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48 UALR L. Rev. 1 (2025-2026)

handle is hein.journals/ualr48 and id is 1 raw text is: NARRATIVE DRIP AND OTHER METAPHORS FOR DATA- RESISTANT IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT Matthew Boaz* If I have to create stories . .. then that's what I'm going to do. JD Vance, Vice President of the United States1 I. INTRODUCTION In the United States, the first few months of 2025 have been besieged by rapid, broadscale, and far-reaching actions by the executive branch. While the entire federal government and reliant agencies have been reeling from mass firings, withholding of congressionally appropriated funds, and a creeping sense of precarity, nowhere has the election of Donald Trump to a second term created more chaos than in the field of immigration law and policy. Since his inauguration, the president and his administration have made more than 143 policy actions affecting the enforcement of immigration in the U.S., in- cluding the issuance of more than thirty executive orders on the same day he took office.2 He accompanied these orders with the rescission of dozens of previous executive actions under the Biden administration, his predecessor.3 Even now, to render a full accounting of the vast changes that have taken place would be ill-advised, since each day brings news of unforeseen terrors being inflicted on the noncitizens who reside in the United States and their families.4 * Assistant Professor, University of Kentucky J. David Rosenberg College of Law. JD, Georgetown University Law Center. A special thank you to Tiffany Lieu and my research as- sistants Peyton Rhodes, Andi Franconia, Emelia Yelencich. 1. Colleen Long, JD Vance Doesn't Back Away from False Claims About Migrants in Ohio Even Amid Threats to the Community, Assoc. PRESS (Sep. 15, 2024, at 13:20 CT), https://apnews.com/article/vance-haitians-springfield-ohio-pets-false-claims- 1c4c8a06ca7d0e1328ba6b9clb5ca7ff [https://perma.cc/3265-TES5] (articulating that his con- tinued reliance on a disproven narrative, about Haitians in Ohio allegedly eating household pets, served a greater purpose by alerting the national media to the suffering of the American people). 2. See IMMIGRATION POLICY TRACKING PROJECT, https://immpolicytracking.org/poli- cies/?page=3&after=2025-0 1-20 [https://perma.cc/76AT-TGC2] (last visited July 13, 2025). 3. See Exec. Order No. 14148, 90 Fed. Reg. 8237 (Jan. 20, 2025). 4. During the first several months of the Trump administration, fear has spread among communities with high immigrant populations throughout the country. See Claudia Rosel, 'I'm paranoid all the time': Surveillance and Fear in a City of Immigrants as the White House Ramps Up Deportations, THE GUARDIAN (Jun. 7, 2025), https://www.theguardian.com/us- 1