Media coverage and local cooperation in immigration enforcement

Public concern about immigrant criminality in the U.S. is reflected in news coverage of immigration, which tends to associate the topic with 'illegality' and crime. Although these media characterizations have increased in recent years as local policy action on immigration has intensified, little research has examined whether or how these two phenomena are connected. This study assesses whether local television news coverage of immigration and crime increases the likelihood of county sheriffs adopting 287(g) agreements deputizing officers to enforce immigration law. Employing fixed effect logistic regressions, this study finds that sheriffs' departments in counties exposed to more news coverage of immigration and crime are more likely to adopt 287(g) agreements. These increases are particularly pronounced in counties with Republican sheriffs as well as areas experiencing above-average immigrant population growth, suggesting that news media may act as an external, politicizing agent that turns seemingly innocuous demographic changes into events that warrant punitive policy action. These findings position news media as an important context of immigrant reception that can trigger threatened responses in local immigration policy.