“Bad hombres” at the Southern US border? White nationalism and the perceived dangerousness of immigrants
| Author | Amanda Graham,Murat Haner,Teresa C Kulig,Alex R Piquero,Francis T Cullen |
| Published date | 01 September 2021 |
| Date | 01 September 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0004865820969760 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
“Bad hombres” at the
Southern US border?
White nationalism and the
perceived dangerousness
of immigrants
Teresa C Kulig
University of Nebraska at Omaha, NE, USA
Amanda Graham
Georgia Southern University, GA, USA
Francis T Cullen
University of Cincinnati, OH, USA
Alex R Piquero
University of Miami, FL, USA; Monash University, Australia
Murat Haner
University of South Florida, FL, USA
Abstract
As a candidate and as president, Donald Trump heightened the salience of immigration,
portraying those crossing the nation’s Southern border as “bad hombres” and advocating
building a wall blocking their access to the United States from Mexico. Based on a 2019
MTurk study of 465 White adults, the current study found that a clear majority of respond-
ents rejected this stereotype of Southern immigrants as “bad hombres,” judging them to be
just as law-abiding as Americans. Importantly, however, the analysis revealed that two inno-
vative measures—Hispanic resentment and, in particular, White nationalism—were consis-
tently related to perceptions of immigrants as criminogenic. Given the growing demographic
diversity of the United States, future research should consider the increasing influence of
Corresponding author:
Teresa C Kulig, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Nebraska at Omaha, 6001 Dodge Street,
Omaha, NE 68182, USA.
Email: tkulig@unomaha.edu
!The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0004865820969760
journals.sagepub.com/home/anj
2021, Vol. 54(3) 283–304
Journal of Criminology
racial/ethnic resentment and White group identity on public opinions about immigration and
other justice issues.
Keywords
Donald Trump, immigration, offending, racial resentment, White nationalism
Date received: 26 February 2020; accepted: 21 September 2020
Now, I want to build the wall. We need the wall. And the Border Patrol, ICE, they all want
the wall. We stop the drugs. We shore up the border. One of my first acts will be to get all of
the drug lords, all of the bad ones—we have some bad, bad people in this country that have
to go out. We’re going to get them out; we’re going to secure the border. And once the
border is secured, at a later date, we’ll make a determination as to the rest. But we have
some bad hombres here, and we’re going to get them out. (Blake, 2016)
-Donald J Trump, Third 2016 Presidential Debate
Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized immigrants—documented and
undocumented—and encouraged Americans to be intolerant or even fearful of this
horde seeking entry into “our” nation (Davis & Shear, 2019; Dwyer & Limbong,
2019; Reilly, 2016a). A common sentiment informing Trump’s rhetoric is that immi-
grants should “go back” to where they came from, the goal being to distinguish and
exclude immigrant “others” from “true” Americans (Dwyer & Limbong, 2019). In
announcing his bid for the presidency, he made the vilification of Mexican immigrants
central to his campaign—referring to them as “bringing drugs,” “bringing crime,” and
being “rapists,” with some assumed to be good people (“Full Text”, 2015).
Although disquieting cases exist of immigrants perpetrating violent crimes (Kulig &
Cullen, 2019), the Trump administration ignores the fact that immigrants themselves are
at an elevated risk of being victimized (e.g., Zatz & Smith, 2012). The administration has
engaged in policies exposing new arrivals to harm, including placing them in crowded
cages and separating parents from children (Garc
ıa Herna
´ndez, 2019; Soboroff, 2020).
All the while, President Trump has continued to portray immigrants crossing into the
United States as inherently criminal (e.g., Trump, 2019a; see also Davis & Shear, 2019).
He uses his political authority and position on these issues to justify building a suppos-
edly impenetrable border wall spanning the US’s Southern border. He promises to make
Americans safe again from the “bad hombres” who may seek to harm us (Blake, 2016;
Updegrove et al., 2020).
Empirical reality, however, challenges Trump’s hyperbolic claims regarding the dan-
gers posed by immigrants. Research has shown repeatedly that compared to native-born
Americans, immigrants—including undocumented immigrants—of nearly any origin
participate in significantly fewer non-violent antisocial behaviors (e.g., scamming
284 Journal of Criminology 54(3)
To continue reading
Request your trial