Legal Learning in the ICE Age: Legal Socialization and Cynicism during Heightened Immigration Enforcement

• In Event: Abolish ICE! Migration and Detention under Trump 2.0

Abstract

While vicarious experiences with immigration enforcement through family can powerfully shape legal attitudes, research has yet to examine the role of social media. However, doing so promises to illuminate new ways in which individuals internalize and adapt to an evolving landscape of enforcement, similar to research on Black Americans and the police in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement. Further, evolving legal attitudes around ICE may have broader implications for how Latino immigrants relate to local law enforcement and the law more broadly. This paper asks: How does social media consumption around ICE enforcement inform the reported attitudes of Latino immigrants towards ICE, other legal authorities, and the law? What implications might these attitudes have for how Latino immigrants adapt to hostile and transgressive ICE encounters during the second Trump administration? This article examines social media consumption as contributing to legal socialization or “the process through which individuals acquire attitudes and beliefs about the law, legal authorities, and legal institutions” (Piquero et al. 2005). Drawing on qualitative analyses of 2,956 TikToks and repeated in-depth interviews with 35 Latino immigrants in the greater Los Angeles area between June and November 2025, this article demonstrates how through frequent consumption of social media content around ICE enforcement Latino immigrants learn new ways of understanding the threat, protection, and legitimacy of the law and legal authorities. As a result, Latino immigrants develop strategic responses to protect themselves and their families in the event of an ICE encounter such as counter surveillance.

Author

• Luis E. Tenorio, Colby College