2026-01-25 06:25:00
2026年1月24日，明尼苏达州明尼阿波利斯市，一名联邦特工在抗议者中踢出催泪瓦斯罐，随后联邦特工开枪射杀了一名男子。据称，该男子亚历克斯·杰弗里·普里蒂（Alex Jeffrey Pretti）当时正在该地区观察特工行动，是一名美国公民，同时也是注册护士和持枪合法者，但事发时他已不再持有武器。普里蒂的死亡是今年明尼阿波利斯地区联邦移民特工第三次开枪杀人，其中两人死亡。这些事件在全国范围内引发了广泛关注。
自2026年1月初特朗普政府在明尼阿波利斯地区展开移民执法行动以来，美国移民与海关执法局（ICE）和海关与边境保护局（CBP）的特工被指控广泛滥用职权，包括频繁使用催泪瓦斯和胡椒喷雾等化学控制手段、对示威者、旁观者和移民实施暴力行为，以及无端且具有煽动性的逮捕和拘留。
2026年1月7日，即特朗普政府宣布“有史以来最大规模的移民行动”后不久，一名ICE特工乔纳森·罗斯（Jonathan Ross）在试图驾车逃离时射杀了瑞妮·古德（Renee Good）。白宫、国土安全部长克里斯蒂·诺姆（Kristi Noem）及其他联邦官员迅速支持罗斯，称古德为“国内恐怖分子”，并认为其被射杀是正当的，尽管有视频证据显示并非如此。此后，明尼苏达州的ICE特工表现出更像占领者而非执法者的姿态，不仅当地官员恳求他们离开该州，他们还戴着面罩，使用军事化装备，包括战术装备、防暴剂和突击武器。他们甚至与当地警方发生冲突，一名明尼阿波利斯地区的警察局长表示，一些警员在非工作时间遭到移民特工的骚扰和种族歧视。
此外，联邦特工还被记录在近距离对一名已被拘留的男子面部喷洒胡椒喷雾。上周，一名明尼阿波利斯家庭在从篮球比赛回家途中，被特工在车内喷洒催泪瓦斯，其中6个月大的婴儿需要进行心肺复苏。所有家庭成员都幸存下来，但婴儿情况危急。
在明尼阿波利斯地区，联邦特工的第二次开枪事件也是一起误伤：一名ICE特工误将一名委内瑞拉男子当作目标，开枪击中其腿部，尽管该男子并非他们原本的目标。最近，一名美国公民乔恩李·“斯科特”·陶（ChongLy “Scott” Thao）在家中被特工持枪带走，当时他只穿着内衣、凉鞋和一条毯子，且在零下温度中被带走。陶被逮捕时没有搜查令，最终数小时后被释放，但特工并未为此道歉或赔偿其家庭损失。
在明尼阿波利斯，ICE特工的行为已构成对第四修正案（禁止不合理搜查和扣押）的严重违反。据《纽约时报》的同事埃里克·利维茨（Eric Levitz）周五报道，根据一份由美联社首次获得的内部备忘录，ICE决定可以仅凭行政令（而非司法令）进入住宅进行搜查。这类行政令不需要法官批准，可由ICE特工自行签发。
此外，ICE的行动还波及到了明尼阿波利斯地区的儿童。据当地学区官员称，本周有特工试图利用一名5岁儿童作为“诱饵”，在将其父亲拘捕后，让儿童敲门以引诱其他人。另外，周四特工还拘捕了一名2岁女童及其父亲，并暂时将他们送往德克萨斯州。
当地媒体如《明尼阿波利斯星-三角报》以及旁观者拍摄的执法互动视频，为记录ICE和CBP在该州的行为提供了更全面的资料。然而，即便只是这些有限的事件，也显示出特工行为中明显的不受约束的攻击性和持续升级的趋势。明尼阿波利斯市长雅各布·弗里（Jacob Frey）在周六表示：“还有多少居民、多少美国人需要死亡或受伤，才能让这次行动停止？”但对于特朗普政府而言，这些死亡似乎并未引起太多关注。
On Saturday, a Border Patrol agent in Minneapolis shot and killed Alex Jeffrey Pretti at close range after Pretti had been pepper-sprayed, beaten, and forced onto his knees by other agents.
Pretti, 37, was a US citizen and reportedly in the area to observe agents’ actions. He was also a registered nurse and a legal gun owner with a permit to carry a weapon — one that he was no longer in possession of when he was shot to death.
Pretti’s death is at least the third shooting by immigration agents in the Minneapolis area this year, and the second where the person who was shot died.
The shootings have understandably attracted the most attention nationwide. But since the immigration crackdown in Minneapolis began in early January, there have been widespread abuses of power US by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents, including widespread use of chemical crowd control like pepper spray and tear gas; brutality against protesters, bystanders, and immigrants; and baseless and often inflammatory arrests and detentions.
On January 7, just days into an immigration crackdown targeting the Minneapolis area that Trump officials heralded as “largest immigration operation ever,” an ICE agent, Jonathan Ross, shot and killed Renee Good as she attempted to drive away.
The White House, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and other federal officials quickly backed Ross to the hilt, describing Good as a domestic terrorist and describing the shooting as justified, despite video evidence to the contrary.
Since then, the message behind the administration’s support for Ross and the shooting seems to have been clearly received by ICE agents in Minnesota, who have behaved much more like an occupying force than a law enforcement operation: Not only have local officials pleaded with them to leave the state, they are also operating from behind masks and with militarized force, including tactical gear, riot control agents, and assault weapons.
They have even pitted themselves against local police: A Minneapolis-area police chief said this earlier week that some of his off-duty officers have been harassed and racially profiled by immigration agents.
In multiple cases, federal agents have been documented using Good’s killing as a threat against other observers documenting their actions, asking one woman, “Have y’all not learned?” before grabbing her phone and detaining her.
Other incidents are too numerous to tally in full, but several stand out.
Last week, federal agents violently detained two Target employees, both of whom a Minnesota state representative said were US citizens and who were later released. At least one of the employees was left in a nearby parking lot with injuries.
In another incident, a US citizen was dragged from her car by federal agents after she was stopped on the way to a doctor’s appointment; agents broke the windows of her vehicle and carried her hanging face down by her arms and legs. And federal agents have been recorded pepper-spraying an already-detained man in the face at close range.
A Minneapolis family was also caught up and brutalized by federal agents last week: On the way home from a basketball game, a family of eight — including a 6-month-old and five other children — was tear-gassed inside their vehicle by federal agents. All survived, but the 6-month-old required CPR.
The second of three shootings by federal immigration agents in the Minneapolis area was also a case of mistaken identity: ICE agents shot a Venezuelan man in the leg, wounding him, even though he was not their original target.
More recently, ChongLy “Scott” Thao, also a US citizen, was detained in his home at gunpoint by federal agents and taken away in sub-freezing temperatures wearing only his underwear, sandals, and a blanket. Thao was arrested without a warrant and ultimately released hours later — without an apology for his detention or for the damage to his home, Thao said.
Thao’s detention is part of a larger pattern in Minneapolis, where ICE agents are increasingly acting in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. As my colleague Eric Levitz wrote on Friday, ICE has decided, according to a closely held internal memo first obtained by the Associated Press, that it can enter homes with only an administrative warrant, rather than a judicial warrant. Such administrative warrants do not require a judge’s approval and can be issued by ICE agents themselves.
ICE’s crackdown has also swept up children in the Minneapolis area, including an incident this week where agents attempted to use a 5-year-old child as “bait” to detain others by having him knock on the door of his home after taking his father into custody, according to officials at a Minneapolis-area school district. They also detained a 2-year-old and her father on Thursday and temporarily removed both of them to Texas.
Local publications like the Minneapolis Star-Tribune — and bystanders filming interactions, as Pretti appeared to have been doing before he was shot and killed on Saturday — have created a more comprehensive record of ICE and CBP’s actions in the state. But even this relatively limited number of incidents shows a clear pattern of unchecked aggression and ongoing escalation by agents.
“How many more residents, how many more Americans need to die or get badly hurt for this operation to end?” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey asked on Saturday. But for the Trump administration, it’s not clear those deaths are very much of a problem at all.
2026-01-25 01:53:50
一段视频截图显示联邦官员杀害一名男子。@TheJFreakinC 表示，明尼苏达州最新发生的杀人事件令人震惊。视频中，大约有五六名身穿军装的男子（看起来像是由特朗普总统派往明尼苏达州的联邦移民官员）将一名男子按倒在地并反复殴打，随后一名官员似乎向该男子连开数枪。即使该男子已经倒地不动，枪声仍未停止。据明尼苏达州警察局长布莱恩·奥哈拉称，这名男子（目前尚未被确认身份）已死亡。任何由此事件引发的逮捕或起诉都必须等待警方调查结果。视频并未显示这名男子在被攻击前的行为，因此尚不清楚他是否曾参与犯罪或暴力活动。但目前所掌握的有限证据似乎非常不利。即便有某种法律辩护可以为第一枪开脱，也很难想象能为连续向倒地男子开枪找到正当理由。然而，特朗普政府开展真正调查的可能性极低。今年早些时候，联邦官员射杀瑞内·古德（Renee Good）后，副司法部长托德·布兰奇（Todd Blanche）不仅关闭了对凶手的调查，还下令对古德进行刑事调查。但明尼苏达州并非只有联邦政府，州官员对特朗普的准军事力量在短短几周内再次造成死亡感到愤怒。明尼苏达州州长蒂姆·沃尔兹（Tim Walz）呼吁特朗普“立即把成千上万的暴力且未经训练的联邦官员从明尼苏达州撤走。”州检察官也可能尝试对这两起杀人案的责任官员提起指控。然而，美国最高法院的共和党多数派使私人公民起诉违反法律的联邦执法官员变得极为困难。但问题是，联邦官员是否真的可以被起诉并定罪违反州刑法？直到最近，法律对联邦官员在执行公务时涉嫌违反州刑法的情况仍倾向于保护他们。标志性案例“Neagle v. California”（1890年）中，最高法院裁定一名联邦治安官在担任美国最高法院法官保镖时射杀一名男子，不能在州法院被控谋杀罪。但去年6月，最高法院在“Martin v. United States”（2025年）一案中推翻了这一观点，指出Neagle案并不总是保护联邦官员免受州法律的追究。Martin案中确立的规则较为模糊，因此尚不清楚它是否适用于明尼苏达州的枪击事件。但其核心内容是，联邦官员只有在证明其行为“虽违反州法，但却是履行联邦职责所必需且适当的”，才能获得保护。如果这些负责明尼苏达州枪击案的联邦官员违反了明尼苏达州法律，那么任何起诉都将取决于法院是否认为该枪击行为是“履行职责所必需且适当的”。此外，还存在另一个潜在问题。一项联邦法律规定，任何针对“美国政府官员或其下属人员”的州刑事指控，都可以被移送到联邦法院审理。这项法律并未阻止州检察官提起指控或进行审判，但确保了有关Neagle案是否适用的问题将由联邦法院裁决，而这些法院正日益由保守派共和党人主导。明尼苏达州的联邦案件通常上诉至第八巡回上诉法院，该法院11名现任法官中有10名是由共和党人任命的。当然，第八巡回上诉法院的裁决可能还会被上诉至最高法院，而那里有6名共和党人担任大法官。所有这些都表明，虽然法律并未完全阻止明尼苏达州检察官对这些官员提起指控，但这些指控是否能够成立仍存在很大不确定性。
那么，联邦官员在何种情况下可以免受州法院的起诉？Neagle案的事实令人震惊。大卫·特里（David Terry）曾是加利福尼亚州的律师和前州最高法院首席法官，他曾在担任州最高法院法官期间与美国最高法院法官史蒂芬·菲尔德（Stephen Field）共事。当时，联邦法官需要“巡回审判”，即在华盛顿特区以外的地方审理案件。因此，菲尔德不得不审理一起关于特里妻子是否应分得一位美国参议员财产的案件。在庭审中，菲尔德裁定特里妻子无权获得该财产，特里随即殴打了一名联邦治安官，持一把博伊刀（Bowie knife）威胁，并被以藐视法庭罪监禁。获释后，他和妻子继续威胁菲尔德的生命，因此，总检察长下令让副治安官大卫·内格尔（David Neagle）担任菲尔德的保镖。之后，特里在乘火车前往加利福尼亚州途中袭击了菲尔德，内格尔开枪将其射杀。鉴于这些事实，最高法院裁定加利福尼亚州不能对内格尔提起杀人罪指控，因为这涉及对现任法官的袭击，而且内格尔是在履行其作为菲尔德保镖的职责。135年后，最高法院在Martin案中重新审视了Neagle案。Gorsuch大法官在该案中指出，Neagle案的背景是担心“加州可能通过起诉一名联邦治安官来妨碍联邦法律”，因为该治安官是根据美国法律被授权执行某些行为的。保护菲尔德是内格尔的职责，因此他在射杀特里时“只是做了必要的和适当的事”。因此，Gorsuch从Neagle案中提炼出一个规则：联邦官员只有在证明其行为“是履行联邦职责所必需且适当”时，才能受到州法律的保护。在Martin案之后，明尼苏达州可能有机会起诉那些在该州造成死亡的联邦官员。一般来说，联邦执法官员没有法律授权在没有正当理由的情况下开枪杀人。因此，如果这次枪击行为被证明是非法的，联邦法院可能会认为该官员的行为并非履行职责所必需和适当。然而，Martin案是一个较新的裁决，其规则仍较为模糊。此外，对联邦移民官员的起诉不可避免地带有政治色彩。因此，尚不清楚审理此案的法官是否会以公正和中立的态度对待，还是以党派立场来裁决。换句话说，关于联邦官员何时可以被起诉犯有州刑事罪的法律仍不明确，因此，即使州检察官能够说服陪审团定罪，这些联邦官员的起诉是否能够成功仍存在很大不确定性。
The video of the latest killing in Minneapolis is truly horrific. In it, about half a dozen men in military garb, who appear to be federal immigration officers sent to Minnesota by President Donald Trump, wrestle a man to the ground and repeatedly strike him. Then one of the officers appears to fire multiple shots into the man. The shots continue, even after the target is lying motionless on the ground.
According to Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, the man, who has yet to be identified, is dead.
Any arrests or prosecutions that arise out of this killing will have to await a police investigation. The video does not show what happened before this man’s killers started wrestling with him, so it is not yet clear if he was engaged in criminal or even violent activity before the altercation began. But the limited evidence available right now appears incredibly damning. Even if there is some legal argument that could justify the first shot fired, it’s hard to imagine one for continuing to fire multiple shots into a man lying on the ground.
But it is also exceedingly unlikely that the Trump administration will conduct a real investigation into this killing. After federal officers shot and killed Renee Good earlier this month, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche reportedly did not just shut down an investigation into her killer, he also ordered federal officials to conduct a criminal investigation into Good.
But the federal government isn’t the only sovereign entity in Minneapolis, and state officials are understandably livid about the second killing by Trump’s paramilitary forces in just a few weeks. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) called for Trump to “Pull the thousands of violent, untrained officers out of Minnesota. Now.” State prosecutors could also attempt to bring charges against the officers responsible for the two killings.
The Supreme Court’s Republican majority has made it very difficult for private citizens to sue federal law enforcement officers who break the law. But can a federal officer actually be charged with, and convicted of, violating a state criminal law?
Until fairly recently, the law was favorable to federal officials who allegedly violate state criminal laws while they carry out their official duties. The seminal case, known as In re Neagle (1890), held that a deputy US marshal who shot and killed a man could not be charged with murder in state court, because this federal officer did so while acting as a bodyguard for a US Supreme Court justice.
Last June, however, the Supreme Court handed down Martin v. United States (2025), which held that Neagle does not always protect federal officials who violate state law. The rule announced in Martin is vague, so it is unclear how it would apply to the shooting in Minneapolis. But the gist of the ruling is that a federal officer is only protected if they can demonstrate that “their actions, though criminal under state law, were ‘necessary and proper’ in the discharge of their federal responsibilities.”
If the officers responsible for the Minneapolis killings broke Minnesota law, in other words, any prosecution against them would turn on whether the courts decide shooting this woman was a “necessary and proper” exercise of the officer’s official duties.
There is one other potential complication. A federal law provides that state criminal charges against “any officer (or any person acting under that officer) of the United States or any agency thereof” may be removed from state court and heard by a federal judge. This statute does not prevent state prosecutors from bringing charges or from prosecuting a case. But it does ensure that the question of whether Neagle applies to this case would be decided by federal courts that are increasingly dominated by conservative Republicans.
Federal cases out of Minnesota appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, a very conservative court where 10 of the 11 active judges were appointed by Republicans. And, of course, any decision by the Eighth Circuit might be appealed to the Supreme Court, where Republicans control six of the nine seats.
All of which is a long way of saying that, while the law does not absolutely preclude Minnesota prosecutors from filing charges against these officers, it is far from clear that those charges will stick.
The facts underlying the Neagle case are simply wild. David Terry was a lawyer and former chief justice of the state of California, who had served with Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field while the two were both state supreme court justices. At the time, federal justices were required to “ride circuit” and hear cases outside of Washington, DC. And so, Field wound up hearing a dispute about whether Terry’s wife was entitled to a share of a US senator’s fortune.
At the court proceeding, where Field ruled against Terry’s wife, Terry punched a US marshal, brandished a Bowie knife, and was jailed for contempt of court. After his release, he and his wife continued to threaten Field’s life, and so, the attorney general ordered Deputy Marshal David Neagle to act as Field’s bodyguard.
Then, Terry attacked Field while Field was traveling through California by train, and Neagle shot and killed Terry.
Given these facts, it’s unsurprising that the Supreme Court ruled that California could not bring charges against Neagle for this killing. The case involved a physical attack on a sitting justice! And, besides, Neagle acted within the scope of his responsibilities as Field’s federally appointed bodyguard.
135 years later, however, the Court decided Martin. That more recent decision focused on language in the Neagle opinion that suggested that its scope may be limited. Neagle, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in Martin, arose from concerns that “California could frustrate federal law by prosecuting a federal marshal “for an act which he was authorized to do by the law of the United States.” Protecting Field was something that “it was [Neagle’s] duty to do.” And, in shooting Terry, Neagle “did no more than what was necessary and proper.”
Thus, Gorsuch extracted a rule from Neagle that federal officials are only protected from state law when their actions “were ‘necessary and proper’ in the discharge of their federal responsibilities.”
In the wake of Martin, Minnesota may very well be able to prosecute the officers responsible for the Minnesota killings. As a general rule, federal law enforcement officers are not authorized by the law of the United States to shoot people without justification. So, if it turns out that this killing was legally unjustified, federal courts may conclude that the officer’s actions were not necessary and proper in the discharge of his official duties.
That said, Martin is a fairly new opinion, and the rule it announced is vague. And any prosecution against a federal immigration officer would be unavoidably political. So, it is unclear whether the judges who hear this case would approach it as fair and impartial jurists or as partisans.
The bottom line, in other words, is that the law governing when federal officers may be charged with state crimes is quite unclear. So, it is uncertain whether a prosecution against these particular federal officers would succeed — even assuming that a state prosecutor could convince a jury to convict.
2026-01-24 21:05:00
今天，Explained将每周六发布视频节目，以音频和视频形式呈现，内容包括对政界和文化界重要人物的深入访谈。请订阅Vox的YouTube频道以获取这些节目，或在您常听的播客平台收听。
明尼苏达州——唐纳德·特朗普并未退让。他坚持自己的关税政策，反对将联邦移民官员部署到争议地区，不愿利用司法部打击政治对手，也不放过对“蓝色城市”（指民主党主导的城市）的攻击。在 Renee Good 被一名 ICE（美国移民与海关执法局）官员射杀后，政府官员却继续指责受害者，并拒绝配合地方官员对事件的调查。本周，司法部对几位明尼苏达州民主党人展开刑事调查，并发出传票，指控他们阻碍了联邦移民优先事项。这使得当地社区陷入紧张不安之中。
五年来，乔治·弗洛伊德之死引发了全球对种族正义和警察改革的抗议运动，而如今，全国的目光再次聚焦于明尼苏达州。虽然人们最关心的问题是“特朗普愿意走多远”，但他的施压行动也对州内的民主党官员构成挑战，包括州检察长 Keith Ellison。Ellison 曾是国会议员和民主党全国委员会副主席，自2019年起担任检察长，同时他也是明尼苏达州民主党州长候选人之一。在一次深入访谈中，我询问了他关于未来在州政坛的发展、如何应对特朗普的施压、州民主党是否在调查社会服务欺诈案件上行动迟缓，以及是否应废除 ICE。以下是我们的对话中最引人注目的部分。
Ellison 强调了一个重要观点：司法部的民事权利部门拒绝调查导致 Renee Good 死亡的 ICE 官员。他们没有审查证据，也决定不追究责任。美国副司法部长 Todd Blanche 在与福克斯新闻的采访中表示：“那天发生的事情已经被数以百万计的美国人观看，因为当时被手机记录下来了。司法部的民事权利部门并不只是在每次警官被迫自卫时就进行调查。”
与此同时，FBI 从现场扣押了关键证据，包括子弹壳以及 Good 的汽车（可能显示子弹轨迹），但拒绝与州和地方检察官分享这些证据。Ellison 表示，联邦政府正在隐瞒可能帮助查明真相的证据，并阻止那些试图为 Good 家人寻求答案的人。
特朗普政府的核心论点之一是，明尼苏达州是“庇护城市”，地方官员积极阻止 ICE 执行任务。Ellison 却坚决否认这一点，并强调这一区别至关重要。明尼苏达州有一项被称为“分离法案”的规定。Ellison 表示，虽然州和地方执法部门不会像其他一些城市那样阻止 ICE 进入监狱，但该法案意味着城市工作人员没有法律义务这样做。他指出，如果超越这一界限，州政府可能会面临法律风险。例如，ICE 可以根据移民逮捕令拘留人员，但明尼苏达州不会根据移民指控延长拘留时间。例如，如果法官下令释放因酒驾被起诉的人，州政府就会释放他们。如果 ICE 想要根据移民问题将其带走，他们可以这么做，但明尼苏达州不会因移民指控而拘留他们。Ellison 将当前的政治局势与2020年夏天的事件进行了比较，当时共和党成功将民主党描绘成支持“取消警察经费”的激进派，尽管大多数民主党官员从未真正支持这一口号。
本周在 Truth Social 上，特朗普指责明尼苏达州民主党未能调查该州索马里裔社区中报告的数起社会服务欺诈案件，并以此为借口派遣联邦特工。在我们的访谈中，Ellison 强烈否认民主党在调查这些案件上有所拖延。他表示，特朗普和白宫正在不公正地针对整个社区，因为个别犯罪行为。当我提到“喂养我们的未来”丑闻——明尼阿波利斯一家非营利组织与一家索马里餐厅合谋骗取超过2亿美元联邦资金时，检察长对此感到愤怒。
“这次 ICE 的大规模行动是针对欺诈的，但特朗普却派出了武装人员，戴着面具，”Ellison 说，“他没有派会计师，也没有派金融调查专家，而是派出了带着枪的强硬分子。因此，你必须得出这样的印象：我们谈论的并不是欺诈。”
特朗普威胁动用“叛乱法案”并非虚张声势。Ellison 表示，他和其他州官员自2024年初就开始演练应对措施，准备对特朗普可能提出的联邦权力扩张进行法律挑战。Ellison 还详细说明了“叛乱法案”在明尼阿波利斯可能带来的影响：现役联邦军队将巡逻美国城市街道，表面上是为了支持 ICE 的行动。Ellison 认为，特朗普正在兑现其竞选承诺，即对政治对手进行报复。
“‘我就是你的报复’不仅仅是一句竞选口号，而是一种治国理念。”Ellison 说。明尼苏达州拥有大量索马里裔居民，政治倾向进步，且在乔治·弗洛伊德事件后曾发生过大规模抗议，这使得该州成为特朗普向反对者传递信息的完美目标。
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MINNEAPOLIS — President Donald Trump is not budging. On his tariffs. On his controversial deployment of federal immigration agents. On his willingness to use the Justice Department to go after his political enemies. On his war against blue cities.
In the weeks after the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis, administration officials have doubled down on comments that laid blame with the victim and stonewalled local officials trying to investigate the shooting. This week, the Justice Department opened criminal investigations into several Minnesota Democrats, issuing subpoenas that allege they have impeded federal immigration priorities.
The result is a community on edge. Five years after the killing of George Floyd made Minneapolis the center of a global movement for racial justice and police reform, the eyes of the country have returned to the Twin Cities. And while the foremost question may be, “Just how far is Donald Trump willing to go?” the pressure campaign from the president has also challenged the state’s Democratic elected officials, including state Attorney General Keith Ellison.
Ellison, a former Congress member and DNC vice chair, has served as attorney general since 2019 — and he’s also a rumored candidate for the state’s Democratic nomination for governor. In an extended interview, I asked Ellison about his future in state politics, the playbook for pushing back on Trump, whether state Democrats were slow to investigate claims of social services fraud, and whether the solution for ICE is to abolish it.
Here’s what most struck me in our conversation.
Ellison stressed an important point: The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division declined to open an investigation into the ICE officer who shot and killed protester Renee Good. They didn’t review evidence and decided not to pursue charges.
“Look, what happened that day has been reviewed by millions and millions of Americans because it was recorded on phones,” US Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said in an interview with Fox News. “The Department of Justice, our civil rights unit, we don’t just go out and investigate every time an officer is forced to defend himself against somebody putting his life in danger.”
Meanwhile, the FBI has seized critical evidence from the scene — bullet casings, as well as Good’s car, which could show the bullet trajectory — and won’t share any of it with state and local prosecutors who want to pursue the case. According to Ellison, the federal government is sitting on evidence that could help determine what happened, and they’re keeping it from the people trying to get answers for Good’s family.
One of the Trump administration’s core arguments is that Minneapolis is a “sanctuary city” where local officials actively block ICE from doing their jobs. Ellison was adamant: that’s just not true, and the distinction matters.
Minneapolis has what’s called a “separation ordinance.” Ellison says that while state and local law enforcement do not block ICE from accessing jails, as some other cities do, the ordinance means that city workers are under no statutory obligation to do it. Ellison argued that going beyond that would expose the state to legal liability.
For example, ICE can collect people with immigration detainers, Ellison said. What Minnesota won’t do is hold someone beyond what a court has ordered based on their criminal charges. For example, if a judge says someone charged with a DUI should be released, the state releases them. If ICE wants to pick them up for immigration violations, they’re free to do so — but Minnesota isn’t going to detain them on immigration charges.
Ellison compared the politics of the situation to summer 2020, when Republicans successfully branded Democrats as supportive of the activist movement to “defund the police” even when most Democratic officials never embraced that slogan.
This week on Truth Social, Trump argued that Minnesota Democrats need to be asked about documented cases of social services fraud in the Somali American community. Trump further alleged that Minnesota Democrats had not properly investigated those cases under state Democratic leadership, which was one of his pretexts for sending in federal agents.
In our interview, Ellison vehemently denied that Democrats slow-walked fraud cases among politically supportive communities. He said Trump and the White House were unjustly targeting an entire community for the criminal actions of a few. When I mentioned the “Feeding Our Future” scandal, where a Minneapolis nonprofit conspired with a Somali restaurant to take in more than $200 million in federal money, the attorney general was indignant.
“This ICE surge is about fraud, but [Trump] is sending armed men with guns, wearing masks,” Ellison said. “He’s not sending accountants. He’s not sending forensic financial investigators. He’s sending aggressive men with guns. So you gotta get the impression that we’re not really talking about fraud.”
Trump’s threat to invoke the Insurrection Act is to be taken seriously. Ellison said he and other state officials have been war-gaming responses since early 2024, preparing legal challenges to what would be an extraordinary assertion of federal power.
Ellison also laid out just exactly what the Insurrection Act would mean in Minneapolis: active-duty federal troops patrolling the streets of an American city, ostensibly to support ICE operations.
Ellison argued Trump is living out his campaign promise for retribution against political enemies. “I am your retribution” isn’t just a campaign slogan — it’s a governing philosophy. And Minnesota, with its large Somali population, its progressive politics, its history of protest after George Floyd, makes the perfect target to send a message about what happens when you resist this administration.
2026-01-24 20:00:00
2026年1月17日，在格陵兰首都努克，人们举着格陵兰旗帜游行，抗议美国总统唐纳德·特朗普宣布意图收购格陵兰。| Sean Gallup/Getty Images
如今，格陵兰危机似乎已经平息。这场危机是特朗普一手造成的。一年前，他首次提出美国可能收购格陵兰，随后几周内他的言论愈发激烈，最终威胁对欧洲征收关税，并暗示如果美国得不到格陵兰，可能会采取军事行动甚至解散北约。然而，本周特朗普在瑞士达沃斯的世界经济论坛上发表讲话后，宣布他与北约秘书长马克·鲁特已就格陵兰的未来达成一项协议框架，但该协议并不包括美国对格陵兰的拥有权。这一宣布被广泛视为特朗普的一次退步。
那么，为什么他会撤回这一立场？为此，Today, Explained的主持人诺埃尔·金今天与约翰斯·霍普金斯大学国际事务教授亨利·法雷尔进行了对话。法雷尔最近在《纽约时报》上发表了一篇题为“欧洲拥有火箭筒，现在该使用它了”的社论，文中他指出欧洲在应对特朗普威胁时过于软弱，需要采取更坚决的态度，这种态度基于“威慑理论”。据报道，本周达沃斯会议上欧洲领导人展示了这种强硬姿态，这可能正是特朗普撤回对格陵兰的威胁的原因。
以下是他们对话的节选，内容经过删减和润色。完整对话可在Today, Explained的播客平台收听，包括Apple Podcasts、Pandora和Spotify等。
自上次世界大战以来已经过去了大约80年，这意味着我们做了一些正确的事情。那么，大国如何威慑其他大国的攻击？我认为，我们应该从核时代开始谈起，特别是从古巴导弹危机说起。当时美苏两国几乎引发了核战争，甚至可能导致人类灭绝。从那以后，人们开始发展一系列概念和理论，试图解决核危机、核战争风险以及美苏根本不同的政治利益问题，从而实现稳定。这些理论由像托马斯·谢林这样的学者提出，他因经济理论获得诺贝尔奖，同时也是一位博弈论专家。他探讨了如何利用核武器作为威慑手段，而无需实际使用它们。关键在于让对方明白，使用核武器将带来严重后果，从而避免战争。例如，冷战时期驻扎在西柏林的部队，他们的任务就是“准备牺牲”，如果苏联进攻，他们可能被俘或阵亡。这种风险足以让任何总统不愿看到数千士兵被俘或死亡，从而避免进一步升级。谢林认为，这种潜在的升级风险，哪怕只有10%的可能性，也足以威慑苏联不发动攻击。
如今，我们看到威慑理论在哪些地方发挥作用？首先，有八个欧洲国家向格陵兰派遣了一支小型军队进行短期军事演习。他们这样做是为了建立一种“预警机制”，类似于美国在冷战时期在西柏林的部署。这些国家实际上是在向特朗普表明，如果他真的入侵格陵兰，那么有八个其他北约盟国愿意站在格陵兰和丹麦一边。这可能是特朗普从威胁入侵转而采取经济手段（如关税）的原因之一。
此外，欧洲还拥有一个名为“反胁迫工具”的立法机制，可以采取多种方式进行经济反制，例如阻止投资、剥夺知识产权、实施进出口限制等。这个机制非常模糊，但具有广泛的适用性。
尽管欧洲似乎没有动用这个经济“火箭筒”，但特朗普仍撤回了对格陵兰的威胁。这背后有什么线索？在特朗普抵达达沃斯之前，代表他发言的几位人士在两天内对问题的表述发生了巨大变化。最初，财政部长斯科特·贝森对欧洲非常不敬，几乎是在说欧洲只会成立一个调查委员会，或者只是说些无关紧要的话。但几小时后，他却表示欧洲人不应升级局势，甚至多次强调“请不要升级，不要升级，不要升级，不要升级”。这表明，在第一次发言和第二次发言之间，特朗普可能与一些盟友进行了交流，意识到存在一个足以让他担忧的联盟。因此，他的退步看起来更像是一个伪装成巨大胜利的让步。
此外，特朗普的退让是通过北约和鲁特进行的，而不是直接与丹麦谈判，这表明未来可能会就北极地区的安全达成某种共识，而特朗普则会将此视为对格陵兰的“伟大胜利”，然后继续推进其他议程。
And just like, the Greenland crisis seems to have been defused.
It was a crisis of President Donald Trump’s own making. After broaching the idea of the United States taking Greenland a year ago, Trump ramped up his rhetoric in recent weeks, culminating with the threat of tariffs against Europe and the specter of military action and the dissolution of NATO if the US didn’t get what it wanted.
But this week, after speaking before world leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump announced that he and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte had reached a framework of a deal over Greenland’s future — one that did not include US ownership of the island.
The announcement was widely seen as a comedown for Trump. So why did he back down?
To answer the question, Today, Explained co-host Noel King spoke with Henry Farrell, a professor of international affairs at Johns Hopkins University. Farrell recently wrote an op-ed for the New York Times titled “Europe Has a Bazooka. Time to Use It.” In the piece, he argues that Europe had been too timid in pushing back against Trump’s threats, and that it needed a more forceful posture, one grounded in “deterrence theory.” According to reports, that’s what Europe’s leaders showed at Davos this week — and it may well explain Trump’s retreat on Greenland.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
It’s been roughly 80 years since the last World War, which means we’ve been doing something right, all of us. How do big powers deter attacks from other big powers?
So I think that you really want to start with the nuclear age and the nuclear era, and you even want to start with the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was a moment when the United States and the USSR scared the hell out of each other because it was very close to a situation in which we would’ve actually had a nuclear war and possibly the extinction of humanity.
So after that, we began to see the development of a set of concepts, a set of ideas, which really tried to figure out, how can you work through the situation of nuclear crisis, the risk of nuclear armageddon, the fact the United States and the USSR have fundamentally different political interests, and how can you actually get to a place of stability?
So you begin to get the development of all of these ideas by people such as Thomas Shelling, who won a Nobel Prize for economics. He’s a game theorist who begins to work out, how do you deter? How do you in a sense use the fact that you have nuclear weapons as something that people will pay attention to without ever actually having to use them.
You want to make it so that you don’t have to use a nuclear weapon. How?
The key example, which I think shows some of the brutality in a certain sense of this way of thinking that Shelling offers, is troops in West Berlin during the Cold War. The idea behind this was that, as Schelling describes these people, these soldiers, their job in a certain sense was to, as he said it bluntly, their job is to die.
And so what the calculus is, is that if you have these soldiers there, these soldiers are in a sense not going to be able to defend the city particularly well, but they will die or be captured if the city is in fact attacked by the Soviet Union. If that happens, then any president is not going to want to be able to stand over the fact that thousands of troops have been captured and killed.
This is likely to lead to further escalation, and Shelling’s argument is that this risk of further escalation and the possibility, maybe a 10 percent possibility, that this might actually lead to nuclear war, is sufficient to deter the Soviet Union from attacking.
Nobody is threatening anybody with a nuclear weapon, but Donald Trump is making some statements that very clearly make Europe very nervous. Where do we see deterrence theory operating now, today?
First of all, we see these eight European countries who send a small military force for a brief period of exercises to Greenland. What they’re doing here is they’re setting up a trip wire, which is like a less powerful version of what the United States did with West Berlin. So really what they’re doing here is they are saying effectively to Trump that if Trump actually goes ahead and invades Greenland, that there are going to be eight other NATO allies who are willing to be on Greenland’s and Denmark’s side if this happens.
That is one of the reasons plausibly why Trump goes from these saber-rattling threats where he suggests that he is indeed going to invade Greenland, [then] moves instead to economic measures of one sort or another. In particular, these tariffs. He imposes tariffs against these eight European countries in order to punish them for what they do.
And then that leaves a second set of questions for Europe, which is, how do they respond to that? And they have this very weird, very complicated, very awkward legislative mechanism called the anti-coercion instrument, which possibly serves as a very imperfect trip wire. And that is more or less where the argument goes.
How does that serve as an economic trip wire?
This is a legal instrument that the European Union brought into being, which allows them to retaliate in a wide variety of ways. It’s one of these very vague seeming instruments, which allows the EU legally to retaliate against economic coercion by, for example, blocking investments by taking away intellectual property, by imposing import or export restrictions. It’s very, very open-ended.
It sounds like the European Union did not have to use the economic bazooka but Trump backed down anyway. Why?
[There’s] some interesting clues as to what is happening, which come from some of the statements of the people who were at Davos representing Trump before he got there. Over a period of two days, [there’s] a huge difference in the ways that they’re talking about the problem.
So it begins with [Treasury Secretary Scott] Bessent being quite insulting to Europe, more or less saying, “Well, yeah, so they’re just going to mount some kind of a committee of inquiry or words that affect sort of, let’s see how far that gets.” In other words, completely dismissing the possibility that Europe can do anything which is effective. And then a few hours later, he is saying that Europeans really shouldn’t escalate. We really don’t want you to escalate; please don’t escalate, don’t escalate, don’t escalate, don’t escalate.
And so that suggests that he has been having conversations in between the first statement and the second where clearly there has been some real sense that there is a coalition which is engaging against this measure, and that coalition is sufficiently credible that the United States has something to worry about.
So it really does look like a climbdown disguised as a declaration of enormous victory. The fact that this is happening through Rutte and through NATO rather than, for example, through direct negotiations with Denmark, suggests that what is going to happen is that we’re going to get some kind of agreement on security in the Arctic region, which everybody is more or less on the same page on and Trump will declare this a glorious victory over Greenland and then move on.
2026-01-24 07:20:00
2025年12月5日，唐纳德·特朗普在华盛顿特区的肯尼迪中心。| 约翰·博恩兰·斯迈洛斯基/法新社/Getty图片
本文出自《Logoff》——一份每日简报，帮助你在不被政治新闻淹没的情况下了解特朗普政府的动态。点击此处订阅。
欢迎来到《Logoff》：特朗普总统似乎已经摧毁了美国最牢固的盟友关系之一——也许永远。到底发生了什么？周二，加拿大总理马克·卡尼发表了一次引人注目的演讲，我的同事凯特琳·德威称之为“宣告我们所知的世界的终结”。这场演讲实际上是在宣布美国无法再被视为国际秩序的可靠维护者，加拿大必须走自己的路。卡尼称这是一次“断裂，而非过渡”。此后，特朗普继续印证了卡尼的观点。周三，他在讲话中嘲讽卡尼，称“加拿大之所以存在，是因为美国。记住这一点，马克，下次你发表讲话时。”周四，他更是取消了加拿大加入其新设“和平委员会”的邀请。（不过，卡尼可能并不急于接受这个邀请；尽管该委员会将包括像白俄罗斯这样的“被孤立国家”，但传统盟友如法国却尚未加入。）
背景是什么？卡尼的演讲或许只是对已有变化的公开宣布。去年特朗普重返白宫时曾威胁要将加拿大变为美国的“第51个州”并征收关税，加拿大民众的愤怒促使卡尼成为总理，他当时就表示“我们与美国之间旧有的关系……已经结束了。”但自那以后，特朗普的国际行为进一步加深了这种分歧。
大局如何？在最亲密的盟友——加拿大和欧洲——眼中，美国如今更像是一个威胁而非盟友。在周二的演讲中，卡尼表示：“中等强国必须团结一致，因为我们如果不坐在桌边，就只能成为菜单上的选项。”这种转变对美国的影响将在特朗普下台后持续下去。
好了，现在是时候“下线”了……我的同事迪伦·斯科特最近开始了一档新的简报：《Good Medicine》（你可以在这里订阅）。在社交媒体和卫生部长罗伯特·F·肯尼迪 Jr.在公共健康机构中肆意妄为的背景下，很难找到可靠的健康建议，但迪伦能够有条不紊地提供有价值的健康信息，包括他最近一期的内容。
附言：感谢大家对我们周二简报中征求反馈的回应！如果我尚未有机会亲自回复你，也请知道我们非常感激。感谢阅读，祝你们度过一个愉快的周末（可能还很下雪），我们周一再见！
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.
Welcome to The Logoff: President Donald Trump has shattered one of the US’s strongest alliances — maybe for good.
What happened? On Tuesday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney gave a remarkable speech — one that my colleague Caitlin Dewey described as “declaring the end of the world as you and I have known it.” The speech amounted to a declaration that the US can no longer be trusted as a steward of the international order and that Canada must go its own way. Carney called it a “rupture, not a transition.”
Since then, Trump has continued to prove Carney’s point. On Wednesday, he taunted Carney in his own remarks, saying that “Canada lives because of the United States. Remember that, Mark, the next time you make your statements.”
And on Thursday, he pulled Canada’s invite to his new “Board of Peace.” (Though, it likely was not one Carney was eager to accept; while the board will feature pariah states like Belarus, traditional US allies like France have not signed on).
What’s the context? Carney’s speech is arguably only the announcement of a change already underway. After Trump returned to office last year threatening to annex Canada as the US’s “51st state” and impose tariffs, Canadian outrage powered Carney to the prime minister’s office, and he declared that “the old relationship we had with the United States…is over.” But Trump’s international conduct since then has only deepened the divide.
What’s the big picture? In the eyes of its closest friends — Canada and Europe — the US now looks like something closer to a threat than an ally. In his speech Tuesday, Carney said that “the middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.” The consequences of that shift for the US will continue well after Trump is out of office.
My colleague Dylan Scott just recently began a new newsletter: Good Medicine (you can sign up here). Between social media and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. running amok through US public health institutions, it can be hard to know where to look for good health advice , but Dylan manages to do it thoughtfully and with aplomb, including in his most recent installment.
P.S.: Thank you to everyone who responded to our Tuesday newsletter asking for feedback! If I haven’t had the chance to reply to you directly, just know it’s truly appreciated. Thanks for reading, have a great — and possibly very snowy — weekend, and we’ll see you back here on Monday!
2026-01-24 04:35:00
2026年1月18日，美国明尼苏达州圣保罗市的一处私人住宅外，联邦执法官员展开行动。美国的移民争论往往聚焦于大规模驱逐的道德问题。进步派认为，将守法家庭驱逐出境是错误的，无论其移民身份如何。保守派则坚持认为，强有力的内部执法对于阻止移民涌入、维护美国法律和保护国家文化至关重要。这是一场重要的争论，但随着移民与海关执法局（ICE）的执法人员在明尼阿波利斯市肆意妄为，这种争论似乎越来越不重要了。特朗普的移民执法政策不仅威胁着无证移民的福祉，也侵犯了美国公民的基本权利。总统的议程所提出的问题，不仅仅是非犯罪移民是否应该被驱逐，而是是否应该为了实现这一目标而撕毁宪法。选民们开始意识到这一现实。根据最近的《纽约时报》/西雅图民意调查，美国人中50%支持特朗普对非法居留者进行驱逐，但超过60%的人仍然反对ICE处理移民事务的方式，认为其手段过于激进。美国人不需要接受左翼的道德假设来反对总统的移民政策，他们只需要重视自身的自由。以下我详细说明了总统的移民政策如何侵蚀所有美国人的自由。
第四修正案禁止政府人员在没有搜查令的情况下强行进入美国居民的家中。这种保护免受无理搜查和拘捕的权利是美国人最基本的权利之一，而ICE却决定无视这一规定。本周泄露的一份内部备忘录显示，该机构告知其驱逐官员，可以强行进入疑似无证移民的家中，而无需任何法官签发的搜查令。ICE规定，只要拥有其自行签发的行政搜查令，就可以破门而入。这种做法明显是对宪政政府的破坏，且对无证移民和美国公民都造成了伤害。如果ICE不需要建立合理理由就可以强行闯入住宅，那么它最终会闯入一些美国公民的家中。事实上，上周在明尼苏达州圣保罗市，ICE官员强行破门而入，用枪抵住一名美国公民的头部，将其拖出家中，只穿着内衣，而没有出示任何司法搜查令。
一个核心的民主自由是防止武装国家代理人滥用职权。特朗普政府通过隔离DHS官员免受法律问责，削弱了这一自由。他们采取了各种方式，包括大范围和小范围的措施。最明显的是，当ICE官员乔纳森·罗斯在视频中向瑞内·妮可·戈德开枪射击时，总统立即站出来为罗斯辩护。司法部迅速拒绝调查这一事件，反而选择对戈德的遗孀展开调查。即使戈德的死亡在法律上是正当的，这种行为也令人不安。总统在未进行任何调查之前就支持罗斯，表明他将无条件支持任何ICE官员的执法行为，无论其严重程度或法律模糊性如何。事实上，在戈德死亡之前，政府已经表明其意图让ICE免受问责。特朗普上任后，关闭了DHS内部的监督办公室，包括民权与自由办公室和移民拘留监察办公室，这些办公室旨在保护被拘留者免受虐待和不公正对待。后者在2023年处理了超过11,000起投诉。同时，政府默许许多ICE官员以面具和便衣身份行动。这种政策使得被虐待者难以识别施害者，从而无法追究责任。关键的是，这一切都符合总统本人对执法人员应如何运作的信念。他曾提到，联邦政府接管华盛顿特区警察时，警察将被允许“做任何他们想做的事情”。他还特别表示，当抗议者向ICE车辆投掷石头时，官员有权使用“一切必要手段”逮捕这些“混蛋”。
总统将移民政策视为一种惩罚他不喜欢言论的工具。这不是猜测，而是描述政府的官方政策。今年早些时候，特朗普宣称：“所有参与支持激进主义抗议的居民，我们给你们警告：到2025年，我们会找到你们，并将你们驱逐出境。”他还承诺要“取消所有在大学校园支持哈马斯的学生签证”。即使特朗普仅针对真正的哈马斯支持者，这种立场也是不民主的，因为政府不应仅因言论就剥夺合法身份，无论这些言论多么令人憎恶。实际上，政府对任何支持巴勒斯坦立场的移民都持批评态度。去年3月，土耳其籍美国学生鲁梅亚萨·奥兹图尔克在大学报纸上发表了一篇社论，呼吁大学从以色列撤资并承认“巴勒斯坦种族灭绝”。这一言论引起了亲以色列活动人士的注意。上任后，国务卿马尔科·鲁比奥撤销了奥兹图尔克的签证。六名戴面具、穿便衣的DHS特工随后在马萨诸塞州索梅维尔市将其带走，并送往路易斯安那州南部的ICE处理中心。官方理由是奥兹图尔克参与了支持哈马斯的活动。但据《华盛顿邮报》获得的内部国务院文件显示，政府没有任何证据表明奥兹图尔克曾公开支持哈马斯或参与反犹活动。同样，特朗普政府还试图剥夺哥伦比亚大学两位合法永久居民——马哈茂德·哈里尔和莫欣·马达维的合法身份，因为他们参与了支持巴勒斯坦的活动。联邦法院已质疑这些行动的合法性，尽管哈里尔目前面临驱逐令。
即使支持严格的移民执法，也应支持移民的正当程序权利。正当程序是防止政府错误或故意驱逐合法美国居民的关键。然而，特朗普总统明确表示要结束移民案件中的正当程序，并采取了一系列符合其专制目标的行动。在第一任期期间，他宣称政府应能够“在没有法官或法庭案件的情况下”驱逐无证移民。上任后，他进一步限制了那些被指控非法居留者的法律保护。首先，他的政府扩大了“快速驱逐”程序的使用，该程序允许移民官员在不进行完整听证的情况下迅速驱逐无证移民。历史上，这一程序仅在特定情况下使用：当移民在美墨边境被拦截且没有有效签证、可信的避难申请或在美国境内停留超过两周的证明时。其初衷是，这些移民仍在寻求进入美国，而非获得留在美国的许可。因此，国会和法院认为，为了行政效率，特别是在边境官员因大量避难申请而不堪重负的情况下，政府可以不给予这些移民完整的法庭听证。但特朗普却试图将快速驱逐程序扩展到美国全境。在他的指导下，DHS提出了一项规则，允许ICE在没有完整听证的情况下，对任何无法立即证明在美国停留两年的疑似移民进行驱逐。这种政策对合法美国居民的风险不仅仅是理论上的。即使没有如此广泛的权力，ICE和海关与边境保护局（CBP）也已错误地拘留或驱逐了合法居民，包括美国公民。根据2020年政府问责办公室（GAO）的报告，2015年至2020年间，ICE逮捕了674名可能的美国公民，拘留了121人，驱逐了70人。法院已阻止特朗普扩大使用快速驱逐程序，但政府仍在上诉。同时，总统试图破坏移民法庭系统的独立性。自1月上任以来，已有139名移民法官被解雇、被迫提前退休或被强制调职。这场清洗似乎旨在用特朗普的执法机构的“橡皮图章”取代中立的法律仲裁者。最令人震惊的是，总统曾将长期居住在美国、但无犯罪记录的居民驱逐至萨尔瓦多臭名昭著的监狱，据称该监狱内有囚犯遭受酷刑和无限期拘留。在基尔马尔·阿布雷戈·加西亚的案例中，政府非法驱逐了他，随后声称无法撤销这一错误，因为加西亚现在被外国政府控制。最终，法院迫使政府将加西亚送回美国。但他的案例清楚地表明了特朗普对正当程序的蔑视。
总统还部署联邦军队监督移民执法行动，挑战地方政治权威。这严重违反了自由民主的规范。移民执法应属于民事执法领域，而在美国，维护民事法律的责任应由文职官员承担，除非在最极端的情况下。这种权力划分在《治安官法》中有所规定，该法禁止在没有国会明确授权的情况下使用武装部队进行国内执法。特朗普政府却违反这一惯例，援引一项1903年的模糊法律，该法律允许总统在“美国政府权威受到叛乱或有叛乱危险”或“总统无法依靠常规部队执行美国法律”时动用国民警卫队。然而，特朗普将“任何公开抗议”定义为“叛乱”，包括非暴力的抗议活动。在6月的一份备忘录中，他授权国民警卫队部署到“任何有抗议活动发生或可能发生的地点”。换句话说，总统声称有权在任何美国城市部署军队，只要那里有抗议他移民政策的活动，或他认为可能会发生抗议。这种做法对民主构成了直接威胁。与文职警察不同，武装部队受总统指挥。如果不对总统使用军队进行民事执法的行为进行严格限制，他可能会利用军事权力来保护自己的政权免受民主控制。如今，特朗普声称有权在民主党城市部署军队，以防止他不喜欢的抗议活动。明天，他可能同样会这样做，以阻止他反对的政客当选。当然，这种灾难性的结果并非必然发生，但保持制度性障碍至关重要。而特朗普的移民议程正在削弱这些障碍。
到目前为止，我一直在阐述为何即使认为大规模驱逐是正当的，特朗普的移民政策也应被视为反民主。但同样重要的是，任何试图驱逐数百万非犯罪的无证移民的尝试，都会对美国人的公民自由造成代价。集中移民执法于违法者身上不仅是人道主义的考虑，也是合理的。因为被定罪的移民通常已被政府掌握，因此DHS可以将他们驱逐出境，而无需进行可能牵连合法居民的搜查行动。然而，特朗普政府致力于尽可能驱逐美国的1400万无证移民。这导致他们采取了诸如在芝加哥公寓楼逐户敲门，要求家庭证明其合法身份；突击汽车洗车店，将年长者扔在地上；以及对合法移民处以罚款，因为他们没有随时携带身份证明等手段。拒绝这些手段并设定更狭窄的执法重点，并不意味着要否定美国的移民法律。法治并不依赖于完美的执法。在美国，大多数犯罪行为都未受到惩罚，包括近一半的谋杀案。我们当然应该努力改变这一现状。但要将未受惩罚的犯罪率降至接近零，唯一的方法就是接受对公民自由的严重侵犯：政府需要几乎全天候地监控几乎所有公民。大多数美国人会认为这种执法是专制的。因此，我们接受警察优先处理某些犯罪，同时容忍大量未受谴责的违法行为。移民执法也涉及类似的权衡。这并不意味着任何比拜登更广泛的执法政策就是法西斯主义。但我鼓励那些不因人道主义反对大规模驱逐而动摇的人，考虑这种政策对公民自由的内在代价。无论如何，合理的人可以就政府如何在维护边境安全和尊重公民自由之间取得平衡存在分歧。但有一点应毫无疑问：削弱美国人最基本宪法权利的行为从不正当。而特朗普的移民议程正是如此。
America’s immigration debate has often centered on the morality of mass deportation. Progressives have argued that exiling law-abiding families is inherently wrong — no matter their immigration status. Conservatives have insisted that vigorous internal enforcement is necessary for deterring chaotic inflows of migrants, upholding America’s laws, and preserving our nation’s culture.
This is an important dispute. And yet, as masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents run amok in Minneapolis, it also feels increasingly beside the point.
President Donald Trump’s approach to immigration enforcement doesn’t only threaten the welfare of the undocumented but also the basic rights of American citizens. The question posed by the president’s agenda is not merely whether non-criminal immigrants should be deported, but whether the Constitution should be shredded in service of that aim.
Voters are starting to recognize this reality. In a recent New York Times/Siena poll, Americans approved of Trump’s deportations of people living in the country illegally by a 50 percent to 47 percent margin. Yet, over 60 percent nevertheless disapproved of the way that ICE was handling its job, saying that the agency had “gone too far” in its tactics.
It is important for Americans to understand that they don’t need to accept the left’s moral assumptions to reject the president’s immigration regime. They simply need to value their own freedom.
Below, I detail six ways that the president’s immigration policies are eroding all Americans’ liberty.
• ICE is forcibly entering Americans’ homes without warrant.
• The Trump administration is using immigration enforcement to punish speech it doesn’t like.
• The White House is shielding ICE officers from accountability.
• All this threatens US citizens, not just undocumented immigrants.
The 4th Amendment bars government agents from forcing their way into a US resident’s home without a warrant. This protection from unreasonable search and seizure is among Americans’ most basic civil liberties — and ICE has decided to ignore it.
In an internal memo leaked this week, the agency informed its deportation officers that they can forcibly enter the homes of suspected undocumented immigrants without obtaining a warrant from any judge. ICE decreed that its agents could break into anyone’s house, so long as they had an administrative warrant, a type of warrant that ICE itself can issue at will.
This is a blatant subversion of constitutional government — and one that harms undocumented immigrants and US citizens alike. If ICE doesn’t need to establish probable cause before storming into a residence, then it will inevitably march into some American citizens’ homes.
Indeed, last Sunday, in St. Paul, Minnesota, ICE agents broke down the door of a house, put a gun to the head of a US citizen, and dragged him out of his home in just his underwear — all without presenting any judicial warrant.
A core democratic freedom is protection from abuse by armed agents of the state. The Trump administration has undermined such liberty by insulating DHS officers from legal accountability.
It has done this in ways both large and small.
Most conspicuously, when ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot Renee Nicole Good three times on video — twice while standing safely to the left of her vehicle — the president immediately rallied to Ross’s defense. And the Department of Justice swiftly declined to investigate the shooting, opting instead to launch a probe against Good’s widow.
This conduct would be alarming even if Good’s killing were legally justified. By embracing Ross’s cause — before any investigation had been conducted — the president signaled that he will reflexively defend any use of force by ICE agents, no matter how grave or legally ambiguous.
Even before Good’s death, however, the administration had already demonstrated that it wished to immunize ICE from accountability. Upon taking office, Trump’s White House shuttered the DHS’s internal watchdog offices — the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman — which sought to protect detainees against abuse and unfair treatment. The latter office investigated more than 11,000 complaints in 2023.
Meanwhile, the administration condoned the decision of many ICE agents to operate in masks and plainclothes. This policy enables abuse by making it harder for the mistreated to identify abusive officers, and thus hold them to account.
Critically, all this is consistent with the president’s own stated beliefs about how law enforcement officers should be allowed to operate. Speaking of his federal takeover of the DC police in August, Trump touted that, on his watch, cops would be “allowed to do whatever the hell they want.” He has also specifically said that when protestors throw rocks at ICE vehicles, the officers become entitled to “arrest these SLIMEBALLS” using “whatever means is necessary to do so.”
The president sees immigration policy as a tool for punishing speech he does not like.
This is not conjecture but a description of the administration’s official policy.
Earlier this year, Trump declared, “To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” further promising to “cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses.”
This stance would be illiberal, even if the president were referring exclusively to genuine supporters of Hamas; the government should not revoke legal status from people on the basis of speech, no matter how reprehensible.
In reality, though, the administration’s complaint was with any immigrant who advocated for a staunchly pro-Palestinian point of view.
In March of last year, Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish national residing in the U.S. on a student visa, co-authored at op-ed in her university’s newspaper, calling on it to divest from Israel and acknowledge the “Palestinian genocide.” This speech act put Öztürk on the radar of pro-Israel activists.
Upon taking office, Secretary of State Marco Rubio revoked Öztürk’s visa. Six masked, plainclothes DHS agents proceeded to abduct her off the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts and send her to an ICE processing facility in southern Louisiana.
The ostensible rationale for this was that Öztürk had engaged in pro-Hamas activities. But internal State Department documents, obtained by the Washington Post, revealed that the government possessed no evidence that Öztürk had ever publicly advocated for Hamas or participated in anti-semitic activities.
The administration has similarly sought to revoke legal status from two lawful permanent residents — Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi — who participated in pro-Palestinian activism at Columbia University.
Federal courts have disputed the legality of all these actions, although Khalil presently faces a deportation order.
Even those who favor strict immigration enforcement should support immigrants’ due process rights. After all, it is due process that prevents the government from deporting lawful U.S. residents (either by mistake or design).
Yet President Trump has explicitly called for ending due process in immigration cases and taken various actions consistent with that authoritarian ambition.
During his first term, Trump declared that the government should be able to deport undocumented immigrants “with no judges or court cases.” Since taking office a second time, the president has sought to curtail legal protections for those accused of being in the country illegally.
First, his administration has expanded the use of “expedited removal” — a process that allows immigration authorities to deport the undocumented rapidly, without a full hearing. Historically, this process was used in a narrow set of circumstances: When an immigrant is intercepted near the U.S. border without a valid visa, credible asylum claim, or proof that they have been in the U.S. for longer than two weeks.
The idea here was that migrants who have just crossed the border do not possess the same legal protections as longtime residents. In some sense, they are still seeking admission into the country, rather than permission to remain in it. Therefore, Congress and the judiciary concluded that the government could deny such migrants a full court hearing, in the interests of administrative efficiency, particularly when border agents were overwhelmed by large inflows of asylum seekers.
But Trump has sought to authorize expedited removal throughout the United States. Under his guidance, DHS has proposed a rule that would empower the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) to summarily deport any suspected immigrants who can’t immediately prove that they’ve been in America for two years.
The risks of this policy to lawful U.S. residents isn’t merely theoretical. Even in the absence of such broad authorities, ICE and the Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) have wrongfully detained or deported legal residents, including American citizens. According to a 2020 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, between 2015 and 2020, ICE arrested 674 potential U.S. citizens, detained 121, and removed 70.
Courts have intervened to block Trump’s expanded use of expedited removal, but the administration is appealing those rulings.
Meanwhile, the president has sought to corrupt the independence of the immigration court system. Since taking office in January, 139 immigration judges have been fired, nudged from the bench with an early retirement offer, or involuntarily transferred. The purge is seemingly aimed at replacing neutral arbiters of immigration law with rubber stamps for Trump’s enforcement agencies.
Finally, and most appallingly, the president has infamously deported longtime U.S. residents — who’d been convicted of no crime — to a notorious prison in El Salvador, where inmates are reportedly subject to torture and indefinite dentention. In the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the administration deported a resident unlawfully, and then claimed that it was powerless to reverse its mistake, since Garcia was now in the custody of a foreign power. The judiciary eventually forced the administration to return Garcia to the U.S. But his case illustrates the extremity of Trump’s contempt for due process.
The president has also deployed federal troops to oversee immigration enforcement operations, in defiance of local political authorities.
This is a severe breach of liberal democratic norms. Immigration enforcement is a civil authority. And in the United States, responsibility for upholding civil laws is supposed to lie with civilian officials — not the military — except under the most extraordinary circumstances. This division of powers is codified in the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the use of armed forces for domestic policing absent explicit congressional authorization.
The administration has flouted this convention by invoking an obscure 1903 law, which authorizes the president to call up the National Guard if there is a “rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States” or “the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”
Yet the president has effectively defined such a rebellion as any public protest — even non-violent ones — against immigration enforcement. In a June memorandum, Trump authorized the Guard’s deployment to any “locations where protests against” ICE functions “are occurring or are likely to occur based on current threat assessments and planned operations.” In other words, the president asserted the authority to send the military anywhere in the U.S. where a protest against his immigration policy is happening — or where his administration thinks a protest against its policy could happen.
The danger that this poses to democracy is straightforward. Unlike civilian police forces, the armed services operate at the president’s command. If his use of the military for civilian functions isn’t tightly constrained, there is a risk that he could exploit his martial authorities to insulate his regime from democratic control. Today, Trump is asserting the right to deploy troops to Democratic cities, to preempt protests he does not like. Tomorrow, he could do the same to obstruct the election of politicians he opposes.
Of course, that catastrophic outcome is far from guaranteed. But it is important to maintain institutional obstacles to it. Instead, Trump’s immigration agenda is eroding them.
To this point, I’ve been outlining reasons why one should consider Trump’s immigration policies anti-democratic, even if one regards mass deportation as legitimate.
But it’s also true that any attempt to deport millions of non-criminal, undocumented immigrants is bound to impose costs on Americans’ civil liberties.
The case for concentrating immigration enforcement on law-breakers is not just humanitarian. Undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes are already known to the government and typically in its custody. As a result, DHS can remove them from the country without conducting sweeps that ensnare legal U.S. residents.
Yet the Trump administration is committed to deporting as many of America’s 14 million undocumented immigrants as they possibly can. And that has led them to embrace tactics like going door to door in a Chicago apartment building, demanding families prove their legal status in the middle of the night; storming car washes and throwing senior citizens to the ground; and fining legal immigrants for not carrying proof of their status on their person at all times.
To refrain from these tactics, and set narrower enforcement priorities, is not to nullify America’s immigration statutes. The rule of law has never depended on perfect enforcement. Most crimes committed in the United States go unpunished, including nearly half of murders. We should obviously try to change that. But the only way to push the rate of unpunished criminality to anywhere near 0 percent would be to embrace gross violations of civil liberties: The government would need to surveil more or less all citizens more or less all of the time.
Most Americans would regard such enforcement as authoritarian. And so we instead accept that the police will prioritize the prevention and punishment of certain crimes, while acquiescing to a great deal of uncensured lawbreaking. Immigration enforcement entails similar tradeoffs.
That doesn’t mean that any enforcement regime broader than Joe Biden’s is fascism. But I would encourage those unmoved by humanitarian objections to mass deportation to consider the inherent, civil libertarian costs of such a policy.
In any event, reasonable people can disagree about exactly how the government should balance the objectives of enforcing borders and honoring civil liberties. What should be beyond dispute, however, is that eroding Americans’ most basic constitutional rights is never legitimate. And it has never been more clear that Trump’s immigration agenda does precisely that.