Adam Isacson

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

Your donation to WOLA is crucial to keeping these paywall-free and ad-free Updates going. Please contribute now and support our work.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

• Reports of southbound migration as people abandon hope of seeking protection in the United States: As Trump administration measures shut off the possibility of seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, some people who had migrated to Mexico to do that are turning around. Several dozen per day have been boarding boats through dangerous currents to avoid traveling southbound through the Darién Gap.
• Another Guantánamo flight arrives, as released detainees reveal horrific conditions: The Trump administration sent 17 more undocumented migrants to the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station, just 3 days after removing to Venezuela all who had been at the base for up to 16 days. Those released from the facility told of horrific and abusive conditions.
• “Mass deportation” updates: The House passed a budget resolution that, like a Senate measure passed a week earlier, could provide a gigantic amount of funding for the administration’s mass deportation plans. These plans appear to include widespread use of military bases and invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
• “Bridge deportations” continue: The Trump administration sent to Costa Rica a second plane with migrants aboard from Asia, eastern Europe, and Africa. In Panama, 112 of 299 migrants whom the administration flew there are in a jungle camp, cut off from access to attorneys, as they voice fear of return to their countries of origin.
• The impact on Mexico: President Trump appears determined to levy tariffs on Mexican goods on March 4, citing continued flows of fentanyl. U.S. deportation flights to Mexico are now taking people as far south as possible, near the Guatemala border.
• Update on CBP’s border drug seizures: Despite Donald Trump’s tariff threats, CBP is finding less fentanyl at the border. Seizures dropped 21 percent from 2023 to 2024, and another 22 percent in the first four months of fiscal 2025, compared to the same period a year earlier. All drugs except marijuana—which continues a sharp decline in seizures—continue to be overwhelmingly encountered at ports of entry.

THE FULL UPDATE:

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

Your donation to WOLA is crucial to keeping these paywall-free and ad-free Updates going. Please contribute now and support our work.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

The many actions and changes following Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration force a change in this week’s Border Update format. Instead of narratives organized under three or four topics, this Update organizes brief points under the following headings:

• Migration dropped in January in anticipation of Trump asylum shutoff: Customs and Border Protection reported a 36 percent drop in migrant encounters at the border from December to January, deepening a 13-month-long decline in migration. Restrictive Trump policies are the main cause for the new drop. Border Patrol apprehensions are now averaging 285 per day.
• Darién Gap migration declines sharply: Migration through the treacherous jungle route from Colombia to Panama dropped to 72 people per day in January, the fewest since February 2021.
• Deportation flights send third countries’ citizens to Panama and Costa Rica: In what is being called “bridge deportations,” the Trump administration sent 299 migrants from mostly Asian countries to Panama and 135 to Costa Rica. Both countries are keeping people in remote camps pending their repatriation. The situation of those with protection needs is uncertain.
• Guantánamo detainees sent back to Venezuela via Honduras: The Trump administration sent all but one of 178 Venezuelan migrants whom it had been holding at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba to Honduras, where a Venezuelan government plane retrieved them and brought them to Caracas.
• Congress readies a massive border and deportation spending package: The Senate passed a framework bill that could pave the way for $175 billion in new border hardening and “mass deportation” spending, which could pass without a single Democratic vote. The timetable is uncertain, though, as House and Senate Republican leaders disagree on the way forward.
• “Mass deportation” updates: Top Trump administration officials are dissatisfied with the “flagging” pace of Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportations so far. The administration plans to cancel Temporary Protected Status for Haitians.
• Notes on the impact in Mexico: Mexico has still not seen a big increase in cross-border deportations from the United States. For now at least, migrant shelters in Mexico are emptying while smugglers raise their prices.

THE FULL UPDATE:

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

Your donation to WOLA is crucial to keeping these paywall-free and ad-free Updates going. Please contribute now and support our work.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

The many actions and changes following Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration force a change in this week’s Border Update format. Instead of narratives organized under three or four topics, this Update organizes brief points under the following headings:

• Migration plummeting along the U.S.-bound route as the new U.S. administration leads people to pause: In part because of the Trump administration’s near-complete ban on asylum access, in part because of Mexico’s crackdown, migration levels are low from South America to the U.S.-Mexico border. Large numbers of people are coming to terms with extended stays in Mexico.
• Guantánamo: as planes keep bringing migrants, some are not “the worst of the worst”: The Trump administration has taken about 100 people, likely all of them Venezuelan, to detention at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba. Some do not appear to have criminal backgrounds. Groups are suing to allow attorneys to gain access.
• “Mass deportations”: as Trump blasts their pace, Congress begins work on a giant spending measure: President Trump is reportedly angry that arrests and deportations from the U.S. interior are not increasing faster. Agencies lack capacity, but that could be vastly increased by a spending package, now underway in Congress, that could add $175 billion for border and migration crackdowns.
• Venezuela sends two planes to pick up deportees: Following a friendly meeting between a Trump administration representative and Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan regime sent two planes to Texas to retrieve deported Venezuelan citizens.
• Updates about the U.S. military border deployment: The number of active-duty troops and National Guard (state and federal) deployed to the border may now exceed 10,000. Air Force personnel running deportation flights are removing name tape and unit insignias from their uniforms. Those flights cost about three times as much as civilian deportation flights.
• Eight Latin American criminal groups to be added to the U.S. terrorist list: The Trump administration is adding eight criminal groups from four countries to the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. This will affect the asylum cases of people threatened by these groups, strengthening some cases and devastating others.
• U.S. aid freeze affects programs designed to integrate migrants and receive deported people: The administration’s 90-day freeze in most forms of foreign assistance has dealt a blow to Mexican shelters. It also weakens programs that aim to integrate migrants into countries like Colombia so they might not continue their journeys northward.

THE FULL UPDATE:

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

Your donation to WOLA is crucial to keeping these paywall-free and ad-free Updates going. Please contribute now and support our work.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

The many actions and changes following Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration force a change in this week’s Border Update format. Instead of narratives organized under three or four topics, this Update organizes brief points under the following headings:

• A tariff threat and a Mexican military deployment: after President Trump threatened to levy tariffs on Mexican imports, the Mexican government agreed to send 10,000 National Guard personnel to the U.S. border zone.
• Reduced migration, and almost no asylum access, as groups file suit: fewer migrants are arriving at the border, in part because it is now impossible to exercise the right to asylum; a new lawsuit challenges the Trump administration’s border shutdown.
• The U.S. military at the border and in the deportation effort: the new administration has now sent about 2,100 active-duty troops to the border as the new defense secretary paid a visit and military deportation flights—including one to India—continue.
• First detainees taken to Guantánamo: two military planes have taken less than two dozen detained migrants, apparently people with ties to a Venezuelan organized crime group, to the notorious terrorist detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
• Administration cancels TPS for Venezuelans: nearly 350,000 Venezuelans will lose their ability to live and work in the United States in April as the Trump administration reverses an extension that the Biden administration had granted in January. A similar number of Venezuelans face the same fate in September.
• “Migration diplomacy” in Venezuela and Central America: a Trump administration envoy met with Venezuela’s dictator and appears to have secured a deal to allow deportation flights. The new secretary of state visited Central America and secured increased cooperation against migration, including a deal to send prisoners to El Salvador’s growing jails.
• Mass deportation proceeds as Congress prepares a big funding bill: ICE is ramping up its arrests, detentions, and removals in the U.S. interior as Congress prepares a spending measure that could total $150 billion for border security.
• Texas seeks reimbursement for “Operation Lone Star”: Texas’s governor, a Trump ally, is offering the federal government use of facilities built with state funds while asking for reimbursement of $11 billion spent on its border crackdown. Texas National Guard troops may now arrest migrants for CBP.

THE FULL UPDATE:

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

This Update is the product of interviews and the review of over 270,000 words of source documents since January 23. Your donation to WOLA is crucial to keeping these paywall-free and ad-free Updates going. Please contribute now and support our work.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

The many actions and changes following Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration force a change in this week’s Border Update format. Instead of narratives organized under three or four topics, this Update organizes brief points under the following headings:

• An already quiet border gets quieter
• Mass deportation
• The U.S. military role
• Controversies about military deportation flights to the Americas
• The impact on Mexico
• El Salvador may receive deported migrants from other countries
• Incidents reported along the border

THE FULL UPDATE:

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

This Update is the product of interviews and the review of over 210,000 words of source documents since January 18. Your donation to WOLA is crucial to keeping these paywall-free and ad-free Updates going. Please contribute now and support our work.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

The many actions and changes following Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration force a change in the format of this week’s Border Update. Instead of narratives organized under three or four topics, this Update organizes brief points under the following headings:

• CBP One appointments canceled
• Shutdown of processing migrants and asylum seekers
• “Remain in Mexico” restarts
• Humanitarian parole programs end
• Declaring that the United States is under “invasion”
• Domestic use of the U.S. armed forces
• Placing criminal groups on the “terrorist list”
• Foreign relations
• Other provisions
• Reactions in Mexico and elsewhere
• Initial analyses

THE FULL UPDATE:

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

This update is later than usual because of staff travel and congressional testimony in recent days. It reflects events as of the end of January 17, making it slightly out of date. Weekly publication will resume on time on Friday, January 24.

Support ad-free, paywall-free Weekly Border Updates. Your donation to WOLA is crucial to sustain this effort. Please contribute now and support our work.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

• The Incoming Administration’s Likely Initial Actions

Media are reporting that about 100 executive orders will follow Donald Trump’s inauguration, many related to the border and migration. We can expect an end to the CBP One mobile phone app and humanitarian parole programs for Cubans, Haitians, Nicarguans, and Venezuelans. We can expect a push to renew “Remain in Mexico,” possibly Title 42 and “safe third country” agreements: programs that require the cooperation of Mexico and other nations. A gigantic piece of spending legislation to fund this, plus a mass deportation plan, may soon move in Congress.

• Mass Deportation

The Wall Street Journal reported that ICE may begin raids seeking to detain undocumented migrants in Chicago immediately after Inauguration Day. Near Bakersfield, California, Border Patrol agents spread fear among farmworkers by carrying out a large-scale operation of their own. Officials like “Border Czar” Tom Homan are promising conflict with so-called “sanctuary cities” as they call for more detention and deportation capacity, while Mexico prepares to receive large numbers of people.

• “Laken Riley” Bill Nears Passage

Enough Democratic senators voted “yes” to break a filibuster and permit likely passage of the Laken Riley Act. The Republican-led bill, named for a woman murdered by a Venezuelan migrant, would allow migrants with pending immigration cases to be detained even if just arrested and charged with a petty crime, and would empower state attorneys-general to challenge aspects of U.S. immigration law in court. The Senate’s cloture vote passed with the votes of 10 of 45 Democratic-aligned senators present, all of them from electorally competitive states.

• Migration continued to decline in December

December 2024 saw the fewest Border Patrol apprehensions per day of the entire Biden administration. The administration’s June rule barring most asylum access between ports of entry is the main reason. For the second time ever, more migrants were encountered at the official border crossings than apprehended by Border Patrol between them. Texas’s Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol Sector measured the most apprehensions, edging out San Diego, which had been number one since June 2024.

THE FULL UPDATE: