President Donald Trump has vowed to target his political enemies, and experts have warned that he could weaponize U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct mass surveillance on his targets.

Mass surveillance is the widespread monitoring of civilians. Governments typically target specific groups – such as religious minorities, certain races or ethnicities, or migrants – for surveillance and use the information gathered to “contain” these populations, for example by arresting and imprisoning people.

We are experts in social control, or how governments coerce compliance, and we specialize in surveillance. Based on our expertise and years of research, we expect Trump’s second White House term may usher in a wave of spying against people of color and immigrants.

Spreading moral panic

Trump is already actively deploying a key tactic in expanding mass surveillance: causing moral panics. Moral panics are created when politicians exaggerate a public concern to manipulate real fears people may have.

Take Trump on crime, for example. Despite FBI data showing that crime has been dropping across the U.S. for decades, Trump has repeatedly claimed that “crime is out of control.” Stoking fear makes people more likely to back harsh measures purportedly targeting crime.

Trump has also worked to create a moral panic about immigration.

He has said, for example, that “illegal” migrants are taking American jobs. In truth, only 5% of the 30 million immigrants in the workforce as of 2022 were unauthorized to work. And in his Jan. 25, 2025, presidential proclamation on immigration, Trump likened immigration at the southern border to an “invasion,” evoking the language of war to describe a population that includes many asylum-seeking women and children.

The second step in causing moral panics is to label racial, ethnic and religious minorities as villains to justify expanding mass surveillance.

Building on his rhetoric about crime and immigration, Trump frequently connects the two issues. He has said that migrants........

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