Adam Isacson, Director for Oversight at WOLA
Adam Isacson
Adam Isacson, Director for Oversight at WOLA
Adam Isacson
Director for Defense Oversight
Adam Isacson has worked on defense, security, and peacebuilding in Latin America since 1994. He now directs WOLA’s Defense Oversight...
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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:
CBP publishes February border data: As the Trump administration shut down asylum access at the border and canceled the CBP One program, the number of people entering CBP custody at the border has plummeted. There are now at least four uniformed security personnel for every apprehended migrant. Migration is also way down in the Darién Gap. Fentanyl seizures are also very low.
“Mass deportation” updates: ICE arrested 32,809 people in the U.S. interior during the first 50 days of the Trump administration. Congress is considering budget measures to make deportations truly “massive.” ICE is increasingly targeting families as it reopens family detention facilities.
Active-duty deployment nears 9,600 soldiers: Troops keep arriving at the border, playing supporting roles.
Guantánamo base is currently empty: The entire population of 40 detainees at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station has been returned to the United States. The operation’s cost so far has averaged $55,000 per detainee.
The impact in Panama and elsewhere: On short-term visas, Panama’s government released 112 Asian, African, and European migrants whom the Trump administration had sent there despite their fears of return. It isn’t clear what their next steps are.
Congressional opponents grow more vocal: Letters and statements from congressional Democrats voiced more alarm and outrage about Trump administration anti-immigration measures, even as a CNN poll showed respondents narrowly approving of Trump’s performance on migration policy.
THE FULL UPDATE:
CBP publishes February border data
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported a sharp drop in the number of migrants its agents and officers encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border in February 2025, to levels probably not seen since the 1960s.
The reason is the Trump administration’s new restrictions that essentially eliminate the right to seek asylum at the border, along with migrants’ and smugglers’ caution about crossing as security-force deployments and a “mass deportation” effort get rolled out. The Trump administration’s restrictions, issued in a January 20 executive order, are the subject of active litigation.
Numbers decline
CBP, which incorporates Border Patrol agents operating between ports of entry (official border crossings) and Field Operations officers operating at the ports of entry, took 11,709 people into custody last month, down from 61,447 in January, 96,036 in December, and 176,195 in February 2024.
Data table
Sixty-two percent of migrants encountered in February were citizens of Mexico, more than double the 31 percent share that Mexican people represented between October 2023 and January 2025.
Between the ports of entry in January, CBP’s Border Patrol component apprehended 8,347 people, down from 29,101 in January, 47,322 in December, and 140,641 in February 2024.
Data table
February’s total, 298 per day, is the fewest monthly Border Patrol apprehensions in the more than 25 years for which monthly data are available, below the previous low of 11,127 measured in April 2017, in the first months of Trump’s first term.
Data table
Then as now, migrants and smugglers are pausing their decisions as a new president promising an anti-migrant crackdown assumed office. However, numbers were at least a bit higher eight years ago because the first Trump administration did not act immediately to curb the right to asylum at the border.
A figure of 8,347 people in a month is not the fewest ever. Before fiscal year 2000, we only have annual apprehension numbers from Border Patrol, but dividing those by 12 shows monthly averages below 8,347 occurring from the mid-1950s to 1967, and in all years before 1947.
Border Patrol agentsreleased one (1) migrant from custody in February, down from 2,560 in January, 7,041 in December, and 76,923 in February 2024. Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks toldCBS News on February 20 that the agency has released only two migrants from custody since January 20, and those individuals “were released to assist with criminal prosecutions as witnesses.”
At the ports of entry, the Trump administration abruptly stopped honoring appointments that the Biden administration had been allowing asylum seekers to arrange using the CBP One smartphone app. As the new administration canceled CBP One’s use for appointments, CBP’s encounters at ports of entry fell 90 percent from January to February, from 32,346 to 3,362. (The drop from December—when CBP One was in effect for all 31 days—was 93 percent.)
Instead of CBP One, a means for protection-seeking migrants to make appointments, CBP has launched“CBP Home,” an app “ allowing unlawfully present aliens or those with revoked parole to voluntarily notify the U.S. government of their intent to depart.” A statement from acting CBP Commissioner Pete Flores read that using the app to self-deport gives undocumented migrants “a chance to leave before facing harsher consequences,” the Washington Post reported.
Leaving out citizens of Mexico, who are more likely to be encountered without authorization at ports of entry, the number of migrants encountered at the official border crossings fell 98.5 percent from January to February, from 24,074 to 366.
Data table
Eighty-three percent of migrants encountered in January were single adults, 10 percent were family unit members (parents and children), and 7 percent were unaccompanied children. That is vastly different than the proportions between October 2023 and January 2025 (57 percent single adults, 37 percent family unit members, 5 percent unaccompanied children.)
The main reason for the shift from families to single adults is the unavailability of asylum: parents with children were more likely to turn themselves in to seek protection than to attempt to evade Border Patrol.
Data table
Of the nine geographic sectors into which Border Patrol divides the border, El Paso, which includes far west Texas and all of New Mexico, was the number one sector for migrant apprehensions with 2,110, or 25 percent of the total. El Paso had not occupied the number-one position since April 2023.
Data table
All told, combining Border Patrol agents with active-duty and National Guard military personnel—but not including CBP officers or Texas state police with border enforcement missions—there will soon be four uniformed personnel at the U.S.-Mexico border for every migrant whom Border Patrol apprehended there in February.
With fewer migrants arriving, and virtually none undergoing asylum processing, CBP is shutting down tent facilities that Border Patrol had been using to process migrants. The agency began dismantling tent structures in Laredo and Donna, Texas, and Tucson, Arizona. Only two of eight “soft-sided” facilities border-wide will remain open, in El Paso and San Diego, Border Reportreported.
In Arizona, increased border security and the filling of fencing gaps where asylum seekers had been crossing means that migrants are likely to take more remote and life-threatening routes through the desert, humanitarian volunteers told Tucson’s ABC television affiliate.
Fentanyl seizures are down
CBP’s seizures of fentanyl at the U.S.-Mexico borderfell to 589 pounds, about a third of the fiscal 2024 monthly average, about a quarter of the fiscal 2023 monthly average, the fewest in any month since December 2021, and the second-fewest since May 2020.
Data table
Of February’s U.S.-Mexico border fentanyl seizures, 96 percent took place at border ports of entry and another 3 percent at Border Patrol’s interior road checkpoints.
The reasons for the drop in fentanyl seizures remain unclear. It could be due to reduced supplies, or to new methods of evading detection. If supplies are declining, the cause could be shifting dynamics in Mexican organized crime or declining demand in the United States.
Darién Gap decline
Panama released data showing a sharp drop in northbound migration through the Darién Gap, a treacherous 60-plus-mile jungle route through which 1.07 million people passed between 2022 and 2024.
Just 408 people passed through the Darién route in February, the fewest in any month since November 2020.
Of those 408, 37 percent (151 people) were citizens of Venezuela, 11 percent were from Cameroon, and 5.1 percent were from Colombia. Migration from Venezuela plummeted 86 percent from January.
Data table
Due to the reduced northbound migratory flow from the Darién Gap, Panama’s government plans to close several shelters, Agénce France Pressereported. Security Minister Frank Ábrego told reporters that his government will dismantle the reception facilities in Bajo Chiquito and Lajas Blancas “as soon as possible.” The San Vicente camp, where third-country citizens sent from the United States were held until March 8 (see below), will remain open.
Ábrego added that those among the reduced number of migrants “will be immediately deported to their country of origin or to the country from which they entered Panama.”
Colombia’s government reported that between January 15 and February 28, it detected 1,885 migrants “in reverse irregular migration flow,” an average of 84 people per day arriving on a southbound sea route around the Darién Gap. Of 1,599 whom Colombia was able to “characterize,” 1,585 were Venezuelan and the rest were from Peru, Ecuador, Chile (possibly children of Venezuelans), and Nigeria.
“Mass deportation” updates
ICE arrests
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released new data about Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) operations to “massively” detain and deport undocumented migrants in the United States. “In the first 50 days of the Trump administration, ICE made 32,809 arrests,” the Department tweeted. The number includes people arrested by ICE while at large, and those handed over to the agency by local law enforcement.
14,111 of the 32,809 arrested individuals had criminal convictions, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons told a call with reporters. 9,980 had pending criminal charges, 44 were foreign fugitives, and the agency suspected 1,155 of gang membership. (CBS News reporter Camilo Montoya-Gálvez reported 1,555 alleged gang members, and 39 “known or suspected terrorists.”)
The official “called the remaining 8,718 ‘immigration violators,’” ABC Newsnoted. “During previous interviews with ABC News and other outlets, ICE has referred to these arrests as ‘collateral damage’—people who are not necessarily the target but get swept up in the process.”
ICE arrested 646 people in a single February 23-March 2 operation in Houston, according to Border Report. Of that total, 543 reportedly faced criminal charges.
DHS data obtained by Fox News noted 11,791 interior ICE arrests during the first 20 days of the Trump administration (January 20 to February 8), up from 4,969 during the same period in 2024.
Citing internal data, Nick Miroff reported at the Atlantic that in February, “ICE officers, some working six or seven days a week, made about 18,000 arrests,” greater than roughly 10,000 arrests in February 2024.
The ICE briefer said the agency has used up available detention space, with 46,700 people in custody. That is 113 percent of ICE’s congressionally funded 41,500 detention beds.
ICE detention center overcrowding means “shortages in food, clothing, hygiene products, and staff,” including medical staff, reported journalist Kate Morrissey. A Venezuelan migrant detained in the El Paso Service Processing Center said that most meals are bread and salad and that “We’re all losing a lot of weight.”
Funding for “mass deportation”
With less than 6,000 Enforcement and Removal Operations agents, “ICE doesn’t have the resources or staffing to do what Trump wants” regarding mass deportation, Miroff recalled, which is placing stress on the agency.
The House of Representatives’ version of a Continuing Resolution keeping the federal government funded at 2024 levels through September 30, 2025—which Congress must pass by March 14 to avoid a U.S. government shutdown—includes a 5 percent increase in funding for ICE’s Operations and Support account. This budget would increase from a 2024 level of $9.50 billion to $9.99 billion through fiscal 2025, enabling more detention and deportation operations.
As Congress works on the Continuing Resolution followed by a week-long recess, there is little new to report about its Republican leadership’s plan to pass a gargantuan spending package to support mass deportation and other border-security programs. As noted in past WOLA Border Updates, a “skeleton” budget resolution would provide DHS with an additional $90 billion (House) or $175 billion (Senate), and under Senate rules could pass with a simple majority, without a single Democratic vote.
As House and Senate leaders iron out disagreements about amounts and the procedure to follow, this big spending bill—which the Trump administration had hoped would pass by now—is delayed. “One Democratic Senate staffer tracking the bill told me that it’s likely months away from a vote but could be approved this summer,” the Atlantic’s Miroff reported.
WOLA’s Adam Isacson discussed the state of the administration’s “mass deportation” plans in a video Q&A with San Diego’s KPBS.
Targeting families with children
In an apparent de-emphasis of its initial declared focus on migrants with criminal records, ICE is planning an operation to target migrant families with deportation orders, reported Julia Ainsley of NBC News and Camilo Montoya-Gálvez of CBS News.
The Los Angeles Times’ Andrea Castillo reported the story of “Cesar and Norelia,” a Venezuelan couple with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and pending asylum claims, who were arrested by CBP personnel in front of their children, from whom they are now separated, in the Washington DC area in late February. They are charged with improper entry, as the family—like millions of other asylum seekers in the past decade—crossed into El Paso between ports of entry and turned themselves in to Border Patrol. That was back in October 2022. Experts have been unable to cite similar recent cases of TPS recipients arrested for improper entry so far from the border and so long since they entered.
ICE deported two Mexican parents, neither with any criminal history, along with their five U.S. citizen children from Texas on February 4. One of the children, a 10-year-old girl, is recovering from brain cancer and no longer has access to her specialist doctors in Houston, NBC Newsreported. The family, who lives close to the border, was detained while rushing to Houston for an emergency medical checkup. They were “deported to an area in Mexico that is known for kidnapping U.S. citizens.”
Family detention
The Trump administration’s resumption of family detention, a practice that the Biden administration had suspended, is underway. The practice began last week, and the Associated Press reported on March 12 that 14 families with children as young as 1 year old were being held at the Karnes County detention facility in Texas.
According to the organization RAICES, they are from Colombia, Romania, Iran, Angola, Russia, Armenia, Turkey, and Brazil. “Some were in the U.S. for as little as 20 days and others for as long as about 10 years,” the AP added.
Border Report, citing NewsNation, reported that families sent to Dilley will not be awaiting immigration adjudication—they will be awaiting final deportation. The Flores standards, mandating that children be held for no more than 20 days, should still apply. Still, there is some likelihood that the administration might challenge that, citing operational constraints (like a lack of available deportation planes) or the families’ lack of active immigration cases.
Judging from past Obama and Trump-era experience with privately managed family detention facilities like Karnes and the South Texas Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, Guardian reporter Alexandra Villareal warned, “Some kids will face getting sicker and sicker with serious illnesses like failing kidneys or intestinal parasites while contracted medical personnel largely ignore them.”
“Jails are dangerous places, and Donald Trump plans to lock up more immigrants than ever before,” read an essay by Jack Herrera at the New Yorker warning that increased migrant detention is likely to mean an increase in migrant deaths in custody. “In the 2022 fiscal year (the most recent year for which we have comprehensive data),” Herrera recalled, “fifty-two people—an average of one per week—perished in C.B.P. custody,” and loopholes can make oversight and scrutiny difficult.
Other agencies’ deportation support roles
The Trump administration continues to involve agencies with non-immigration-specific missions in the deportation effort. The Department of Justice, for instance, continues to divert prosecutorial resources into migration enforcement. U.S. attorneys “must commit to investigations and prosecutions targeting all of the insidious results of the four-year invasion of illegal immigration that we are now working to repel,” read a memo from the new deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche.
A release from the Department’s Western District of Texas announced that its attorneys had filed nearly 250 immigration cases during March 3-9. It billed the arrests as “part of Operation Take Back America, a nationwide initiative that marshals the full resources of the Department of Justice to repel the invasion of illegal immigration.”
Brian Clark, the Drug Enforcement Administration’s (DEA) special agent in charge of the San Diego Field Division, spoke to the local NBC affiliate about the Trump administration’s call on the agency to help enforce immigration law. “That is new to DEA. We’ve always only done drugs and narcotics. So with that, we are called upon to do more.”
Some state and local agencies are seeking to expand their supporting role in federal deportation efforts. As Texas’s state legislature meets, representatives have “filed dozens of bills that could further cement the state’s role in immigration enforcement—long the sole responsibility of the federal government,” the Texas Tribunereported. These include tighter partnerships between local law enforcement and ICE, deputizing many cops to enforce immigration law.
Active-duty deployment nears 9,600 soldiers
The Defense Department’s deployments of active-duty military personnel to the U.S.-Mexico border are continuing, and increasing. The latest appear to be 590 engineers from the Army’s 18th Airborne Corps, from Fort Bragg, North Carolina and Fort Knox, Kentucky, plus 40 Air Force intelligence analysts.
“When the soldiers and airmen arrive, a total of about 9,600 service members will either be deployed or scheduled to deploy to the U.S.-Mexico border,” reportedTask and Purpose. Stars and Stripesreported an identical figure.
Army units from Fort Cavazos, Texas assigned to “Task Force Griffin” received “on-the-job training alongside CBP agents” so they could perform their assigned missions of “detection and monitoring, administrative support, training and vehicle maintenance,” a release indicated. These are similar to the rearguard support tasks that past federal National Guard deployments have carried out.
The Guardianreported on a White House proposal, apparently still under review and first reported by the New York Times, to use Fort Bliss, a sprawling army base adjacent to El Paso, Texas, to house migrants about to be massively deported. “Our military bases should be prepared to support national security and readiness, not serve as processing centers for mass deportations,” said Rep. Gabe Vásquez (D), whose New Mexico border district includes El Paso’s western suburbs.
Guantanamo base is currently empty
The Guantánamo Bay Naval Station in southeastern Cuba is now empty of detained migrants. The 40 men held there wereflown back to ICE detention facilities in the United States on March 11.
Between February 4 and February 20, the Trump administration held 178 Venezuelan men at the base, with those considered “high risk” at the “Camp 6” military prison built for “war on terror”-era captives, and those considered “low risk” at a “Migrant Operations Center” built to hold migrants detained on the high seas. Of those 178, all but one were returned to Venezuela via Honduras on February 20.
290 migrants from 27 countries had cycled through Guantánamo between February 4 and March 7, according to a court filing from an ICE official cited by the New York Times.
The Guantánamo operation has cost $16 million so far, the Times reported, citing Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-California), a member of a congressional delegation that visited the base on March 7. That would be $55,000 per detainee so far—and it is not clear whether that amount includes the cost of the 20 flights that brought them to and from the base.
An overview by the New York Times’s Carol Rosenberg recalled President Trump’s January 29 pledge to increase the Guantánamo base’s capacity to 30,000 people awaiting deportation. “It seems clear there’s no plan to get to 30,000 that’s workable in any way,” Rep. Jacobs told the Times.
Right now, the base can hold 225 detained people at a time, according to a briefing given to the congressional delegation. Military construction of tents to house detainees is now on hold because they are not up to ICE detention standards.
At least 1,000 security forces and civilian contractors are assigned to the detention mission.
The Times reported an eyebrow-raising piece of information: “ICE sent nine migrants back to El Paso on Feb. 26, a day after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was at Guantánamo and observed nine migrants being led off a C-130 transport from El Paso during his visit.”
Among court filings cited was that of the Army officer in charge of the Guantánamo task force, Lt. Col. Robert Green, who stated that in a single day (February 18), personnel strapped six of the initial group of Venezuelan men into restraints “after each man undertook a so-called self-harm episode—military jargon for a suicide threat, gesture or attempt,” the Times added.
José Daniel Simancas Rodríguez, a Venezuelan man who spent 15 days in Guantánamo before being flown to Caracas, toldCNN, “The only sound that accompanied him during what he describes as ‘hell’ were the screams of the other prisoners,” as he endured confinement alone, just two tightly guarded showers, and tiny food portions. Simancas, a construction worker, believed that U.S. agents decided he was a member of the “Tren de Aragua”—a criminal organization that the Trump administration has added to the U.S. list of terrorist groups—because he was from Venezuela’s Aragua state and had tattoos.
Two lawsuits—one challenging the legality of detainee transfers to Guantánamo, and one seeking to guarantee detainees’ access to attorneys—have been assigned to the same Washington DC federal district court judge, who will hold a hearing on March 14.
Writing at the New Yorker, Haitian-American author Edwidge Danticat recalled the miserable conditions that Haitian migrants suffered at Guantánamo after the Clinton administration brought thousands of them to the base during a 1990s maritime migration event in the Caribbean. “Some of the men who were deported from Guantánamo to Venezuela have told a familiar tale of being beaten by guards, strip-searched, and put into solitary confinement, and of suicide attempts as well as hunger strikes to protest the inhumane conditions.”
The impact in Panama and elsewhere
Panama releases 112 of 299 migrants sent from the United States
On March 8, Panama’s government released 112 citizens of third countries, who were among 299 whom the U.S. government had delivered to Panama aboard three military aircraft between February 12 and 15. They may remain in the country for 30 days, with renewals up to 90 days.
“Over the past week, under legal pressure, the Panamanian government dropped them off at a bus station in the capital with 30 days to figure out where they will go next,” the Associated Pressreported, in a feature that conveyed some of these asylum seekers’ narratives of the threats they fled.
The Trump administration promised to pay for the 299 migrants’ subsequent repatriation, but these 112 individuals have expressed fear of return. Panama had been holding them in San Vicente, a rustic camp at the end of the Darién Gap migration route.
Most of the asylum seekers speak no Spanish and have little or no access to income to support themselves in Panama City. “Once I get off the bus, I’ll be sleeping on the ground tonight,” a Russian citizen told the Associated Press. “I have no money, just one dollar,” an Iranian man traveling with two children toldEFE.
A migrant from Pakistan told the AP that “he asked authorities in the camp multiple times if he could seek asylum in Panama, and said he was told that ‘we do not accept asylum.’” Panama is a state party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol.
ProPublicareported that the Panama situation draws scrutiny to the role of the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM), which receives significant U.S. funding and has supported the return flights of migrants willing to be sent back to their countries. While appreciating the agency’s view that the migrants’ situation might be worse without its role, Hannah Flamm of the International Refugee Assistance Project told ProPublica, “in the context of egregious unlawful conduct by the Trump administration, this is a moment that calls for deep introspection on where the line of complicity lies.”
“This was a bid by the Panamanian government to buy some good will with the Trump administration,” Andrew Selee of the Migration Policy Institute told the New York Times. “But it was not yet a developed strategy.”
Writing at Flaming Hydra, Felipe de la Hoz echoed concerns voiced by Jack Herrera at the New Yorker about migrant deaths in U.S. custody (see above), arguing that the likelihood of death is even greater for migrants whom the Trump administration is sending to third countries.
EFEreported that the 112 people are from Iran (24), Cameroon (21), China (12), Nepal (10), Afghanistan (9), Vietnam (7), Ethiopia (6), Uzbekistan (6), Nigeria (5), Eritrea (2), Pakistan (2), Somalia (2), Ghana (2), Russia (2), Angola (1), and Sri Lanka (1).
Central America
Guatemala’s foreign minister, Carlos Ramiro Martínez, discussed border security and counter-migration efforts with U.S. legislators on March 11-12 during a visit to Washington. Those with whom Martínez met trended conservative: Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin); Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina); and Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas).
The president of Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo, announced that his government will build a new center for deported migrants along the country’s border with Mexico, in Tecún Umán, near Tapachula, Chiapas. Construction will be supported by USAID, the U.S. foreign aid agency facing extreme budget and staffing cuts under the Trump administration.
As the Trump administration slashes or cancels USAID programming in Latin America, Mileydi Guilarte, USAID’s deputy assistant administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean under the Biden Administration, toldWLRN’s Tim Padgett, “In places where we doubled down our efforts, particularly in high-crime areas in Honduras, the intention [of local residents] to leave and take the dangerous journey north [to the U.S. border] had been reduced three-fold.” Guilarte added, “We will likely see an uptick of immigrants heading for the U.S.”
At Just Security, Lauren-Brooke Eisen of the Brennan Center for Justice recalled the illegality of El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s early February offer to Secretary of State Marco Rubio to accept U.S. citizen convicts who could serve their terms in Salvadoran prisons. Rubio at the time called it an “extraordinary gesture,” but it violates the 8th amendment and other statutes. “In fact, U.S. citizens can only be stripped of citizenship if they knowingly perform acts resulting in a voluntary relinquishment of citizenship.”
Mexico
CBP Deputy Director Ricardo Moreno told the Mexican daily El Sol that the U.S. government is now deporting an average of 135 migrants per day on planes flying to the far south of Mexico, Border Reportreported.
In Mexico in January and February, the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM), which assists voluntary repatriations, received 2,862 requests from migrants who, giving up on coming to the United States, needed assistance returning to their countries of origin. That is triple the number of requests that IOM received in January and February 2024, according to data obtained by Reuters.
With asylum no longer available in the United States, citizens of Haiti stranded in Mexico are increasingly seeking asylum in the Mexican government’s system, the Haitian Timesreported. It notes that a section of Mexico City’s Tláhuac neighborhood is now “an area locals call ‘Little Haiti’ due to the growing Haitian community there.”
At Yes Magazine via TruthOut, Chantal Flores spoke to trans migrants who are now unable to seek asylum in the United States. They and others who had been awaiting CBP One appointments now wish to seek asylum in Mexico. However, they need exceptions to the Mexican government’s Refugee Assistance Commission (COMAR) requirement that people apply for protection within 30 days of arriving in the country.
South America
The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, said that his government will not accept U.S. deportations of third countries’ citizens. Noboa is up for re-election against a leftist challenger in an April 13 runoff.
Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, said that the Trump administration’s suspension of a license allowing the oil company Chevron to produce and market Venezuelan oil—a blow to his country’s economy—is “a little problem” that led his government to refuse flights deporting Venezuelan citizens back to Caracas. Venezuelan planes had brought back 366 migrants, including 177 who had been at Guantánamo Bay.
On March 13, however, Trump administration envoy Richard Grenell, who had met with Maduro in late January, tweeted that “Venezuela has agreed to resume flights to pick up their citizens” and that they will resume on March 14.
Congressional opponents grow more vocal
The ranking Democratic members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees and relevant Judiciary subcommittees sent a letter to President Trump challenging his assertion, in January 20 executive orders and elsewhere, that migration constitutes an “invasion” of the United States. The authors are Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Illinois, ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee), Sen. Alex Padilla (D-California, ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Safety), Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland, ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee), and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington, ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement). They view Trump’s claim to invoke the term “invasion” as defined by the Constitution as a ploy to “allow his Administration to circumvent domestic immigration law.”
Among congressional Democrats, “President Donald Trump’s critics are sounding alarms his sweeping approach to immigration enforcement undermines other critical missions, including military readiness and combating fentanyl trafficking,” read an analysis by Ellen Gilmer at Bloomberg Government, citing senators concerned about shifting resources from other security priorities into the migration mission. It includes quotes from Sen. Alex Padilla (D-California), Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nevada), Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), and Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona). Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona) lamented a lack of transparency.
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC), whose members are all Democrats, published official positions on immigration and border policy and on mass deportations. The first cites “keeping families together,” “legalizing dreamers, DACA recipients, and TPS holders,” “protecting farm workers,” and “modernizing border security resources.” The second calls out “mass deportation efforts that are terrorizing immigrant families and destabilizing the American economy” and opposes any funding for them.
On the other side of the aisle, Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R) hosted nine newly elected Republican House colleagues in his southeast Arizona border district. They reported a steep drop in border crossings and high morale among Border Patrol agents.
While it found U.S. respondents disapproving of Donald Trump’s overall job performance, a CNNpoll reported 51 percent saying they approved of Trump’s handling of immigration, his highest approval on any issue surveyed. 48 percent disapproved of his handling of immigration.
Other news
As early as March 14, the White House may announce the fourth-ever application the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to remove suspected members of the Venezuelan criminal organization Tren de Aragua, CBS News and CNN reported. The ancient law allows the president to detain and remove entire classes of non-citizens without due process. However, it is a wartime authority that the president may only invoke during a declared war or foreign government “invasion” or “predatory incursion.” It is unlikely that federal judges will agree that migration or foreign organized crime meet that standard, especially at a time of historically below-average violent crime rates.
A late January White House executive order called for a 60-day State Department review of countries whose citizens may be barred from entering the United States; the New York Timesreported that the administration is now finalizing this “travel ban.” The proposal includes a “red list” of countries whose citizens would be barred from entering, an “orange list” of countries whose citizens would face partial bars, and a “yellow list” that would have 60 days to “change some perceived deficiencies.” The administration is considering adding citizens of Cuba and Haiti to its “red list,” the Miami Heraldreported.
Migrant shelters that had received federal support during the Biden administration—the Shelter and Services Program (SSP), a measure to guarantee short-term stays so that migrants released from CBP custody didn’t end up on U.S. border cities’ streets— received a letter from the Trump administration’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). It announced a review of the shelters’ possible “encouraging or inducing an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States in violation of law,” and demanded that shelter operators provide “all documents” about migrants whom the shelters interacted with, including their names and contact information.
Border Patrol agent Shane Millan pleaded guilty to August 2024 misdemeanor charges for “having told multiple women to expose their breasts during interviews to gain admission to the country,” USA Today and other outlets reported.
By a 53-43 vote, the Senate confirmed Troy Edgar to serve as Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security. A Navy veteran who has held positions in private-sector corporations and hosted an 82-episode podcast, Edgar was DHS’s chief financial officer during the first Trump administration. Edgar had a contentious March 13 interview with NPR host Michel Martin, in which he appeared to conflate protest with terrorism as he defended the ICE arrest of Columbia University student protest leader Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident.
The Trump administration is dropping a lawsuit against Southwest Key Programs, which had been the largest contractor managing short-term shelters for unaccompanied children encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border. While the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) will no longer be contracting with the company, the administration is abandoning a complaint alleging sexual abuse and harassment of unaccompanied kids in the non-profit’s care. “I worry that if the signal from the Trump administration is that we’re dismissing these cases, it makes it seem like it’s open season for abusers and harassers,” Johnathan Smith, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s civil rights division, toldBloomberg Law.
As an anti-money laundering measure, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a “geographic targeting order” requiring border-zone businesses that transfer money or cash checks to report all transactions over $200.
A $200 million DHS ad campaign promoting the Trump administration’s migration crackdown was contracted out to two well-connected Republican media-consulting firms without “a fully competitive bidding process,” the Associated Pressreported.
In Eagle Pass, Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) wants to hand off to the federal government control of a 1,000-foot “wall” of floating buoys, interspersed with serrated metal discs, in the middle of the Rio Grande. Under the Biden administration, the federal government had sued to get Abbott to take down this riverine structure.
Also in Eagle Pass, state forces have reopened the city’s riverfront park to allow full Border Patrol agent access. During the latter part of the Biden administration, Texas police had prevented agents from entering Shelby Park without permission because—as they were bound by federal asylum law—they apprehended people waiting in the park rather than jailing them for trespassing or pushing them back to the riverbank.
At USA Today, reporter Lauren Villagrán discussed the religious faith that guides many—perhaps a majority—of U.S.-bound migrants despite little understanding of asylum requirements and obstacles like the Trump administration’s policies.
The Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh published a 50-year survey of terrorist activities committed by foreign-born individuals in the United States. It finds that such attacks are exceedingly rare, with a 1 in 4.6 million chance of dying in a terrorist attack committed by a foreign-born person. The annual chance of dying in a terrorist attack committed by an asylum seeker drops to 1 in 1.5 billion. Of 3,046 deaths caused by 237 foreign-born terrorists on U.S. soil—all of whom had documented status—98.6 percent occurred on September 11, 2001.
At the New Yorker, writer Jonathan Blitzer published a lengthy profile of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, making the case that his hardline border and migration policies, like the “Operation Lone Star” crackdown and busing of migrants to Democratic Party-governed cities, have influenced Trump administration policy and added to his dominance of Texas politics. Blitzer noted that billions of dollars in Operation Lone Star funds have gone to no-bid contracts, with key beneficiaries donating to Abbott’s campaigns.