国土安全部部长马克韦恩·马林在中期选举选民惩罚其政党的第二天，在X平台发帖写道：“驱逐将继续。”这三个字的声明似乎旨在平息共和党内部一场初露端倪的辩论，即特朗普总统是否应缓和其移民与海关执法局（ICE）的打击行动。两年前，特朗普承诺发动美国历史上最大规模的大规模驱逐行动并因此重返白宫，如今他和他的政党在得克萨斯州、佐治亚州和北卡罗来纳州等州遭遇惨重失利，选民——尤其是西班牙裔选民——大幅倒向民主党。
By Nick Miroff“Deportations will continue,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin wrote in a post on X the day after voters punished his party in the midterm election. The three-word statement appeared to be aimed at quieting an incipient debate among Republicans over whether President Trump should ease his ICE crackdown. Two years after he won back the White House promising the largest mass-deportation campaign in U.S. history, Trump and his party suffered monumental losses in states such as Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina, where voters—especially Hispanics—swung hard to Democrats.
较为温和的共和党人敦促政府采取更低调的执法方式，将重点更狭窄地聚焦于有犯罪记录的违法者。
More moderate Republicans have urged the administration to adopt a quieter enforcement approach, focusing more narrowly on criminal offenders.
据我采访的三位国土安全部高级官员透露，尽管总统据称向身边亲信表达过担忧，认为某些ICE战术做得太过火，但他并未下令具体的政策变更。这些官员以及我交谈过的其他人士均表示，他们不指望会有收敛之举。特朗普昨日决定任命斯蒂芬·米勒为幕僚长，将ICE行动的主要设计师和核心意识形态倡导者置于其政府掌舵之位。米勒的晋升将赋予他更大权力，调动其他联邦机构协助ICE最大限度地推进驱逐行动。
Although the president has reportedly expressed concern to those close to him that some ICE tactics have gone too far, he has not ordered specific policy changes, according to three senior officials I spoke with at DHS. Those officials and others I’ve talked to told me they aren’t expecting a pullback, either. Trump’s decision to name Stephen Miller as his chief of staff yesterday places the chief architect and principal ideologue of the ICE campaign in charge of his administration. Miller’s promotion will give him even more power to mobilize other federal agencies to help ICE maximize deportations.
自特朗普重返白宫以来，国会共和党已为这项打击行动拨款近2500亿美元，目标是每年驱逐100万人。美国移民与海关执法局（ICE）获得了1100多亿美元，是其年度预算的11倍多，这笔资金激增产生了强大的惯性。除非特朗普实施重大政策逆转，或国会民主党多数派成功干预——专家称这不太可能——特朗普的大规模驱逐行动将继续推进，其任务是增加更多执法人员、更多驱逐航班和更多移民拘留中心。
Since Trump’s return to the White House, Republicans in Congress have given the administration nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars for the crackdown, aiming for 1 million deportations a year. ICE has obtained upwards of $110 billion, more than 11 times its annual budget, and the funding surge has created a powerful inertia. Absent a major policy reversal from Trump or a successful intervention by Democratic majorities in Congress—a longshot, experts say—Trump’s mass-deportation campaign will continue with its mandate to add more officers, more deportation flights, and more immigration jails.
该行动包括向当地警察局和治安官办公室发放大量现金，这些部门协助ICE增加逮捕人数。在中期选举前，ICE启动了招聘计划，计划到年底前增加5000名员工——其中大多数是驱逐官员。
The campaign includes handing out wads of cash to local police and sheriff departments, which help the agency boost arrests. Prior to the midterms, ICE launched a hiring push to add 5,000 more employees—mosty deportation officers—by the end of the year.
“无论白宫在移民执法方面可能面临何种政治压力，这笔资金本身就产生了巨大的惯性，”中间偏左智库“第三条路”的移民政策专家莎拉·皮尔斯告诉我。她说，ICE拥有的资金太多，以至于必须将支出速度翻倍，才能在2029财年结束前用完这笔钱。“白宫要收回这笔钱将极其困难。”尽管中期选举结果已出，共和党内部并未形成广泛共识，认为过度激进的ICE战术是一个弱点，一些右翼评论员指出，出口民调数据显示，移民问题是激励共和党选民投票的首要议题。
“Regardless of the political pressures that the White House may be feeling on immigration enforcement, the money creates a huge amount of momentum on its own,” Sarah Pierce, an immigration policy expert at the center-left think tank Third Way, told me. ICE has so much money that it will have to double its rate of spending to use it all before its deadline at the end of the 2029 fiscal year, she said. “Pulling that back would be extremely difficult for the White House.”Despite the midterm results, there hasn’t been a broad consensus in the Republican Party that overzealous ICE tactics were a vulnerability, and some right-wing commentators have pointed to exit-poll data showing that immigration was the top motivating issue for Republican voter turnout.
周二，我在达拉斯郊区的一个投票站与选民交谈时，遇到的几位共和党支持者表示，他们希望特朗普坚持现有路线。“必须继续严控，”我在达拉斯以北普莱诺一家公共图书馆外遇到的32岁医院工作人员丹尼说。丹尼告诉我，他不希望公开自己的姓氏，因为担心会遭到骚扰。他说，他成长时，他的家乡以及周围的科林县一直是共和党的稳固票仓，但该地区的经济繁荣吸引了更多外来人口。
At a polling place in the Dallas suburbs where I spoke with voters on Tuesday, several of the Republican supporters I met said they wanted Trump to stay the course. “Gotta keep locking it down,” said Danny, a 32-year-old hospital staffer I met outside a public library in Plano, north of Dallas. Danny told me he didn’t want his last name published, because he worried that he’d be harassed. His hometown and surrounding Collin County were reliably Republican when he was growing up, he said, but the region’s economic boom had brought in more transplants.
“他们继续投票给民主党，”他说。“民主党投票支持更多移民。这是一个恶性循环。”周二，得克萨斯州参议院选举的民主党获胜者詹姆斯·塔拉里科在科林县以12个百分点获胜，较特朗普2024年的胜选出现了23个百分点的转变。这是本世纪民主党首次在该县赢得州级选举。特朗普在2024年赢得了全国近一半的西班牙裔选票，但今年西班牙裔选民预计以69比29的比例投票支持民主党。
“They keep voting for Democrats,” he said. “Democrats vote for more immigration. It’s a vicious cycle.”James Talarico, the Democratic winner of the Senate race in Texas, won Collin County by 12 points on Tuesday, a 23-point swing from Trump’s 2024 victory. It was the first time this century that Democrats have won statewide races in the county. Trump won nearly half the Hispanic vote nationwide in 2024, but this year Hispanics are estimated to have voted for Democrats by a 69–29 percent margin.
民主党能否利用明年在国会的大多数席位，迫使政府限制移民与海关执法局（ICE）？克莱尔·特里克勒-麦克纳尔蒂是一名律师，曾在ICE担任多个高级职务，最近是在拜登政府期间，她告诉我，民主党很难改变ICE支出的趋势。如果民主党通过一份包含限制或转移ICE资金条款的拨款法案，特朗普必须签署。“我不太相信他会签署，但我与国会山上交谈过的人觉得，如果把它与他关心的事情结合起来，可能会出现一个窗口或一条追回资金的路径，”特里克勒-麦克纳尔蒂说。
Could Democrats use their large majorities in Congress next year to force the administration to rein in ICE? Claire Trickler-McNulty, an attorney who has held several high-ranking roles at ICE, most recently during the Biden administration, told me that it will be hard for Democrats to change the trajectory of ICE spending. If Democrats pass an appropriations bill with language constraining or shifting ICE funds, Trump would have to sign it. “I don’t have a lot of confidence that he would sign that, but people I’ve talked to on the Hill feel like there may be a window or a path to a clawback, if you combine that with something he cares about,” Trickler-McNulty said.
特朗普表示，他不想在未来两年里“否决所有事情”，尽管白宫也发布了一张照片，照片中一顶红色的“VETO”（否决）帽子放在“决心桌”上，特朗普在背景中。特朗普周二深夜表示，如果“适当且有利于国家”，他愿意与民主党人在移民改革问题上合作。但这种谈判的可能性可能会降低特朗普在此期间命令移民与海关执法局（ICE）采取不同行动的可能性。
Trump has said he doesn’t want to spend the next two years “vetoing everything,” although the White House has also circulated a photo of a red VETO hat sitting on the Resolute Desk with the president in the background. Trump told late Tuesday night that he’d be willing to work with Democrats on immigration reform if it were “appropriate and good for the country.”But the possibility of such negotiations could reduce the likelihood that Trump orders a different tack for ICE in the meantime.
移民研究中心执行主任马克·克里科里安告诉我，特朗普政府已经改变了策略，并且可能再次改变。移民研究中心是一个主要的限制移民团体。1月，明尼阿波利斯发生两名美国公民被杀事件后，特朗普降级了格雷格·博维诺，他是当时负责该市打击行动的、表演性的边境巡逻队指挥官，并用穆林取代了克里斯蒂·诺姆，穆林表示希望采取更为低调的ICE方式。
Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a leading immigration-restrictionist group, told me that the Trump administration has already shifted tactics, and could do so again. After the killings of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January, Trump demoted Greg Bovino, the performative Border Patrol commander who was leading the crackdown in the city, and replaced Kristi Noem with Mullin, who said he wanted a more low-key ICE approach.
克里科里安称，这一变化标志着他所说的“表演性”的结束，这种表演性制造出适合电视拍摄的画面：蒙面联邦部队开展行动，令总统的基本盘兴奋不已。但克里科里安表示，“防弹衣执法与公文包执法”之间仍存在“失衡”。
That change marked the end of what Krikorian described as “theatricality,” generating ready-for-TV images of masked federal forces staging operations that thrilled the president’s base. But Krikorian said that an “imbalance” remains between “body-armor enforcement versus briefcase enforcement.”
特朗普可能指示ICE在工作场所开展更多执法行动——克里科里安说，不一定是会让人们四散奔逃的突袭，而是检查社会安全号码和其他文件的日常审计。“工作场所执法是本届政府一直严重缺乏的东西，”他说。“只派一些官僚过去，既不那么具有拍摄价值，也不那么引发政治动荡。”明尼阿波利斯事件后，ICE继续以较少喧嚣的方式加强行动，该机构目前每月逮捕人数超过5万，创下历史最高纪录。
Trump could direct ICE to conduct more enforcement at worksites—not necessarily with raids that would send people running, Krikorian said, but with mundane audits that check Social Security numbers and other documents. “Worksite enforcement is something that has been very much lacking in this administration,” he said. It’s a lot less photogenic and a lot less politically tumultuous to just send in some bureaucrats.”ICE continued to ramp up, with less fanfare, after Minneapolis, and the agency is now making more than 50,000 arrests a month, its highest rate ever.
警官们部分通过使用自动化技术，如车牌识别器，以及强大的数据库工具来增加交通拦截，从而实现了这些水平。这些公开接触加剧了今年夏天对ICE的反弹，当时警官向几名试图开车逃离的未武装移民开枪，其中两人当场死亡。城市和州政府也加入了这场反弹，本周民主党普遍获胜的趋势可能会加速这一进程。休斯顿市长昨天宣布，该市警方将不再就缺乏合法身份的非暴力犯罪者联系ICE。
Officers have achieved those levels in part by using automated technologies, such as license-plate readers, and powerful database tools to make more traffic stops. Those public encounters deepened the backlash to ICE over the summer when officers shot several unarmed immigrants—two fatally—as they attempted to drive away. City and state governments have joined in that backlash, a trend that could accelerate with the widespread Democratic victories this week. The mayor of Houston announced yesterday that the city’s police will no longer contact ICE about nonviolent offenders who lack legal status.
克里科里安表示，针对白领领域的执法不一定会导致逮捕和驱逐，但会让非法滞留美国的移民更有可能自行离境。特朗普从企业主那里听到的不满情绪，可能会成为打击雇主的阻力。
White-collar enforcement would not necessarily lead to arrests and deportations, but it would make it more likely for immigrants who are in the United States illegally to leave on their own, Krikorian said. The frustrations that Trump has been hearing from business owners may weigh against a crackdown on employers.
正在考虑参加2028年总统竞选的副总统万斯，周三在X平台上发布长文评估该党的败局，似乎暗示倾向于这种做法。万斯写道，他“愿意”将移民与海关执法局（ICE）的重点转移到“雇佣非法劳工”的企业身上，但表示他不支持“大赦”，这是移民强硬派用来指代反对为估计有1200万至1500万非法滞留美国的移民创造合法身份途径的统称。“任何推动大赦的人都在欺骗你，”万斯写道。
Vice President Vance, who is considering running for president in 2028, appeared to signal a preference for that approach on Wednesday in a lengthy X post that assessed the party’s defeat. Vance wrote that he was “open” to shifting ICE’s focus to businesses that “hire illegal labor,” but said he didn’t support “amnesty,” the catch-all term used by immigration hard-liners who oppose creating a path to legal status for the estimated 12 million to 15 million immigrants who are illegally present in the United States. “Anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you,” Vance wrote.
皮尔斯告诉我，她将万斯的帖子解读为针对那些把中期选举结果视为谴责的共和党人，为政府的打击行动进行辩护。她说，她将密切关注未来几周要求政府改变策略的压力是否会增大，还是说白宫将继续保持防御姿态，坚持既定路线。
Pierce told me that she interpreted Vance’s post as a defense of the administration’s crackdown that was aimed at Republicans who view the midterm results as a rebuke. She said she’ll be watching to see if pressure on the administration to change tactics builds in the coming weeks or if the White House remains defensive and determined to follow the same course.
万斯的帖子中也显露出，他和其他可能的共和党总统候选人若试图接替特朗普，可能面临的两难困境。尽管选民中广泛支持驱逐犯下暴力犯罪或对公共安全构成威胁的移民，但这类移民仅占ICE逮捕人数的10%至20%。特朗普政府官员过去两年一直在争取MAGA运动中最狂热的成员，尤其是那些希望将国土安全部作为通过驱逐和“回迁”数百万移民来实现社会和人口结构转型工具的人。
There were also signs in Vance’s post of the conundrum that he and other potential Republican presidential candidates will likely face if they try to succeed Trump. Although there is broad support across the electorate for the deportation of immigrants who commit violent crimes or pose a threat to public safety, those immigrants represent only 10 to 20 percent of ICE arrests. Trump officials have spent the past two years appealing to the most ardent members of the MAGA movement, especially those who want DHS to be a tool of social and demographic transformation through the removal and “remigration” of millions of immigrants.
这些观点在总统大选中对大多数选民来说过于极端。但要赢得党内初选，万斯或任何其他潜在的共和党候选人，可能都需要接受这些观点。
Those views are too extreme for most voters in a general presidential election. But to win the party’s primaries, Vance, or any other potential Republican candidate, may need to embrace them.