Anti-Immigrant

Anti-immigrant hate groups are the most extreme of the hundreds of nativist and vigilante groups that have proliferated since the late 1990s, when anti-immigrant xenophobia began to rise to levels not seen in the U.S. since the 1920s.

TOP TAKEAWAYS

The number of anti-immigrant groups grew by 1 to 18 groups in 2023. This number, however, was reached by various groups dropping or re-emerging based on activity. 2023 saw activity from dormant groups including Floridians for Immigration Enforcement and Help Save Maryland. American Border Patrol was removed due to inactivity following the death of its founder and leader, Glenn Spencer. Border Network News, once listed as antigovernment extremist, was re-categorized to anti-immigrant hate after a review of the group’s activities and rhetoric.

The anti-immigrant movement spent much of the year directing its ire toward the Biden administration, particularly Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Anti-immigrant groups and hard-liners in Congress joined together in calling for Mayorkas to be impeached, alleging the southern border to be – by his and President Biden’s design – chaotic and unsecured. Anti-immigrant groups based their rhetorical attacks largely on the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, popular among both anti-immigrant and white supremacist groups, which falsely claims immigrants are a threat to white American culture. The hate group Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) wrote on its website that it “will work closely with the Homeland Security Committee to uncover the facts and help document the evidence in support of impeachment.”

KEY MOMENTS

Once largely relegated to the fringe and used mostly by white nationalist and anti-immigrant groups, “invasion” rhetoric is now showing up in official congressional hearings. Mayorkas’ position and immigration at the Southern border were used as scapegoats in other anti-immigrant narratives. Members of Congress and anti-immigrant groups also found synergy pushing the xenophobic, white nationalist-style idea of there being a migrant “invasion” happening at the southern border. Anti-immigrant groups claim this invasion is being orchestrated by the Biden administration According to data collected by the immigrant rights group America’s Voice, by late July, 34 members of Congress deployed such rhetoric at least 90 times during Republican-led hearings on immigration-related matters. This rhetoric invokes ideas of migrants, many of whom are people of color, being an invading force at the southern border. It plays into larger great replacement theory-style conspiracy theories of immigrants replacing white Americans and threatening the dominant culture.

The Biden administration again became the target of anger among anti-immigrant groups when, in May 2023, it rolled back the President Trump-era Title 42 policy, which was put in place to help mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 virus. As migrants arrived at the border around May 11, 2023, when Title 42 officially expired, the hate group Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform remarked, “This is what the Great Replacement looks like.”

FAIR continued its efforts to court law enforcement officials who are sympathetic to xenophobic causes. In April 2023, FAIR published a piece calling to support local sheriffs who are willing to implement anti-immigrant policies like 287(g) agreements. “FAIR works closely with these law enforcement heroes who see firsthand the adverse impact of open borders,” the group wrote. “We support them, and there are good reasons you should too.” In November 2023, FAIR hosted a press event in Washington, D.C., on “Border Security and Immigration Reform” that featured Sheriffs Thad Cleveland of Terrell County, Texas, and Sam Page of Rockingham County, North Carolina. In September, FAIR organized a two-day “border school” in McAllen, Texas, for sheriffs and lawmakers. The event was reportedly attended by a member of the antigovernment extremist group Texas Border Volunteers.

Todd Bensman, a senior fellow at the hate group Center for Immigration Studies, further demonstrated the overlap between anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups, appearing on Washington Watch with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council. Family Research Council published several articles throughout 2023 in its online publication, Washington Stand, that characterized the Southern border of the United States as unsecured or mimicked invasion-style rhetoric.

Bensman was oft-booked throughout 2023 on conservative-leaning media to talk about the border. He appeared on a Oct. 12, 2023, episode of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s X (formerly Twitter) show. During the show, Carlson, who is known for peddling great replacement-style rhetoric, said to Bensman, “When you visit Texas now, it’s very obvious that the state has changed and for the much worse, literally everywhere. It’s chaotic. The political balance is changing because the demographic balance is changing. Do people in Texas see this is an emergency? Do you think, and if so, why is nobody doing anything about it?” Bensman responded, "Yes, I do believe that” and added that “unfunded masses of people are suddenly showing up” in cities all over the country. 

Carlson concluded the segment, “Well, if there was ever reason to have a citizens militia, I’d say this is it.” The clip was shared on the Center for Immigration Studies website.

Republican hard-liner governors including Texas’ Greg Abbott continued to send buses and fly migrants to liberal-leaning cities across the U.S. in hopes of driving a wedge between communities. This helped fuel xenophobic protests in such cities as Chicago, where migrants arriving have been met with mixed attitudes. One Chicago alderman was the victim of a reportedly violent attack over a proposed migrant shelter. In September 2023, the neo-Nazi group Nationalist Socialist NSC-131 held an anti-immigrant protest outside of a hotel in Marlborough, Massachusetts, where migrants were being housed. Members of the group carried flares and a banner that read: “INVADERS: GO HOME.”

WHAT’S AHEAD

The anti-immigrant groups are likely to continue to butt heads with the Biden administration over its immigration policies. Xenophobic protests, like the ones witnessed in 2023 by neo-Nazi groups and other opportunists, have the potential to continue into 2024. With 2024 being an election year, anti-immigrant rhetoric is likely to be featured in campaigns and candidate stump speeches. Additionally, conspiracy theories about undocumented immigrants voting are sure to ramp up.

A coalition of hard-right, xenophobia and anti-LGBTQ+ figures and organizations billing itself Project 2025 put together a document titled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, which puts forth a series of policy recommendations for whoever wins the White House in 2024. Contributors include staffers from the anti-immigrant groups FAIR, Center for Immigration Studies and Immigration Reform Law Institute. The document puts forth various draconian anti-immigrant policies.

In October 2023, anti-LGBTQ+, anti-immigrant and white nationalist groups all rejoiced over the election of U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., as Speaker of the House. Johnson brings with him past connections to hate groups and views on immigration and LGBTQ+ rights that align with groups the SPLC tracks, giving them hope about having an ally in one of the most powerful positions in the country in 2024.

BACKGROUND

The organized anti-immigrant movement in the U.S. has long supported draconian immigration-enforcement measures and has worked to stall legislative relief for immigrants and their families and to spread bigoted messages.

This movement’s chief architect was John Tanton, a Michigan-based ophthalmologist, white nationalist and eugenics advocate whose tenacity set in motion a network of groups devoted to pushing nativist policies and ideas. Memos donated by Tanton to the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan evidence that his anti-immigrant sentiment was steeped in racism, eugenics and fears of the United States losing its white hegemony.

Although Tanton died in 2019, his legacy lives on through a constellation of groups devoted to his vision. Many of these groups bill themselves as fact-based think tanks engaged in policy research and lobbying; however, their main goal is to spread propaganda targeting immigrants. While not every group designated by the SPLC as an anti-immigrant hate group is part of the Tanton network, they generally push the same nativist and dehumanizing rhetoric. This includes slandering immigrants as inherently criminal, as invaders and/or as threats to the dominant culture.

The flagship group founded by Tanton in 1979 is the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Dan Stein, a close confidant of Tanton, remains FAIR’s president, stewarding its same anti-immigrant agenda into the future. In 1985, Tanton founded the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which has become a go-to think tank for anti-immigrant groups and nativist-leaning politicians. CIS has a decades-long history of circulating racist writers, while also associating with white nationalists. Tanton also helped found or fund 13 nativist organizations; however, not all are designated as hate groups.

One of the main drivers among anti-immigrant hate groups is vastly limiting or halting immigration to the United States altogether. FAIR claimed in a 2016 video that “mass immigration is too dangerous for America.”

Anti-immigrant groups like FAIR and others are active in Congress, lobbying for nativist legislation and leveraging their partnerships with sympathetic members of Congress to derail relief for immigrants living in the U.S. One extreme measure lobbied for by FAIR is repealing birthright citizenship guaranteed under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. ProEnglish  is committed to pushing legislation making English the official language of the United States and demonizing inclusive efforts to translate government documents to different languages. Americans for Legal Immigration PAC seeks to fund nativist candidates running for office in the U.S. The House Immigration Reform Caucus, founded in 1999, has been the Congressional arm working to encode much of FAIR’s agenda. And many of the key leaders in the anti-immigrant movement worked both for outside groups and inside government.

Cordia Strom was FAIR’s legal director, represented the Immigration Reform Law Institute and worked for U.S. House Subcommittee on Immigration and Claims. In 1996, while working for the subcommittee, Strom helped bring about the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, creating the basis for the current mass deportation and detention system.

Anti-immigrant hate groups supported the construction of a wall along the U.S. southern border. Dangerous rhetoric depicting migrants arriving at the border as an “invasion” has been deployed by anti-immigrant groups and hard-line members of Congress. This rhetoric was supercharged in 2022, though it has been pushed by nativist figures for decades.

In 1994, Tanton and Wayne Lutton, editor of The Social Contract Press, co-wrote the book The Immigration Invasion. One of the central themes of the book is, “Uncontrolled immigration is altering the distribution of political power in the United States.”

Both anti-immigrant leaders were deeply connected to the larger far right. Lutton was also on the editorial advisory board of a publication of the white nationalist group Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) and Social Contract Press was responsible for bringing Jean Raspail’s racist novel, The Camp of the Saints, back into the political fray after two decades out of print. Tanton wrote in a 1999 memo that he hoped the “reissuance of this book will measurably advance the [immigration] debate.”

Anti-immigrant groups are also focused on pushing for draconian measures at the state and local levels. This includes supporting policies making it so hard for immigrants and their families to live and work in the U.S. that they leave, a strategy popularized by CIS called “attrition through enforcement.” This includes supporting problematic E-Verify programs and calling to end so-called “sanctuary city” policies.

Barbara Coe, founder and leader of the California Coalition for Immigration Reform and a self-described member of the Council of Conservative Citizens, organized one of the first modern anti-immigrant state initiative campaigns, Proposition 187 in 1994, that became a model strategy for the anti-immigrant movement.

By 2010, anti-immigrant politicians like Kris Kobach, who served as chairman of the Kansas Republican Party before being elected Kansas secretary of state, had ushered in a series of laws in states and localities, all aimed at restricting immigrant people’s rights and punishing immigrant communities. Arizona’s anti-immigrant SB 1070 law in 2010 brought about a series of copycat policies pushed by anti-immigrant groups around the country, notably in Southern states, including Alabama and Georgia.

Groups like FAIR have encouraged counties to enter 287(g) programs, which deputize local law enforcement to serve as federal immigration enforcement officers. This fits into a larger strategy employed by FAIR and others to court law enforcement officers, including sheriffs, to carry out their anti-immigrant agenda.

Nativist hate can also exist outside the policy realm. The once-listed hate group AZ Patriots, like other border vigilante militias, had harassed migrants at the border as well as representatives from institutions seeking to help them. The many spinoffs and remnants of the anti-immigrant militia group the Minutemen Project, started by Chris Simcox and Jim Gilchrist, remain today in the form of conspiratorial anti-government groups focused on the Southern border. All of this adds to a broader climate of sowing fear and bigotry toward immigrants in America.