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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.
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THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:
In the days following his election to the presidency, Donald Trump has named three officials with direct border and migration responsibilities. All of them represent the Republican Party’s hard line on border security crackdowns and restriction of immigration. Stephen Miller will be Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy at the White House. Tom Homan will be in the White House as a “border czar.” Kristi Noem is the nominee to head the Department of Homeland Security. They will manage a planned “mass deportation” campaign while seeking to do away with legal migration pathways that the Biden administration preserved or established. Secretary of State-designate Marco Rubio will lead a foreign policy toward the Western Hemisphere, especially Mexico, for which migration will be a dominant issue.
Analysts and border-security planners continue to expect the number of migrants approaching the U.S.-Mexico border to increase ahead of Inauguration Day as people race to reach U.S. soil before a crackdown. So far, though, this has not materialized: Border Patrol apprehensions have actually dropped since Election Day.
22,914 people migrated in October through the treacherous Darién Gap region straddling Colombia and Panama. That is a modest drop from 25,111 in September, which may be due at least in part to weather conditions. The number of migrants from Venezuela (19,522) barely dropped from September.
The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, chaired by Democrats until the chamber switches to Republican control, published the text of its version of the 2025 appropriations bill for the Department of Homeland Security. It includes more money for CBP, especially for ports of entry, and more funding for shelters and local jurisdictions receiving and integrating released migrants. It does not include additional money to hire Border Patrol agents or to build new border barriers. It is unclear whether this bill will move forward. Republicans may seek to write their own bill after they assume the Senate majority in January, though that would require keeping the U.S. government open after December 20, the deadline for passing a 2025 budget.
THE FULL UPDATE:
The Trump administration begins assembling an ultra-hardline border and migration team
Citing three sources, Reuters reported that upon taking office on January 20, Donald Trump will “take a slew of executive actions” to harden immigration enforcement and undo Biden administration programs that created legal migration pathways. (See WOLA’s November 8 Border Update for a list of likely actions.) Day-one measures will include giving immigration agents “more latitude to arrest people with no criminal records,” sending military personnel to the U.S.-Mexico border, and restarting border wall construction.
Homan, Miller, and Noem
The first two points of the Republican platform on which Donald Trump based his 2024 presidential campaign were—quoting directly—“Seal the Border, and Stop the Migrant Invasion” and “Carry Out the Largest Deportation Operation in American History.” In the days after winning the November 5 elections, Trump named a triumvirate of close allies, all noted border and migration hard-liners, to manage the fulfillment of these pledges.
Tom Homan, who served for 16 months as the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the first Trump administration, is to be the new administration’s “border czar,” a top post that Trump will create in the White House. This position, Trump posted, will put Homan in charge of “the southern border, the northern border, all maritime, and aviation security.” Homan’s “czarship” will not require Senate confirmation as it is not a cabinet position.
Homan is a career government official. He started as a New York Police Department officer and then became a Border Patrol agent and an ICE official. Homan headed ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division in the Obama administration. During the Trump administration, Homan was a driving force and vocal proponent of the policy that separated thousands of migrant parents and children at the border. During the Biden years, he headed a controversial advocacy organization called “Border 911” and stayed close to Trump.
“I got a message to the millions of illegal aliens that Joe Biden’s released in our country. You better start packing now,” Homan told the Republican National Convention in July. In October, CBS’s 60 Minutes asked Homan, “Is there a way to carry out mass deportation without separating families?” He replied, “Of course there is. Families can be deported together.”
Homan will work alongside Stephen Miller, a well-known Trump loyalist and aggressive immigration restrictionist, who will be the deputy chief of staff for policy in the Trump White House. Miller joined the first Trump White House at the age of 31 as a speechwriter and advisor.
While there, Miller sought to activate every possible provision in U.S. law that could be employed as a pretext to exclude migrants. These included an obscure 1940s public health provision in Title 42 of the U.S. Code that, during the COVID pandemic, the Trump and Biden administrations used to expel people from the border 2.9 million times, usually without a chance to ask for protection in the United States.
In a 2023 New York Times interview, Miller laid out plans to use the U.S. military to help deport undocumented migrants, and perhaps some migrants whose statuses would get revoked, using laws dating back to the 18th century. He laid out the possibility of detention camps in Texas where the administration would stage migrants about to be deported. The Times quoted Miller at the time:
“Any activists who doubt President Trump’s resolve in the slightest are making a drastic error: Trump will unleash the vast arsenal of federal powers to implement the most spectacular migration crackdown,” Mr. Miller said, adding, “The immigration legal activists won’t know what’s happening.”
“It remains to be seen how broad Mr. Miller’s portfolio will be, but it is expected to be vast and to far exceed what the eventual title will convey,” sources told the New York Times’s Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan. Like Homan, Miller will not require Senate approval for his White House position.
Trump has tapped Kristi Noem (R), the governor of South Dakota, to be his first secretary of Homeland Security. (The New York Times recalled that during his first term, Trump “cycled through six homeland security leaders.”) Among Republican governors who have ordered National Guard personnel to Texas to support Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) “Operation Lone Star” border crackdown, Noem has been one of the most consistent and energetic.
Noem had been on the “shortlist” of possible Trump vice presidential running mates, but as NewsNation put it, “her consideration fizzled after the release of her autobiography, in which she described having killed a dog that was ‘untrainable.’”
Border Patrol agents expect Homan “to handle day-to-day border operations while Noem oversees broader DHS responsibilities,” NewsNation added. Art del Cueto, the vice president of the Border Patrol agents union, said that Noem’s nomination to DHS was unexpected: “I’m not upset… but it was surprising because I hadn’t heard her name.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) added his belief that Homan, not Noem, “will be the point person driving the agenda” of border policy.
Further down the organizational chart at DHS, the administration has yet to announce nominees to head CBP and ICE. Anna Giaritelli at the conservative Washington Examiner pointed to two former Border Patrol chiefs to head CBP, Border Patrol’s parent organization: Rodney Scott and Jason Owens. Scott led Border Patrol during the latter part of the Trump administration and retired five months into the Biden administration; he is now a vocal Biden critic. Owens is the current Border Patrol chief. Giaritelli named Victor Avila, a “team member” of Homan’s Border 911 organization along with Scott, as a possible nominee to be ICE commissioner.
Mass deportation
The nominations, New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg asserted, make clear that Trump is “going to oversee a militarized mass roundup of the undocumented.” Added David Graham in the Atlantic, “If personnel is policy, as the Ronald Reagan–era maxim states, then the president-elect is deadly serious… If Miller is the architect of mass deportation, Homan will be the builder.”
The New York Times explored the impact that a mass deportation campaign might have on the U.S. economy. While a lack of detail makes it difficult to predict, the Times recalled an October 2024 American Immigration Council study finding that the campaign could cost the government at least $315 billion while depressing economic growth and increasing inflation.
The scale of the deportation plan—which depends heavily on the extent to which the new administration would employ military personnel to help carry it out— remains unclear. “The idea of mass deportations—we use that term a lot—people are going to be disappointed (with it). It’s going to be very targeted, very focused,” Victor Manjarrez, a former Border Patrol sector chief who has taught at the University of Texas at El Paso, told Border Report. “If anyone is expecting buses rolling down Interstate 10, I don’t think that’s going to be the case.” Homan insists that mass deportation “will prioritize public safety threats and national security threats first.”
Homan told Fox News that when an immigration judge denies an asylum seeker’s petition, they must be deported immediately “because if we’re not, what the hell are we doing?” He also called for an increase in ICE raids of work sites where undocumented people may be employed.
For recent arrivals at the border, however, including asylum seekers, Manjarrez said to expect a sharp increase in expedited removals: asylum claims adjudicated or withdrawn rapidly while in Border Patrol custody, followed by rapid deportation.
In a lengthy and vivid interview with This American Life, Jason Houser, who served as ICE chief of staff during the Biden administration, explained what the first 100 days of “mass deportation” might look like:
Reporter Nadia Reiman: At the end of the 100 days, how many people do you think will be gone?
Jason Houser: Let’s just say this. Let’s say all rules are out the—and I can remove people that aren’t removable. Like, I’m going to send them to third-party countries. ICE has 48,000 people in its custody now. ICE has 14 ICE planes that are hardened planes. They hold 135—135 souls. I need more of those. But while I’m sending those 48,000, I’m probably going to go out and bring another 50,000 to 100,000 into custody. So if you’re talking 30 to 60 days, you could remove 150,000 to 200,000 people.
Reiman: So 200,000 people in the first 60 days?
Houser: Yeah.
Reiman: So in the first 100, that puts you at what, how many?
Houser: If all rules are gone and I can remove them anywhere, you could do a million.
The ACLU, the National Immigrant Justice Center, the International Refugee Assistance Project, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and other immigrant defense groups that carry out litigation say they are prepared to challenge “mass deportation” and other likely Trump policies in the federal courts.
Doing away with legal pathways
Several legal immigration pathways that the Biden administration had created or maintained, and which helped reduce the number of migrants crossing the border between ports of entry, are very likely to end or be sharply curtailed after January 20.
One of those is asylum seekers’ ability to use the CBP One smartphone app to schedule up to 1,450 daily appointments at official border crossings (ports of entry). CBS News spoke to people awaiting CBP One appointments in Nogales —including a Mexican family fleeing threats and a Bolivian doctor—who feared having appointments canceled. The San Diego Union-Tribune talked to people awaiting appointments in Tijuana who have been gripped by “fear, anxiety, and uncertainty” since Election Day.
The Associated Press analyzed the Trump campaign’s suggestion that it would scale back the use of Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which currently protects from deportation over 1 million people in the United States from 16 countries. A president can terminate a TPS designation before it expires, with 60 days’ advance notice.
The administration has also made clear its plans to terminate a Biden administration program that allowed up to 30,000 citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to enter the United States each month with a 2-year “humanitarian parole” status if they have valid passports and U.S.-based sponsors. In exchange for that policy, Mexico agreed to take back a similar number of deportees from those countries at the border. Without the humanitarian parole program in place, the Miami Herald reported, Mexico might revoke its willingness to receive those four countries’ citizens.
Trump is promising to sign an executive order, on his first day in office, ending “birthright citizenship”: the grant of citizenship to anyone born in the United States regardless of their parents’ migratory status. As the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment guarantees this right, an effort to revoke it will face stiff and immediate legal challenges.
The administration will likely end the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Shelter and Services Program (SSP), which supports nonprofits and local governments receiving and integrating asylum seekers and other migrants released from U.S. government custody. Asked about the program’s possible termination, Sister Norma Pimentel of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in Texas told Border Report that she hopes that “God will provide and that she believes the Rio Grande Valley community will come out to support asylum seekers.”
With legal migration pathways no longer available, more migrants are likely to turn to smugglers and seek to enter the United States through other, more dangerous means, experts and advocates told Associated Press reporters in Mexico. Many people will “have no place to go because there are many, many countries in the hemisphere where there is effectively no asylum system or where even if you could get asylum, you’re not necessarily safe,” said Mark Hetfield of HIAS.
Coercive migration diplomacy in Latin America
Carlos Trujillo, who served as Organization of American States (OAS) ambassador during Trump’s first term and is likely to play a Latin America policy role in the incoming administration, told NBC News that a top U.S. foreign policy priority in the Western Hemisphere will be “a lot of emphasis on controlling the border and working with Central American and South American countries to do so.” This will likely mean negotiating with states to expand deportations, possibly including removals of third countries’ citizens.
Foreign relations will be up to a close associate of Trujillo’s, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of State. While Rubio has a long record of opposition to left-leaning dictatorships like those in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, he will be joining an administration whose Latin America policy may be guided more by the president’s insistence on limiting migration. For Trump, “Central America simply does not exist, and is reduced to migration,” former Costa Rican president Laura Chinchilla told El Faro.
Trujillo expects confrontation with Nicaragua. The Ortega regime has been allowing many nations’ citizens to arrive in the country without visas (instead charging them hefty fees), after which they travel overland to the U.S. border.
A nationality of migrants at high risk of “mass deportation” is citizens of Venezuela, where the Nicolás Maduro regime has no diplomatic relations with the United States and does not accept deportation flights. “We may end up seeing some kind of arrangement with (Maduro) if it means the ability to deport more people, for Venezuela to accept deportee flights,” Ryan Berg of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told Telemundo, which could be an “opening gambit to leverage an eventual negotiation” between Washington and Caracas. In Venezuela, NBC noted, “Trump may focus more on migration than trying to democratize the government.”
Much speculation focuses on whether the incoming administration will levy tariffs on Mexican goods if it is unsatisfied with Mexico’s blocking of migrants and willingness to receive removals. Mexico, in turn, could retaliate with tariffs on U.S. goods. Mexican experts and shelter directors told the Washington Post that the country is in no way prepared to receive or integrate a possible mass deportation of hundreds of thousands of Mexican citizens.
“We will always defend Mexicans on the other side of the border, because they are also necessary for the U.S. economy,” said Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum. In the two presidents’ first phone conversation, Trump quickly brought up the border issue, the Associated Press reported. “There came a time when he raised the issue of the border, that’s all he said, and I told him ‘yes, there is the issue of the border, but there will be space to talk about it,’” Sheinbaum said.
An analysis at the Arizona Daily Star looked at the likely implications of Trump acting on threats, issued by the president-elect and by prominent Republicans, to designate Mexican criminal organizations as terrorist organizations, and to carry out military missions in Mexican territory, without Mexican government approval, against organized crime targets. While such operations would gravely harm relations, reporter Emily Bregel concludes, they would be unlikely to solve security and drug trafficking challenges because organized crime will remain embedded in many segments of Mexico’s government and economy.
The outgoing Biden administration
Immigrant rights defenders are urging the Biden administration to take steps to protect vulnerable immigrants during its final 66 days.
The American Immigration Council called for expediting Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) renewal applications, clearing the backlog of work permit applications, extending and re-designating TPS, protecting temporary work visas, releasing people in ICE custody who pose no public safety risk, and rescinding two remaining Trump-era asylum rules.
In his Migrant Insider newsletter, Pablo Manríquez listed more actions the outgoing administration could take, like closing ICE facilities with records of abuse, publicizing CBP and ICE guidances and other materials so that states and municipalities know what kinds of tactics to expect, extending existing humanitarian paroles, ending credible fear interviews in CBP custody, and frontloading funding for the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the Case Management Pilot Program (an alternative to detention), and the Shelter and Services Program.
Others are calling for the administration to increase the daily number of CBP One appointments at border ports of entry while the program still exists.
Whether the Biden administration might adopt any of these recommendations is a very open question. An analysis by the Washington Post’s Nick Miroff pointed out that the outgoing president has left in place some “enforcement tools,” like rules curbing nearly all border-area access to the U.S. asylum system, “that are even more powerful than the policies at his [Trump’s] disposal last time.”
A possible rush to the border before January 20?
“Multiple experts” told Fox News that “migrants are likely to continue their march to the southern U.S. border in a bid to enter the country before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.” This may be accurate: people fleeing threats, or who have already traveled long distances to get near the U.S. border, may decide to risk an illegal crossing to get to U.S. soil during the two months before the harder-line Trump administration takes power.
“Online, in Facebook and WhatsApp groups where potential migrants share information, smugglers are using Mr. Trump’s election to urge people to use their services—now,” the New York Times reported.
The El Paso Times speculated that Mexican soldiers’ November 8 discovery of a tractor-trailer carrying over 150 (possibly 257) migrants in the border state of Chihuahua might indicate that the flow of people is accelerating. In the Darién Gap jungles, migrants “picked up their pace” upon learning of Trump’s election win, the Associated Press reported.
During the first days after November 5, a rush to the border has not yet materialized. Camilo Montoya-Gálvez of CBS News tweeted on November 13 that Border Patrol’s apprehensions of migrants had, in fact, dropped: “Border Patrol averaged just over 1,500 daily apprehensions in the past 7 days, down from the 1,800 average in October.”
The chief of Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector reported the second-fewest weekly apprehensions all year (2,562) between November 3 and 9. In Ciudad Juárez, the Somos Uno Por Juárez network of 13 migrant shelters is currently at 45 percent capacity. Some people in Venezuela who had been considering migrating, interviewed by the New York Times, said that they are reconsidering because of the election outcome’s likely policy changes.
Still, the Times noted that three “caravans” of migrants are currently moving through southern Mexico, the largest with about 1,300 members, and activist Luis García Villagrán expects more to form in the coming days. Dana Graber Ladek, the International Organization for Migration’s (IOM) Mexico mission director, said that so far in 2024, about 13 migrant “caravans” have formed in the country, adding that they rarely reach the northern border intact.
On the other hand, the Ciudad Juárez daily El Norte reported, a few false rumors may be leading migrants to believe that crossing could actually be easier after January 20. “Criminal groups have unleashed false campaigns on networks that with the new government of Donald Trump, which begins on January 20, 2025, immigration restrictions will change, and there will be better conditions for crossing illegally.” The paper cited a press call with Luis Miranda, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) communications director.
Migration dips modestly in October in the Darién Gap
Panama released data about the number of migrants who passed in October through the Darién Gap, the treacherous jungle region spanning Colombia and Panama. During the month, authorities registered 22,914 people, down from 25,111 in September and more than in July (20,519) and August (16,603).
The number of people passing through the region dropped in July after Panama inaugurated President José Raúl Mulino, who campaigned promising to crack down on Darién Gap migration and increase deportations. With U.S. assistance, Panama has sent over 25 planeloads of people to Colombia, Ecuador, and India. The number of registered migrants increased sharply from August to September; however, it dropped only a bit in October.
Some of the drop may be due to weather conditions; at least one major storm system temporarily halted boat traffic across Colombia’s Gulf of Urabá to the sites where the Darién trail begins.
The number of Venezuelan citizens in October (19,522) barely dropped from September (19,800). In October, Venezuelans made up 85 percent of Darién Gap migration, the largest percentage ever. Analysts have been expecting migration to increase following the Nicolás Maduro regime’s refusal to recognize an apparent landslide opposition victory in July 28 elections, and the likelihood of instability and further repression is growing as the January inauguration approaches.
At a November 13 hearing of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), Panamanian government representatives said that as of November 11, 291,386 people had passed through the Darién in 2024. Only in 2023 (520,085) was this number higher.
The officials’ number indicates that during the first 11 days of November, an average of 471 people per day transited the Darién. That would be a sharp drop from the 739 per day registered in October; weather conditions may be the principal reason.
In October, President Mulino issued a decree charging fines of up to $1,000 to $5,000 for people who enter Panama illegally, such as those transiting the Darién Gap. Such a measure would likely drive more migrants into the hands of illegal migrant smugglers. At the IACHR hearing, Panamanian representatives said that the government is not charging the fine and that it “does not have the desire to implement it,” as the decree does not specify a date when it would go into effect.
Senate committee produces text of 2025 Homeland Security Appropriations bill
The U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, chaired by Democrats until the chamber switches to Republican control in January, published text and explanatory language of its version of the 2025 Homeland Security appropriations bill.
It is unclear whether this bill will go anywhere: “Republicans are still debating whether to seek a final fiscal 2025 funding deal in December or use another continuing resolution to set a date during the next Congress when they’d have a Senate majority,” explained Bloomberg Government. The current continuing resolution—which keeps the government running at 2024 levels, though fiscal 2024 ended in September— expires on December 20.
If Republicans decide to pass an entirely new bill in early 2025, it may bear little resemblance to what the Democratic-majority Senate appropriators published on November 13.
Among the current Senate bill’s provisions:
- $19.7 billion for Customs and Border Protection (CBP), “which is $3,160,630,000 above the budget request amount and $101,890,000 above the fiscal year 2024 enacted level.”
- Resources to hire 1,000 additional CBP officers at ports of entry.
- Maintaining the existing funded level of 22,000 Border Patrol agents. (The agency, facing hiring and retention challenges, is below 20,000 agents right now.)
- Funding for ICE to maintain 41,500 detention beds, maintaining a 2024 funded level that the American Immigration Council called “the third highest level in Congressional history.”
- $750 million for FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program (SSP). Republicans oppose the SSP.
- “$19.5 million for child well-being professionals that operate at CBP facilities to provide care for children.”
- No funding for border wall construction.
- Over $920 million, a $520 million increase over 2024, for CBP’s interdiction of fentanyl and other drugs at the border, and to increase the agency’s screening of traffic flowing south into Mexico.
- $268.7 million to help U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) reduce its processing backlog, including asylum cases.
Other News
- Based on official data published at the end of the federal government’s 2024 fiscal year, WOLA published a graphics-heavy analysis highlighting five key migration and security trends: temporary declines in migration following crackdowns, a large share of child and family migration, geographic shifts in migration, persistent migrant deaths, and the first-ever decrease in fentanyl seizures.
- No More Deaths published a trove of data, obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request to CBP, listing every single deceased migrant whom Border Patrol has reported finding in the border region since 2002. It is a giant spreadsheet with more than 9,500 records, each listed by date, geographic area, cause of death, citizenship, and gender—a great deal more information about official migrant death records than has been public before. Among No More Deaths’ findings is that Border Patrol’s El Paso sector, which includes far west Texas and New Mexico, led the agency’s nine border sectors’ count of migrant deaths in 2024 for the first time.
- At the London Review of Books, Rachel Nolan reviewed Exit Wounds by Ieva Jusionyte and Soldiers and Kings by Jason de León, which respectively cover gun trafficking and human smuggling between the United States and Mexico. Mexico “is awash with guns, which are often in the hands of criminal outfits,” Nolan wrote. “Locals know which spots or people to skirt. Migrants and asylum seekers trying to reach the US-Mexico border from further south can’t avoid traversing the area more or less blind.”
- A man died after falling from the border wall in Otay Mesa, east of San Diego, on November 8. A woman was injured after falling from the wall in El Paso on November 10.
- Guatemala’s La Hora reported that as of November 6, the United States and Mexico had deported 68,121 migrants to Guatemala in 2024, a pace of returns that is probably rapid enough to surpass the 79,697 people deported in 2023.
- Donald Trump’s election caused the stock prices of private prison contractor companies to skyrocket, as investors expected a sharp rise in profits for companies like Geo Group and CoreCivic, which manage detention facilities for ICE and other agencies.