments and agencies, which provides for

more interaction in governance and expertise;

 These policies have all been challenged in federal courts and led to widespread media coverage, providing plenty of empirical evidence about the policy process;

 Many experts publicly spoke out about the policies and leaked documents to the press, providing a more holistic picture of the process than just from the viewpoint of the nativist populists;

 These policies also focus specifically on immigrants most often demonized as the “other”, because the policies mainly restrict immigration from Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East;

 These policies have a large impact on the lives of millions of tourists, asylum seekers, refugees, and immigrants;

 Finally, these three policies were all dramatic reversals of policy from previous presidential administrations, which demonstrates the unique and unprecedented aspects of the Trump immigration policy over the past three and a half years.

I did not choose to study the two very large sub-cases of the building of the wall along the Mexican-American border and the efforts to dismantle the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA) that protects unauthorized immigrants brought as children to the U.S. from deportation, partly because of their size that makes them more apt for a single case study. Mostly, I chose not to include them because they involved Congressional oversight, which limited the power of nativist populists to control their policy outcome. This is perhaps why the border wall has not been built yet and DACA is still the law of the land. These two cases seemingly also did not involve as much deconstruction of expertise in the policy process, but rather entailed back and forth political maneuvering between the two political parties, which is outside the scope of this thesis to examine deconstructing expertise within the White

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9 House. Other smaller sub-cases do not have nearly the same amount of media coverage nor the same amount of expert interaction, which limits my ability to find empirical evidence documenting the deconstruction of expertise. Finally, some very small sub-cases just did not involve enough actors or interaction to make it indicative of the larger case study on immigration policy during the Trump administration. Thus, the three sub-cases chosen meet all of the previously listed selection criteria and shared many similar aspects of the process of deconstructing expertise, as well as are still large enough to shed light on immigration policy as a whole.

2.3 Data Collection and Analysis

My data collection process and analysis is based on the assumption that there is an ontological reality that serves as a basis to tell apart ‘real truth’ from ‘real lies’. Of course, everything is subjective, but for the purpose of exploring deconstructing expertise, it is important to establish facts to examine how those facts are attacked. My data includes policy documents, interviews with populists and experts, and reports from journalists documenting changes to immigration policy. By collecting multiple sources of data, with varying points of view, I trace and triangulate the consecutive steps by which

deconstruction occurred to develop a portrait of the process. Focusing on the three main embedded cases, I am able to demonstrate how the strategies of the nativist populists, and the reactions from experts, are replicated across policy issues. While the steps of the process are listed numerically, they occur often simultaneously, yet involve successive interaction, i.e. consolidation of power is continuous, but also happened first before any immigration policy was implemented in order to provide the power nativist populists needed to begin to implement their policy changes. Below is an illustration of my process tracing method and the results:

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2.4 A Reflexive Note

My father was an immigrant to the United States, and married my mother when his visa ran out so he could stay in the country. Even though I have dual citizenship with the Netherlands, I still feel like an immigrant after two years of living in Amsterdam. My mother’s great-grandparents and grandparents immigrated to the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s, fleeing persecution from Eastern Europe because they were Jewish. My personal history has led me to have very favorable views of immigration and I am a fan of moving towards open borders, which I thoroughly enjoy as a citizen of the European Union. Even though I disagree with the restrictive policies that President Trump and his nativist populist advisers have enacted, I believe I can remain relatively objective in analyzing the process behind deconstructing expertise. I am not arguing for or against the policies, but rather I am describing the process by which these policies are attempting to be enacted. Understanding the process is key for understanding how to counteract the deconstruction of expertise.

D ata co llect io n in c h ro n o lo gical o rd er o f general im m ig ratio n p o licy d u rin g T ru m p ad m n istratio n Narrowing down to three sub-cases Travel Ban Reductions in Refugee Resettlement Family Separation Policy Futher data collection related to three sub-cases in chronological order Collating similar parts of policy process in each sub-case Further data collection of policy process to triangulate data and

confirm patterns Development of theory of deconstructing expertise 1) Consolidation of Power 2) Excluding Experts 3) Creating Chaos 4) Experts Strike Back 5) Retribution 6) Gaslighting

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III. Background Data

3.1 Immigration Policy in the United States

The history of immigration policy presents an illustrative case to understand the process of deconstructing expertise, as it is often a history in which popular opinion that is ignored by elites. I define elites as people in positions of power over the majority of Americans, whether through economic or political success. For instance, businesspeople have had huge influence over the direction of

immigration policy, as they view increased immigration as cheaper skilled and unskilled labor (Waldinger 2018). Meanwhile political elites have promoted policies of liberalism towards migrants to maintain the American image of protector of human rights in order to use as leverage for other foreign policy

interests (Lauret 2016; Waldinger 2018).

Until the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the United States generally had open borders. Between 1861 and 1920, 30 million people emigrated to the U.S. (Castles, De Haas, and Miller 2015, p. 90). By 1920, immigrants were 13.2 percent of the population, which is similar to the percentage of foreign-born today (Young 2017). The first major backlash to the changing demographics came with the Know-Nothing Party which arose in the 1840s and marketed itself as an anti-immigrant party in favor of white Christian nationalism (Young 2017). However, the Know-Nothings were never able to gain national power. Considerable attention was paid to the Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants that arrived, whom many ‘natives’ considered non-white (Streich 2009; Lauret 2016). But it was Chinese immigrants that were first to be targeted in California because of racism in the 1870s that quickly accelerated to national legislation (Streich 2009; Young 2017). Chinese immigrants were recruited by the elites in industry as a cheaper labor force, and whites resented their different cultural habits (Young 2017). Soon, Japanese and Korean immigrants were also targeted, and by the end of the 1930s, all Asians were effectively blocked from immigrating to the United States until 1965 (Young 2017).

In addition to blocking Asian immigrants, national laws began to be passed to reject immigrants considered undesirable, including prostitutes, convicts, the disabled, and those likely to become a “public charge”—which is a restriction that has been recently revived by the Trump administration over 100 years later (Young 2017; Hirschfeld Davis and Shear 2019). During this time period, resentment against immigrants continued to rise, and there were campaigns to “Americanize” immigrants, including banning non-English language use (Streich 2009; Lauret 2016). Even some elites protested immigration. “Upper-class intellectuals, the press, and business elites were also opposed to the new immigration on the basis of racial and economic grounds, and their opinions — often published in the media — helped to fuel working class resentment and xenophobia” (Young 2017, p. 222). But other elites wanted to keep

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12 borders open, as it provided a cheaper labor force as well as recruits for the military (Young 2017). However, growing resentment led to the Dillingham Commission, a research group funded by Congress to examine the effects of immigration in 1909 (Young 2017). The Commission started with the

assumption that the new immigrants were “inferior”, however the data they collected contradicted their assumptions (Young 2017). Yet, the Commission still recommended that a literacy test and tax be implemented to restrict immigration from Asia and Eastern and Southern Europe (Young 2017). The Dillingham Commission provides an early example of the politicization of expertise in migration policy, as researchers are not immune to biased conclusions or pressure from politicians to substantiate falsehoods (Scholten and Verbeek 2015).

By the 1920s, nativist sentiment had overtaken the country. Nativists railed against non-English newspapers and school instruction (Streich 2009; Lauret 2016; Young 2017). The government printed many documents in multiple languages to accommodate new residents, a tradition still in effect today, despite nativist complaints then and now (Streich 2009; Lauret 2016). Nativists also promoted fears over “race suicide”, the idea that the right type of Americans were not reproducing at the same rate as immigrants (Streich 2009; Lauret 2016). This fear formed an intersection of sexism and racism,

specifically targeting immigrant women as promiscuous and native women as abandoning family values (Streich 2009; Lauret 2016). There are echoes of the same fear today, with highly polarized battles over abortion and birth control rights throughout the United States. The Ku Klux Klan reached its pinnacle of power in the 1920s, stirring racist fears of the other (Streich 2009), which mirrors the recent Charleston white supremacist rally in 2017. Another nativist trope was the stroking of fears over immigrants bringing diseases into the U.S. (Streich 2009), and this trope is revived for every major outbreak, including HIV in 1980s, Ebola a few years ago, and even today with Covid-19.

By 1921, Congress decided to take more drastic measures, and passed its first quota law, setting limits for the amount of immigration from various countries (Young 2017). In 1924, the Johnson-Reed Act went even further, limiting immigration to only 150,000 people per year (Young 2017). However, these policies were bipartisan and the populists leading the charge did not control either political party (Young 2017). For the next forty years, immigration plummeted. Even during World War II, the U.S. turned away many Jews seeking refuge from Nazi Germany. Instead, the U.S. decided to form its own internment camps of Japanese-Americans, but not for German-Americans. The double standard highlights the racial national identity of the U.S., in which the majority of Americans still believe the country should be white and Christian (Streich 2009; Lauret 2016). This racial national identity has remained prominent, despite hundreds of years of activism to combat prejudice and discrimination, and

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13 it is easily exploited by nativist populists today via narratives of the immigrant threat (Streich 2009; Hogan and Haltinner 2015; Young 2017; Giroux 2019).

By the 1960s, the U.S. had an image problem, promoting liberal values in opposition to the Soviet Union, yet still practicing racist laws against its racial minorities and immigrants (Lauret 2016). This led President Kennedy to call for an immigration overhaul, calling the U.S. “a nation of immigrants” for the first time (Lauret 2016). President Johnson finished what Kennedy started, and by 1965, the Immigration and Nationality Act abolished the restrictive quota system and instead installed a system based on family reunification, a policy that favored allowing citizens and permanent residents to sponsor their family members for residency permits and naturalization (Lauret 2016). The law unintentionally became the most liberal in the western world, and led to the largest numbers of immigrants since the late 1800s (Lauret 2016; Waldinger 2018). It also led to very little European immigration, and has visibly changed the demographics of the United States, greatly increasing Latin American, Asian, and African populations (Lauret 2016). Politicians from both parties embraced the “nation of immigrants” discourse because it was good for the economy and good for foreign policy (Lauret 2016; Waldinger 2018).

Until the 1965 law, the U.S. had special temporary worker programs with Mexico, called the Bracero program (Castles, De Haan, and Miller 2015). But after the 1965 law, immigration from the Western Hemisphere was suddenly subject to the same laws as other countries, an unintended

consequence of switching to the new system (Castles, De Haan, and Miller 2015). The Bracero program was also criticized by activists for exploiting Mexican workers, and business elites were forced to end the program under labor union pressures (Martin 2019). However, these changes instead led to large numbers of unauthorized immigrants from Mexico seeking temporary labor in the U.S. (Martin 2019). In order to address the growing problem of unauthorized immigrants, Congress legalized millions of immigrants in the 1980s and 1990s (Martin 2019). However, this was met with a large backlash from white natives who felt “amnesty” was a betrayal (Waldinger 2018). The only other measures Congress has been able to approve since the 1980s are an attempt to implement employee verification of citizenship status, increased border security, and detention of unauthorized immigrants (Waldinger 2018; Martin 2019).

Because elected officials have been unable to pass comprehensive immigration legislation for decades, and the 1965 law still stands, resentment continues to build against elites who keep advocating for liberal immigration policies (Waldinger 2018). Combined with a national identity still based on white Christianity, it was only a matter of time before another populist was able to capitalize on the changing

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14 demographics and stroke fear among whites (Streich 2009; Young 2017; Waldinger 2018). Time and time again, the U.S. has seen nativist fears rise and fall, and the current rise of the 2010s is not an aberration, but a return to classical populist politics. The difference in today’s nativism populism is its ability to take over an entire mainstream political party and rule the executive branch.

4.2. Another Rise of Nativist Populism

How did populism take route in the last decade in American politics and how is that populism intertwined with nativism? Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser define populism as “a set of ideas that not only depicts society as divided between ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, but also claims that politics is about respecting popular sovereignty at any cost” (2018, p. 1669). Populism is almost always portrayed a battle between “us” and “them”, with “us” being the true citizens whose rights are being trampled by “them”. However, populism is a “thin-centered ideology”, which means it cannot succeed without being tied to another ideology (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2018, p. 1669). ‘’For instance, right-wing exclusionary versions of populism usually rely on nativism to depict a narrow ethnic understanding of who the members of ‘the pure people’ are” (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2018, p. 1669-1670). For the current form of right-wing populism in the U.S., and for many previous iterations, it is interlaced with nativism. Nativism is an ideology that favors people who are citizens of a country or who were born in the country over the rights of immigrants (Young 2017).

Brubaker considers this latest reiteration of populism around the world, as “national-populist”, with two dimensions (2017). The first dimension is vertical and includes the opposition between “the people” and “the elite” (Brubaker 2017, p. 1192).

“’The people’ – that is, ‘ordinary’ people, the ‘forgotten men and women of our country’, as Trump styled them – are seen as virtuous, struggling, hard-working, plain-spoken, and endowed with common sense, while “the elite” is seen as corrupt, self-serving, paralyzed by political correctness, and, above all, out of touch with or indifferent to the concerns and problems of ordinary people” (Brubaker 2017, p. 1192).

The second dimension is “between insiders and outsiders: between ‘people like us’, those who share our way of life, and those on the outside who are said to threaten our way of life” (Brubaker 2017, p. 1192; Elias and Scotson 1994). Immigration is connected to both dimensions, with the elites who pushed for liberal immigration policies seen as the enemy and the migrants themselves seen as a threat to the American way of life. By focusing on immigration policy, Trump’s nativist populism plays into both dimensions that create a division between Americans born in the U.S. and immigrants.

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15 This fear-mongering of “us” v. “them”, helped rump catch both the Republican and Democratic establishment off guard and win the 2016 election via focusing on immigration policy (Waldinger 2018). The U.S. has a policy on paper and a policy in practice, and both parties have generally followed the same playbook since the 1965 law was enacted: increasing immigration with weak enforcement against unauthorized immigrants (Waldinger 2018). Economic elites benefitted from the cheap labor that migrants brought into the country, and employers, in particular, benefitted from the precarious situation of unauthorized immigrants (Waldinger 2018). They also benefitted from the growing population and resulting growing consumer class (Waldinger 2018). Political elites benefitted from holding the high ground internationally by claiming to be a leader in human rights (Lauret 2016; Waldinger 2018). And by focusing only on border security, politicians from both parties could perform authority over the broken immigration system (Waldinger 2018).

However, while elites reaped the rewards for this system, they ignored that the public did not favor immigration. In fact, the majority did not support current immigration levels, but the political salience of the issue was low, so elites could ignore voters’ frustrations for decades (Waldinger 2018). At the same time, Republicans and Democrats competed for immigrant votes and thought that criticizing immigration would appear racist (Waldinger 2018). The political establishment didn’t realize that even if it did appear racist, attacking liberal immigration policies would actually resonate with many voters (Waldinger 2018). Media helped flame the fires of polarization and the fear of immigration, by often ignoring and undermining expertise or creating falsehoods (Giroux 2019). With the election of Barack Obama in 2008, a man whose father was an African immigrant, many white Americans were confronted with the changing racial demographics of the country (Streich 2009; Hogan and Haltinner 2015). Within two years, a sizable far right opposition formed into the Tea Party, which moved the Republican party to the right in order to appease nativist voters (Hogan and Haltinner 2015; Waldinger 2018 ). By the time Trump ran for office, there was an organized and vocal nativist contingent that was willing to embrace racist messaging and policies (Giroux 2019).

Trump and his populist allies were able to take advantage of this dynamic and cause a realignment along racial and class lines of the two parties (Waldinger 2018). Yet, while immigration restrictions create an endless feedback loop where migrants continue to outsmart border controls and governments continue to try to outsmart migrants, similarly, anti-migration political organizing creates pro-migration political organizing and increasingly polarizes the issue (Waldinger 2018). In fact, for the first time since polls began, Americans are actually increasingly supporting immigration since Trump was elected (Gallup 2019). This might not bode well for a re-election campaign that claims to be populist if

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16 the restrictions against immigration are no longer as popular. In the 2018 mid-term elections, Trump pushed his nativist populist message, but it turned off white suburban voters who voted for Democrats and helped them take back control of the House of Representatives (Hirschfeld Davis and Shear 2019).

3.3 Sub-cases: Examining Immigration Policy under the Trump Administration

1. The “Muslim” Travel Ban

During the 2016 presidential election, Trump often campaigned on banning people from predominantly Muslim countries from entering the country (Pilkington 2015). The first executive order to be issued within days of Trump’s inauguration was an immediate travel ban for all travelers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen for the next 90 days (BBC News 2017). There was chaos at airports for travelers who were in the air when the order went into effect (BBC News 2017). A federal judge blocked the order after one day under the reasoning that it unfairly discriminates against Muslims (Philips 2018). In March 2017, Trump issued a new order that removes Iraq from the ban, and made it clear that permanent residents are not impacted by the ban (Philips 2018). In July 2017, the Supreme Court upheld most of the travel ban, but said it cannot stop immigrants who have family members in the U.S. from travelling (Philips 2018). In September 2017, Trump issued a third executive order making the ban permanent, removing Sudan, and adding North Korea, Chad, and Venezuelan government officials to the ban, but the ban is blocked in October under the reasoning that it still discriminates against Muslims (Philips 2018). In December 2017, the Supreme Court allowed the ban go into effect while they wait to hear arguments in court (Philips 2018). In April 2018, the Trump administration removed Chad from the ban (Department of Homeland Security (2018). In June 2018, the Supreme Court upheld the travel ban (Philips 2018). In January 2020, six more countries were added to the travel ban: Burma, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Sudan, and Tanzania (Department of Homeland Security 2020). More than 40,000 visas have been rejected since the travel ban went into effect in December 2017, and 320 million Muslims and one in four Africans are impacted by the ban (Levin 2020).

2. Reduction in Refugee Resettlement and end to TPS

In the same executive order establishing a travel ban, Trump also ordered a halt to the refugee program for 120 days and banned all refugees from Syria indefinitely (Scribner 2017). The executive order also reduced the annual cap on refugee resettlement from 110,000 under Obama to 50,000, which was the lowest number of refugees resettled in the U.S. in over a decade (Scribner 2017). For 2018, the Trump administration lowered the cap to 45,000, and in 2019, the cap was lowered to 30,000

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17 (National Immigration Forum 2019). The cap in 2020 was lowered to only 18,000 people (White House 2020). The U.S. is no longer the world leader in refugee resettlement, and is accepting the fewest amount of refugees since the program started (National Immigration Forum 2019).

In addition to lowering the cap for refugee resettlement every year, the Trump administration has also changed the number of people protected under the Temporary Protected Status program (TPS). The TPS program was created in 1990 by Congress, providing temporary entry status to people from designated countries undergoing conflicts or environmental disasters, who need immediate

resettlement (American Immigration Council 2020). The State Department creates reports every year about each TPS country and recommends whether the status should be extended or not (Congressional Research Service 2020). The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) makes the final ruling

(Congressional Research Service 2020). Most countries’ status is renewed as conditions are usually still dangerous and because recipients of the program have settled in the U.S. for years, often with children who are American citizens (Hirschfeld Davis and Shear 2019). Acting Secretary of State Elaine Duke ended TPS for 700 Sudanese in October 2017, and for 4,000 Nicaraguans and 50,000 Haitians in November 2017 (Congressional Research Service 2020; Department of Homeland Security 2017; Department of Homeland Security 2017). Secretary of State Kirstjen Nielsen ended TPS for 240,000 Salvadorans in January 2018, 14,000 Nepalis in April 2018, and 79,000 Hondurans in May 2018 (Department of Homeland Security 2018; Department of Homeland Security 2018; Department of Homeland Security 2018). Various court rulings put a hold on deportation for the 300,000 people impacted by the termination of their TPS program (Lind 2018). The Supreme Court will rule on challenges to the termination of TPS in 2020.

3. Separating Asylum Seekers from their Children at the Mexican-American Border

Over the past twenty years, there have surges of immigrants and asylum seekers from various Latin American countries at the Mexican-American border (Hirschfeld Davis and Shear 2019). The Bush and Obama administrations each briefly discussed the possibility of enacting a policy of separating children from their parents as a deterrent for migrants crossing the border illegally (it’s a misdemeanor) (Hirschfeld Davis and Shear 2019). For decades, the usual policy followed by Border Control agents was to process the family and then release them to an American sponsor (usually a relative or friend) until their day in immigration court, and not to charge them with a criminal offense unless they’ve committed another crime (Lind 2018). This policy exists because a federal judge ruled in 1997 that children cannot be detained longer than 20 days, so parents were routinely released with their children instead of being

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18 held for criminal court (Hirschfeld Davis and Shear 2019). Both previous administrations considered the policy “political suicide” and abandoned plans to discuss it further, but the Trump administration discussed implementing within the first few months of the inauguration (Hirschfeld Davis and Shear 2019, p. 252-253). In March 2017, then Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly confirmed to CNN that the administration is considering the policy, only to backtrack on it within weeks of public outrage (Hegarty 2018). From July to November 2017, the Justice Department and Border Control ran a secret program near El Paso where they separated parents from their children (Lind 2018). The DOJ and Border Control reported that border crossings dropped by 64 percent near El Paso within months of

implementing the policy, but that data was later found to be false (Lind 2018). Based off the trial program in El Paso, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen approved the “zero tolerance” program for the whole border, with Attorney General Jeff Sessions announcing the decision in April 2018 (Hegarty 2018). Public outcry forces President Trump to issues an executive order ending the policy, and a federal judge orders that the government must reunite all children with their parents in 30 days (Hegarty 2018). However, the government did not keep accurate records of families and has struggled to reunite families, with some still separated today, nearly three years after the policy began in El Paso (Aguilera 2019). The policy of family separation still continued after the executive order to end it, and at least 5,500 children were separated from their parents (Aguilera 2019).

3.4 The Actors

There are three main groups of actors in this case study: the nativist populists, the immigration policy experts, and Republican government appointees with power over immigration policy who are not necessarily populists nor experts. While there are thousands of people who work to implement

immigration policy, there are only a dozen or so officials drafting immigration policy in the Trump administration, which is one of the strategies the nativist populists use to consolidate power. On the other hand, there are too many experts to count who are reacting to the deconstruction of their

expertise. However, with limiting my case selection to three smaller sub-cases, it is easier to account for the major experts who reacted to the drafted policies by the populists. Then, there are many

Republicans appointed to positions in the White House who are not necessarily fans of the policies of the populists, but are also not experts advocating for the best policy. They are the wild cards who can influence the final results of the policy process. Below is a chart listing the major actors:

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Name Official Title Responsibilities & Background

Donald Trump President of the United States

Runs the executive branch of the government. Has final approval and is the spokesperson for all policies.

Stephen Miller Senior Adviser to the President

Self-appointed immigration czar for Trump administration. Speechwriter for Trump. Nativist populist. Worked for Sessions before Trump. Jeff Sessions Attorney General (February

2017- November 2018)

Ran the Justice Department and was the chief lawyer for the White House. Nativist populist. Miller and Hamilton worked for Sessions before Trump’s campaign for President. Fired.

Gene Hamilton Senior Counselor to Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice

Legal adviser and main author behind many immigration policies. Led a transition team in the 2 months before the inauguration that drafted several restrictions in executive orders, including the travel ban. Worked for Sessions before Trump.

Steve Bannon Senior Counselor to the President (2017)

One of the main strategists for Trump’s election. Nativist populist and former head of Breitbart News. Now an international consultant for populism. Fired. Thomas Homan Acting Director of

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) (January 2017-June 2018)

Led dramatic increase in ICE’s deportation efforts. Career Border Control agent. Awarded a Presidential Rank Award during Obama’s presidency for a record number of deportations. Nativist populist. Retired. Lee Cissna Director of Citizenship and

Immigration Services (USCIS) (October 2017-June 2019)

Originally Cissna was an ally to Miller and shared many nativist populist views on immigration. However, Cissna began refusing to enact policies he thought were illegal and not well planned. Fired. Andrew Veprek Deputy Assistant Secretary,

Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration at the Department of State

Miller ally and nativist populist. Oversaw the drastic drop in refugee admissions.

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20 John Zadrozny Domestic Policy Council

adviser; Chief of Staff at USCIS

Miller ally and nativist populist. Oversaw the drastic drop in refugee admissions.

Ken Cuccinelli Principal Deputy Director of USCIS (In effect, Acting Director since June 2019); Acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security

Former Attorney General for Virginia. Nativist populist. His appointments have been challenged as illegal because he has not been approved by the Senate, and would not likely be, hence his “acting capacity”. Also unusual for 1 person to serve in both roles.

The Actors: Republicans- Conflicted and Influential Spoilers

Name Official Title Responsibilities & Background

John F. Kelly Chief of Staff (July 2017-January 2019); Secretary of Homeland Security

(January 2017-July 2017)

Main decision-maker for Trump. Retired Marine Corps General. More of a traditional Republican, however often advocated for greater immigration restrictions. Nielsen worked for Kelly at Department of Homeland Security. Resigned.

Kirstjen Nielsen Secretary of Homeland Security (December 2017-April 2019)

Led DHS. More of a traditional Republican. Close ally of Kelly’s from when she worked for him. Enacted many of the nativist populist’s policy ideas despite opposition to them. Fired.

H. R. McMaster National Security Adviser (February 2017-April 2018)

Retired General. More of a traditional Republican. Opposed travel ban on Middle Eastern allies. Resigned.

Rex Tillerson Secretary of State (February 2017-March 2018)

Led State department. Businessman with no government experience. More of a traditional Republican. Opposed parts of the travel ban and reductions in refugees, but often conceded to populists. Fired.

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21 Mike Pompeo CIA Director (January

2017-April 2018); Secretary of State (April 2018-Present)

Republican Representative from Kansas until becoming Director of CIA in January 2017. Ally of Trump’s, but as CIA Director and Secretary of State advocated for more generous outlook on refugees. Jim Mattis Secretary of Defense

(January 2017-January 2019)

Led Defense department. Retired general. More of a traditional Republican. Opposed parts of travel ban. Opposed sending troops to Mexican border. Fired. Nikki Haley Ambassador to the United

Nations (January 2017-December 2018)

U.S. representative to the U.N. Former Governor of South Carolina. More of a traditional Republican. Opposed travel ban and reductions in refugee resettlement. Resigned.

Kevin McAleenan

Commissioner of Customs and Border Control (January 2017-April 2019); Acting Secretary of Homeland Security (April 2019-October 2019)

Career official in Customs and Border Control. Bipartisan support for his work at Border Control, until he became Commissioner and implemented Trump’s more stringent policies. Was frustrated with Miller’s control of immigration and resigned.

Jared Kushner Senior Adviser to the President

Son-in-law to Trump. No government experience before appointment. Moderate Democrat. Ivanka Trump Senior Adviser to the

President

Daughter of Trump. No government experience before appointment. Moderate Democrat. Jennifer Arangio Senior director in the NSC

division that deals with international organizations (January 2017-July 2018)

Led Trump’s engagement of female voters during his campaign. Disagreed with Miller often about

censored immigration reports. Fired.

The Actors: Experts- Government Workers and Career Civil Servants

Name Official Title Background and Responsibilities

Elaine Duke

Acting Secretary of Homeland Security (July-December 2017).

Worked for the federal government for 28 years. Tried to remain non-partisan. Enacted many of the nativist populists’ policy ideas despite opposition to

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22 them. Refused to separate children from parents at border. Retired.

Sally Yates Acting Attorney General for 10 days in January

Career lawyer with the Justice Department. Refused to enact Travel Ban and was fired by Trump. Lawrence

Bartlett

Director of Refugee Admissions at the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration

Career government worker in favor of increasing refugee resettlement. Reassigned from his post after speaking up about lies in a report recommending reductions in refugee admissions.

Tom Shannon

Undersecretary for Political Affairs at State Department

Career diplomat. Argued for writing an accurate TPS report. Tillerson ignored him. Retired.

Scott Shuchart

Lawyer for Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at DHS

Career lawyer with DHS. Raised concerns about policy separating children from parents. Resigned. Barbara

Strack

Chief of the Refugee Affairs Division at Citizenship and Immigration Services

Served for 26 years at the Refugee Affairs Division. Testified in front of Congress in opposition to cuts in refugee admissions. Retired.

Jonathan White

Deputy Director for Children’s Services at the Department of Health and Human Services

Career public health official at the Department of Health and Human Services. Objected to the policy of separating children from parents.

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IV. Theoretical Framework

The main research question of this thesis is what is the process of deconstructing expertise? While researchers have investigated the construction of expertise, as in the promotion of expertise to create a position of authority, there is not as much research into how expertise can be conversely deconstructed. So far, theory is based on the increasing politicization of expertise and its effect on knowledge utilization, as well as the discursive strategies by which expertise is deconstructed to the public. There is a gap however, in explaining how actors can deconstruct expertise of policy within the government, and how that then influences the direction of expert knowledge and policy. In this section, I will explore the concepts of politicization of expertise, deconstructing expertise, and the discursive strategies used to deconstruct expertise. These concepts will form the base of the theoretical

framework I will build in describing the process of deconstructing expertise through the case study of nativist populists changing immigration policy during the Trump administration.

4.1 The Politicization and Deconstruction of Expertise

The intersection of a broken immigration system, the rise of populist politics tied with nativism, and a toxic discourse steeped in falsehoods have paved the road for the deconstruction of expertise of immigration policy in the United States. Deconstructing expertise begins with the increasing

politicization of expert knowledge. Deconstructing expertise is a phenomenon by which experts and expert knowledge is undermined, disqualified, and silenced (Caponio, Hunter, and Verbeek 2015). Politicization of expertise is the phenomenon by which experts and expert knowledge is no longer considered neutral, but rather open to political influence and manipulation (Scholten and Verbeek 2015).

Boswell argues there are three different functions of policy research: instrumental advice for drafting the best policy positions, substantiating politicians’ policy positions, or to legitimize the

authority of policymakers (2019). However, as a policy issue becomes more politicized, the first function of expertise is often ignored in favor of substantiation and legitimization of policymakers’ policy

positions. Scholten and Verbeek have found that politicization of expertise doesn’t necessarily impede knowledge production, but instead changes how it is used, often resulting in symbolic knowledge utilization (2015). Rather than a straightforward system of experts advising policymakers about what the evidence suggests are the best policy positions, politicians use research to buttress their already decided upon agenda (Scholten and Verbeek 2015).

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24 Waldinger argues that migration itself is inherently and fundamentally political because it involves borders (2018). As long as we live in the nation-state system, then there will always be an “us” and “them” divided by borders, whether physical or emotional (Waldinger 2018). Migration represents a challenge to the nation-state system, and anxieties about the legitimacy of the nation often results in a public showing of concern over migration policy (Boswell, Geddes, and Scholten 2019). Since migration policy will likely always be contentious because of its political nature, expertise about migration policy is likely to be politicized as politicians grapple for power over the narrative (Boswell, Geddes, and Scholten 2019). The success of populists in shifting the migration narrative and discourse to favor their vision of a “crisis” directly conflicts with expertise that does not echo the same impending dread (Caponio, Hunter, and Verbeek 2015; Scholten and Verbeek 2015).

Boswell contends there are often two “modes of settlement” to determine how knowledge is utilized in a policymaking process: technocratic and democratic (2019). In the technocratic mode, experts work with policymakers to draft and implement policy that elites have decided upon (Boswell 2019). It doesn’t mean that the policy is necessarily the most effective, but it is one that the public doesn’t weigh in on, most likely because it hasn’t been politicized. In the democratic mode, the issue is salient to voters and is widely campaigned on by politicians (Boswell 2019). The policy issue has been politicized and is often decided upon by the emotions of the voters, rather than expert knowledge (Boswell 2019).

Now that populists have won the White House, what does deconstructing expertise look like? Caponio, Hunter, and Verbeek’s concept on deconstructing expertise is accounting not just for the ways experts and policymakers attempt to build their reputation of expert knowledge, but also for the ways politicians attempt to tear down that reputation of expert knowledge (2015).

“It seems appropriate, however, to add the logical counterpart of deconstructing expertise, because eroding the ‘epistemic authority’ of competing claims and claimants can be expected to be part of the game as well. ‘Deconstructing expertise’ may not only involve targeting

inconsistencies in experts’ testimony, but also attacking their personal credibility and alleged biases” (Caponio, Hunter, and Verbeek 2015, p. 29).

For populism, it’s not just individual researchers whose credibility is attacked or individual research whose veracity is questioned, it is also expertise as a concept itself that is under assault. “Unlike other ideological movements that may sideline evidence that runs counter to their claims, for populist movements, the rejection of expertise is a core part of their political identity and strategy of

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25 mobilization” (Boswell 2019, p. 8). Trump and his populist advisers continue to attack research that contradicts their viewpoints about immigration policy (Bowell 2019; Martin 2019).

Three and a half years into the Trump administration, there have been several major revisions to immigration policy in the U.S. These changes have provided plenty of evidence that a large-scale deconstruction of expertise is occurring, but what is less clear is how exactly these populists strategize to undermine expert knowledge. Through this thesis, I describe what this process looks like and what the consequences are on immigration policy. As Boswell contends, populist movements “will be more comfortable in opposition than as incumbents. Once in power, they risk being exposed as unable to deliver their simplistic and overly ambitious pledges. This creates what I have termed a ‘populist gap’—a discrepancy between what opposition parties may claim, and what they can feasibly achieve once in government” (Boswell 2019, p. 10). The Trump administration has tellingly not been able to deliver on Trump’s most important promises: building a big wall and stopping unauthorized immigration and deporting all unauthorized immigrants (Martin 2019). However, despite fierce opposition to their policies, the Trump administration has been able to achieve quite a few restrictions, and numbers of new immigrants are at their lowest in years (Vigdor 2019).

4.2 Discursive Strategies and the Deconstruction of Expertise: Trump as the Messenger

While there is a research gap in explaining what the process of deconstructing expertise is, there is however scholarship about the discourse that can deconstruct expertise to the public. Understanding this discourse will help understand how deconstruction can occur. When Trump won the 2016

Presidential Election, it was shocking to many people, including experts who did not predict such an outcome. More than three years later, many scholars have investigated what led to Trump’s success, including Waldinger’s assertion that Trump’s victory is a backlash to elites ignoring anti-migration sentiment for too long (2018). One thing is clear, Trump’s victory was aided by a populist discourse that captured the media’s attention in 2016 (Giroux 2019). The media and government are inherently intertwined these days, as both rely on the other (Hajer 2009). The media relies on politics to sell itself and politicians rely on media to promote themselves to voters (Hajer 2009). Trump knew this from his reality TV days, where he and the media worked together to promote his personal brand (Giroux 2019). Trump took advantage of the need of media to sell stories, by constantly creating stories to tell (Giroux 2019).

One of Trump’s greatest stories to draw attention was his exaggerated claims about immigration and how he was going to address the broken system. Trump drew on existing narratives and rhetoric

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26 around migrants that had been on the fringes of society due to social shaming in which traditional politicians did not want to engage because it would be viewed as racist (Waldinger 2018). This discourse goes back nearly two centuries during different waves of immigration (Streich 2009; Lauret 2016; Young 2017). They include language that makes immigrants the “other” through racial, religious, cultural, and emotional lenses (Streich 2009; Lauret 2016). Hogan and Haltinner’s study of “immigration threat narratives” from before Trump’s rise demonstrate that these narratives were growing in prevalence in the 2010s and involved fear-mongering that immigrants will destroy the economy, security, culture, and safety of the country (2015).

Trump, unshackled from traditional political messaging and from caring whether he won immigrant votes or not, capitalized on latent anti-immigrant sentiments with uncensored speeches, interviews, and tweets (Caliskan and Preston 2017; Ross and Rivers 2018; Waldinger 2018; Giroux 2019). Trump accomplished this realigning of discourse via multiple tactics. One was to frame everything with hyperbole (Abbas 2019). Trump repeats the same message over and over again, and dramatizes any situation to make it smaller or bigger, better or worse, and/or the beginning or the end (Abbas 2019). The effect is that he helps create crises and chaos to drive his message home (Abbas 2019). Stone (2012) argues that numbers are always capable of being manipulated for political purposes, and Trump is a master of manipulating numbers to either create a problem when there isn’t one, such as refugee resettlement, or minimize his own mistakes, like the “perfect rollout” of the travel ban (Hirschfeld Davis and Shear 2019, p. 88).

One of his most common discursive tactics was to make immigrants the “other” by not only making them a threat, but also an inferior object endangering American nationalism (Caliskan and Preston 2017; Abbas 2019).

“Throughout his campaign, Trump constantly dehumanized those he deemed Other. His comments reinforced the social hierarchy established by white Westerners. By using language that emphasized illegality, laziness, and danger, he solidified the boundaries between the West and the Other first created through colonization. Without offering any proof, Trump makes broad statements that frame entire populations through an ethnocentric view. He redefines people – here, Mexicans – as people to be feared (‘they’re rapists’)” (Caliskan and Preston 2017, p. 204).

From his very first speech announcing his campaign, he has objectified immigrants like Mexican-Americans as an existential threat to the racial national identity (Streich 2009; Caliskan and Preston 2017; Abbas 2019; Giroux 2019). Trump constantly affirms the United States used to be better, before

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27 the 1965 immigration law, and that he alone must fix the broken immigration system before the United States succumbs to the threat (Caliskan and Preston 2017; Abbas 2019).

Perhaps Trump’s greatest discursive success is capitalizing on the “fake news” era. Now that we know Russia engaged in manipulating the 2016 Presidential Election by creating fake content and sharing it on social media via bots, it is clear that misinformation and disinformation were and still are rampant in American politics (Hirschfeld Davis and Shear 2019). However, fake news was and has already been in full swing in the media landscape for centuries (Darnton 2017). Scholars argue that one reason nativism was successful in the 1910s and 1920s was the rise of the radio, which frequently featured fake news (Streich 2009; Young 2017). In fact, the Tea Party, which precipitated Trump’s rise and engaged a loyal group of voters after President Obama won the 2008 Presidential Election, frequently created falsehoods to spread immigration threat narratives (Hogan and Haltinner 2015). As fake news accelerated in the changing media landscape, Trump took advantage to promote fake news that praised him, and instead, label any news critical of him as the real “fake news” (Caliskan and

Preston 2017; Ross and Rivers 2018; Christensen 2019). Trump frequently relies on promoting fake news when he wants to distract or deflect from criticism of his campaign or administration (Ross and Rivers 2018).

Playing the “fake news” card aligns with a general strategy to gaslight voters and the media into no longer knowing what is true anymore. Gaslighting is a term derived from a 1930s British play where a woman is manipulated by her husband into thinking she’s going insane (Behr 2017; Sweet 2019). Hartmut Behr describes the gaslighting strategy of far-right populists as:

“…. the denial of factual truth and the re-interpretation of reality …. based upon its distortion is comparable to a factoid or half-truth – in contrast to an outright lie (this does not mean that outright lies would not happen and not be used, too) – that are more difficult to devalue than a clear lie as such devaluation necessitates some form of deliberation…A spiral of deliberate confusion begins, paired up with language games and new terminologies (such as “alternative facts”), so politically very well depicted by George Orwell in 1984 and or betrayed by Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator, with the aim to accomplish exegetic authority over reality.” (Behr 2017, p. 74).

Trump utilizes gaslighting to create a political atmosphere of “deliberate confusion”, where there are so many conflicting “facts” that it can appear as if there are no facts but the ones we choose to believe, undermining expertise (Behr 2017). Trump also employs gaslighting techniques to distract from criticisms of his policies and place blame on anyone else but him (Behr 2017).

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28 All of these discursive tactics add up to set the stage to deconstruct expertise, where politicians can no longer even agree on the facts to debate. Politicians talk past each other to two siloed audiences, and reaching any sort of compromise on policy seems further and further out of reach. These tactics can be labeled as “discursive closings”, where a person shuts down conversation, making it impossible to reach a consensus and draft an agreed upon a policy position (Angman 2013). Discursive closings include, disqualification, where claims of expertise are dismissed, or plausible deniability, where a person gaslights another or even a whole country (Angman 2013). These discursive closings are not just used in public discourse over immigration policy, they are also tactics used in the policymaking process, and are employed heavily by Trump’s handful of populist advisers. The aim is to exclude experts and censor their research until enough voters believe erroneous claims because Trump repeats them often enough (Ross and Rivers 2018; Abbas 2019).

4.3 What is the Process of Deconstructing Expertise?

The aim of this thesis is to build from existing scholarship to describe the process of

deconstructing expertise, using abduction to both deductively lay the foundations of theory and using induction to build a new framework from empirical data. Before I begin exploring the embedded cases to build a theoretical framework, I will first summarize what indeed forms the foundation. First,

expertise is constructed by experts, policymakers, and the media to establish authority of certain subject areas (Caponio, Hunter, and Verbeek 2015). These actors use this authority to claim their expertise is the truth and should be followed to create the best policy (Scholten and Verbeek 2015; Boswell 2019). This construction of expertise can become increasingly politicized, to the point where it is simply

produced and used to establish authority for politicians and their policy goals, rather than a nonpartisan authority for the original expert knowledge (Scholten and Verbeek 2015; Boswell 2019).

Once the expertise has been politicized, it can often be deconstructed, in which the veracity and authority of experts and expert knowledge is undermined and silenced (Caponio, Hunter, and Verbeek 2015). The discursive strategies by which expertise is deconstructed include hyperbole, othering, spreading misinformation, and gaslighting (Caliskan and Preston 2017; Ross and Rivers 2018; Abbas 2019; Sweet 2019). These tactics helped a nativist populist like President Trump win the office, with trust in experts reduced. Now, that he is in office, nativist populists within the White House are

deconstructing expertise. But how? In the next section, I will develop a theoretical framework from the three embedded cases to explain the process of deconstruction of expertise.

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V. Empirical Analysis

The Process of Deconstructing Expertise:

Through the course of inductively tracing the policy process of the three sub-cases, a general process of deconstructing expertise by the nativist populists within the Trump administration became evident. Not all aspects of the process occur with every issue, but many common steps appear during the drafting and implementation of immigration policies.

1) First, nativist populists such as Stephen Miller, Jeff Sessions, Steve Bannon, and Gene Hamilton, consolidated power within the first few months of the administration, wrestling control from the hundreds of government officials that advise on immigration policy, into only a few dozen officials.

2) Second, this group of nativist populist staffers began drafting policies without any input from the many government agencies that involve immigration. If they do include some experts, they frequently ignore their warnings and dissent, which often leads to censorship of reports contradicting the efficacy and legality of the policies.

3) When the policies are enacted, they are often done with such secrecy and at such speed that the government is caught off guard. This means the government agencies responsible for implementing the policies have no time to properly prepare. The resulting chaos is a purposeful strategy by the nativist populists to ‘shock and awe’ their opponents, which includes the ‘deep state’ of experts.

4) However, experts frequently argue against these policies that do not include expertise by speaking up in meetings, producing contradictory reports, collecting signatures for formal dissent memos, leaking censored reports and memos, and even acting as whistleblowers to the media, either anonymously or publicly after they've left the administration.

5) There is a concerted effort to intimidate government officials to enact policies they object to, as well as the removal of dissenting expertise and experts, which can occur by forcing experts to not report their misgivings, firing experts and replacing them with yes men, reassigning experts to other departments or agencies, or experts quitting out of frustration.

6) Finally, the Trump administration, and in particular President Trump himself, deny any

wrongdoing and praise their policies no matter the amount of mounting criticism. This results in a sort of gaslighting of the country, where experts, immigrants, and citizens are being negatively impacted by the policy process and policies themselves, but the White House refuses to admit there are any problems or take any responsibility for their actions.