Immigration is one of the most polarizing issues in American politics today. While Democrats have emphasized creating paths to legal status and Republicans have prioritized border security, neither party has devoted much attention to the detention of the immigrants who are the subject of these furious debates. The complexity of immigration detention's place in the legal system has subsequently escaped the court of public opinion, collapsed under the partisan divide on more prominent immigration policies. This project uses survey experiments to examine the effect of information regarding the immigration detention system on White Americans’ opinions regarding the country’s immigration detention policy and practices. Run in two parts, this project examines both respondents’ individualized decisions regarding hypothetical immigrants and broader policy preferences in the arena of immigration detention. This research will contribute to our understanding of Americans’ responsiveness to information regarding little-known bureaucratic processes within highly polarized policy spheres.
