Does policy threat mobilise? 287(g) and Latino voter registration in North Carolina and Florida

Abstract

ABSTRACTImmigration enforcement affects political attitudes and trust even among individuals and communities not directly targeted for deportation. Literature from across the social sciences finds that restrictive local immigration policy has chilling spillover effects on citizen Latino political attitudes, trust, and interactions with state institutions – but few studies have extended this framework to formal political behaviour. In this article, I contribute to the literature on spillover effects of immigration enforcement policies with a new measure of mobilisation and a credible identification strategy. Specifically, this study identifies the effects of restriction on Latino voter registration by leveraging the county-level selection process for the 287(g) Program in North Carolina and Florida. Contrary to expectations, I find little convincing evidence that acceptance into the 287(g) Program decreased Latino voter registration. These null results are consistent across different 287(g) Program types and modelling strategies that relax temporal assumptions about policy effects.