What is it about?
We analyze President Trump's early public discourse (2015-17) to characterize the narrative he consistently articulated about unauthorized immigrants. We provide scientifically rigorous and replicable evidence that the president’s 2017 executive action to rescind the DACA program was a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution. This is a critical discourse analysis of a large sample of his public discourse about immigration—from his first day as a presidential candidate to the day that he attempted to rescind DACA. We inductively analyzed 13 speeches and 6,963 tweets which revealed an anti-immigrant narrative. We definitively demonstrate that he articulated racist statements about immigrants and Latinos, hence expressing constitutionally impermissible racial animus. Beyond our formal statement, we offer an explanation based on cognitive science and US history as to why his discourse resonates so well with a sizeable portion of the US electorate.
Featured Image
Photo by visuals on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Our report was initially referenced as a footnote in an amicus brief that was entered into the New York federal district court; one of the two district courts that heard separate concurrent DACA cases. These cases were consolidated upon appeal. Our report was then submitted as a formal declaration to the United States Courts of Appeals for the Second and Ninth Circuits, and it was ultimately entered into evidence in the US Supreme Court in 2019
Perspectives
This research was undertaken by the UCLA undergraduate DACA defense team, including co-authors Celeste Gómez, Marco Juárez, Kimberly Cerón, Magaly Reséndez, John Hernández, Oscar Gaytan, and Yuina Hirose, as well as Diana Adame, Andy Aguiar, Carolina Armenta, Jennifer Bartelheim, Luís Ceja, Janet Chamu, Nicole Contreras, Fernanda Corral, Ismael De Anda, Jazmín De La Torre, Victor Dealba, Moises Del Real Viramontes, Evelyn Escobar, Odalys Esquivel, Susan Figueroa, Jackelyne García, Lissette García, Cristal Hernández, Lupita Hernández, Veronica Hernández, Jocelyne Herrera, Julia Isais, Adan Martínez Ordáz, Stephanie Ochoa, Ruth Pérez, Ivone Santana, Jocelyn Teah, Eloy Torres, and Barrett Weislow.
Professor Otto Santa Ana
University of California Los Angeles
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: “Druggies Drug Dealers Rapists and Killers”, Aztlán A Journal of Chicano Studies, January 2020, University of California Press,
DOI: 10.1525/azt.2020.45.2.15.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
