This article examines why deportation and imprisonment for immigration offenses rose under presidential administrations that claimed to favor more “humane” approaches to immigration enforcement. I examine the politics of enforcement discretion on the US-Mexico border during the administrations of Bill Clinton (1993–2001) and Barack Obama (2009–17). Drawing on historical and ethnographic research, I argue that the Clinton and Obama administrations took a punitive humanitarian approach to enforcement discretion aimed at punishing “illegal immigration” at the border while protecting “legal immigrants” with long-standing ties to the United States from deportation. The findings show that such an approach extended crime control to US-Mexico border enforcement. This blend of humanitarian and punitive approaches systematized criminal enforcement priorities and expanded the discretion of border agents to deport and imprison. Just as other scholars have shown how liberal reform contributed to the rise of the carceral state, this article shows how immigration policies that blended humanitarianism and security punished the very people such policies were designed to protect.

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自由主义政策，惩罚性效果：美墨边境执法自由裁量权的政治

本文探讨了为什么在声称支持更“人道”的移民执法方法的总统政府领导下，因移民罪行而被驱逐出境和监禁的情况有所增加。我研究了比尔克林顿（1993-2001）和巴拉克奥巴马（2009-17）政府期间美墨边境执法自由裁量权的政治。根据历史和人种学研究，我认为克林顿政府和奥巴马政府对执法自由裁量权采取了一种惩罚性的人道主义方法，旨在惩罚边境的“非法移民”，同时保护与美国有长期联系的“合法移民”免于被驱逐出境. 调查结果表明，这种方法将犯罪控制扩展到美墨边境执法。这种人道主义和惩罚性方法的结合使刑事执法优先事项系统化，并扩大了边境人员驱逐和监禁的自由裁量权。正如其他学者已经展示了自由改革如何促成了监狱国家的崛起一样，本文展示了融合人道主义和安全的移民政策如何惩罚这些政策旨在保护的人。