A War Against Latinx Immigrants: The Trump Administration's Drug, Terror, and Citizenship Race-Making Projects [electronic resource]

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Utilizing racial rhetorical criticism and racial formation theory as guiding theoretical frameworks to theorize the social construction of race, and the reproduction of racialization, this racial rhetorical critique interrogates rhetorics of drugs, terrorism, and citizenship emerging from the Trump Administration as race-making projects. In mapping the Trump Administration's drug war logics, terrorism war logics and citizenship war logics, this dissertation centers the Trump Administration's policies, practices, and legal discourses. From the time span of June 16, 2015 to January 20, 2019, I turn to a selected eighty-four campaign and presidential rallies, and presidential speaking engagements in addition to a curated Donald J. Trump's tweet archive dataset of realdonaldtrump. In the first analysis chapter of the dissertation, I ask how the discourses of drugs, border, and immigration engage in the work of race-making, tracing the connections of the Trump Administration's efforts to rearticulate discourses of drug criminality with Latinx immigration and Latinx migrants as producers of citizen victims. I argue, through the rhetoric of a drug crisis as a border crisis and the rhetoric of Latinx migrants as drug criminals, Trump rearticulates drug war logics to deploy an anti-Latinx immigrant project. In the second analysis chapter of the dissertation, I ask the question: How do discourses of terror, nation, and border engage in rhetorical race-making? In this chapter I argue, Trump construes Latinx migrants as terrorists in two ways-through the argument of migrant commonality as proximity to terrorism and through the representation of Latinx migrants as terrorizing MS-13 gang members. In addition, I investigate Trump's rhetorical construction of the Southern Border as a site of terrorism/terrorists. In the third analysis chapter of the dissertation, I ask the question: How do rhetorics of illegality, citizenship, and immigration participate in the race-making project? In this chapter, I argue, Trump attacks the legal sites of citizenship and legal residency. This analysis centers Trump's use of "anchor baby" rhetorics to delegitimize birthright citizenship and Trump's attack on naturalized citizenship through the rhetorics of immigration fraud and terrorism threat. Together, this dissertation tracks the Trump Administration's war on Latinx immigrants.