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BRIAN: That story shows how fear tactics are experienced by those who are targeted. But before we wrap up the show, I want to return to my conversation with historian Adam Goodman because a lot has happened since the 1930s. Goodman says formal deportations have spiked over the past 20 years.

Back in 1986, there were fewer than 25,000 formal deportations. That number has jumped to about 400,000 a year. One reason for the surge is a 1996 law signed by President Bill Clinton that made more crimes deportable offenses. Another is the attack on the World Trade Center in 2001.

ADAM GOODMAN: Immigration and security have increasingly become inseparable in the minds of officials and policymakers, especially since 9/11. So the funding for immigration enforcement and for the deportation machine has increased dramatically. Immigration detention has also increased, as well as the number of agents on the line.

NATHAN CONNOLLY: So you’ve mentioned President Clinton in the ’90s being a part of this. We know in 2001, it was George W. Bush who was president. President Obama was called by many of his critics to be the “Deporter in Chief.” What difference does Donald Trump make in any of this?

BRIAN: I ask Goodman that very question.

ADAM GOODMAN: I think it’s a little bit too early to say since things are changing so rapidly, but I think we can say at this point at least that many of Trump’s enforcement actions have been similar to those carried out under Obama, in terms of immigration raids, deporting people who are supposedly criminals. And I think the big difference we see between the previous administration and this administration is the ramping up of the fear campaigns and the scare tactics that are meant to push immigrants out of the country, perhaps, and time will tell.

BRIAN: So if these fear tactics are so successful, what do we even need a giant wall for?

ADAM GOODMAN: The border between the United States and Mexico today is as secure as it ever has been. There are already 650 miles of border wall. Migration from Mexico has dropped considerably, and in fact, net migration is at zero or even below zero. So the symbolic importance of arguing for the wall and carrying out the scapegoating and the fear campaign is meant to place the blame on immigrants for perhaps larger political economic problems and questions of unemployment and economic suffering that so many Americans are feeling today. That is old, and that is tried and true throughout American history.

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BRIAN: Adam Goodman is a historian at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He’s writing a book on the history of deportations.

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BRIAN: Joanne, Nathan, what I take away from this show is that fear is actually a key policy in the history of immigration.

JOANNE FREEMAN: It’s not just fear. It’s the theater of fear. It’s a performance that is meant to get people fearful, that is meant to encourage people to take action, to quote unquote, self-deport, which is a term that I hate.

NATHAN CONNOLLY: You mentioned a theater of fear, Joanne, I mean, I wonder who that performance is for, right. Is it as much for the average American voter, who needs a greater sense of security from the notion that a wall is going to be built? Or is it for the undocumented, who is meant to basically hightail it out of the country before ICE knocks on their door?

JOANNE FREEMAN: It kind of has to be a little bit of both, right?

NATHAN CONNOLLY: Yeah.

JOANNE FREEMAN: There you have the craft in statecraft, is that if you come down too hard on one side or another, you’re going to get pushback.

BRIAN: And I think one of the reasons that this tactic is so psychological, if you will, is we have very mixed feelings about immigration in the first place. I mean, for much of American history for most immigrants that come here, they’re basically being encouraged to come here, often to fill America’s insatiable need for labor.

JOANNE FREEMAN: It’s such an ingrained part of American identity, too, that we are a nation of immigrants. But so much of this is about national identity, insiders, outsiders, aliens. I mean the clash, I guess, of symbolism and brute-level reality that we’re talking about here is really striking.

NATHAN CONNOLLY: So here’s the thing, and this links Chinese Exclusion. It links Mexican-American immigration. It links the concerns now about terrorists, right?

I mean, we imagine the country as a white country, and we’re much more ready to accept migrants from Britain, parts of Europe, even from Russia, frankly, than we are from the places of the world that we consider to be the global south or East Asia. I mean, that’s just a fact. When nativism gets stoked up and it has its greatest traction, it’s against those people who are considered to be nonwhite.

I mean, the fact that we have concerns now about Russian interference in the election or that there are concerns during World War II about German Nazis landing on American shores, none of that had the same kind of visceral consequence that has had relative to Arab people, relative now to South Asian people, relative to Mexican-Americans, I mean, we have to just be willing to acknowledge, at least for a moment, that with the fear button, it rings. And it resonates largely because the country imagines itself– and the white Americans of this country imagine the nation to be– a white nation, and it needs to stay that way in order for the country to be America.

JOANNE FREEMAN: Although I think you have to broaden the definition of white. I think it is racial, but I guess what I’m thinking of is I’m going back to early America when the Irish, for example, were considered a “them” and not an “us.” Catholics were considered a “them” and not an “us.” So I do think it is very much about race, but even that in and of itself isn’t always framed the same way.

NATHAN CONNOLLY: Well, no. I would completely agree with that. And in the sense that the “them” is always a nonwhite “them,” that’s all I would say, is that the Irish get incorporated.

JOANNE FREEMAN: Right.

NATHAN CONNOLLY: But, you know, I think in a weird way, I mean, it’s hard to disentangle race and immigration and policy. And maybe we shouldn’t disentangle it, but I think at the base of this we should ask the question, is it possible to have an effective immigration policy that’s not based on fear, right. I’d like to hope so.

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NATHAN CONNOLLY: So that’s going to do it for us today, but you can keep the conversation going online. Let us know what you thought of the episode or ask us your burning history questions. You can find us at backstoryradio.org, or send an email to back backstory@virginia.edu. We’re also on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter at BackStoryRadio, and feel free to review the new show in the iTunes store. Whatever you decide to do, don’t be a stranger.