Adam Isacson
Adam Isacson
Director for Defense Oversight
View Profile
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 It reflects events as of the end of January 17, making it slightly out of date.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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ahead of Donald Trump’s January 20 inauguration, media have reported many hints about the border and migration policy changes expected to go into effect that afternoon. The incoming president is expected to announce 100 executive orders, many of them cracking down on the border and migration by implementing new policies or undoing Biden administration policies.
Stephen Miller, the anti-immigration official who will serve as White House deputy chief of staff for policy, intends a blitz of initiatives that, he hopes, will overwhelm migrants’ rights advocates’ capacity to oppose them by “flooding the zone,” the New York Times reported. Miller is accompanying this with tight secrecy in the run-up to the policy changes’ announcement.
In addition to the promised “mass deportation” campaign discussed in this Update’s next section, the upcoming changes may include the following measures.
Some of these measures, like “Remain in Mexico,” safe third country agreements, and Title 42 expulsions, would require other nations to cooperate, for instance by accepting returns of other nations’ migrants. The incoming president has signaled his readiness to impose steep tariffs on imports of goods from those nations, especially Mexico, if they do not cooperate. A Peterson Institute for International Economics study recalled that exports account for about 40 percent of Mexico’s GDP, and 80 percent of those go to the United States. It concluded that “for Mexico, a 25 percent tariff would be catastrophic” and would likely spur more U.S.-bound migration.
The measures listed here, especially the mass deportation effort described below, would be expensive. The incoming administration and key members of the Republican Party’s two-house congressional majority continue to discuss details of a giant spending package for border and migration controls. Under Senate rules, this so-called “reconciliation” package could pass the chamber without a single Democratic vote, avoiding the filibuster rule by sticking to provisions that have budgetary impact.
“Early estimates of border funding needed have come in at $85 billion or higher,” Bloomberg Government reported. The “reconciliation” bill appears likely to begin moving in Congress by the end of February or early March.
Noem, the governor of South Dakota, promised Homeland Security Committee senators that she would fully implement Donald Trump’s border and migration agenda, several times referring to migrants at the border as an “invasion” and the border itself as a “war zone.” As governor, the New York Times recalled, Noem sent contingents of South Dakota National Guard personnel to the border, but did not deploy the Guard after her state was hit by heavy flooding.
The outgoing Homeland Security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, told Bloomberg Government that he had spoken to Noem several times during the transition and was “very impressed and very pleased with the discussions.” However, he cautioned, “Adhering to our values, and that includes extending humanitarian relief to those who qualify, is an important component of a functioning immigration system.”
CBS News, the New York Post, and other outlets reported that the incoming administration has chosen its Border Patrol chief. It is Mike Banks, a former Border Patrol agent and station chief who has been the Texas state government’s “border czar” in the hardline administration of Gov. Greg Abbott (R). Banks, who will replace outgoing Chief Jason Owens, does not require Senate confirmation. Former Border Patrol chief Rodney Scott, Trump’s pick to head U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP, Border Patrol’s parent agency), does require confirmation, but no committee hearing has yet been scheduled.
The New York Times profiled two other high-profile top officials who will run border and migration policy from perches in the White House and thus will not require Senate confirmation.
The new administration’s highest-profile migration policy will be felt more fully away from the border, in the U.S. interior. The Wall Street Journal reported that, as early as Tuesday, January 21, ICE will launch a week-long raid to round up undocumented immigrants, possibly involving 100-200 agents operating in Chicago. “Hundreds of agents were asked to volunteer and participate in the ‘post-inauguration’ operation,” which will be called “Operation Safeguard,” the New York Times confirmed.
Starting on January 9, about 60 Border Patrol agents carried out a series of immigration raids in farmland in Kern County, California, around Bakersfield. The so-called “Operation Return to Sender” resulted in 78 arrests of undocumented people, some of them with prior criminal records.
Bakersfield is more than 200 miles from the Mexico border, but as it is just under 100 miles from the Pacific Ocean, it is still within the 100-mile border zone where Border Patrol can most freely operate. “Immigrant advocates say it was the largest enforcement operation in the Central Valley in years and fear that it could be a prelude of what’s to come under President-elect Donald Trump,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “With our border under control in El Centro, we go where the threat is,” the chief of Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector, Gregory Bovino, wrote on Instagram.
The operation was confrontational: Ernesto Campos, a U.S. citizen, recorded an interaction with agents who slashed his car’s tires. The United Farm Workers held a news briefing to denounce “rogue” law enforcement activity creating a climate of fear. As much as 75 percent of a workforce needed for the region’s citrus harvest failed to report for work after the raids. “I think we can all agree known criminals should be expelled from the United States, but it is crucial that future operations are communicated clearly to avoid causing any further alarm among our farmworkers,” wrote Rep. David Valadao, the Republican member of Congress representing the region.
The choice to begin post-inauguration raids in Chicago points to incoming administration officials’ animosity to so-called “sanctuary jurisdictions”: states and cities, usually governed by Democrats, that choose not to cooperate with ICE because it would complicate policing in communities with large undocumented populations. Chicago, whose mayor, Brandon Johnson (D), has exchanged public criticisms with Homan, is one such jurisdiction. Homan and others have floated the idea of cutting federal grants to such cities.
“Mass deportation” will require ICE’s detention capacity to expand well beyond its currently funded level of 41,500 beds. Homan told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that he would need a minimum of 100,000 beds to hold detained migrants while they awaited deportation or challenged their deportation orders in immigration court. Homan and others “have floated the idea of using military bases or temporary tent facilities to hold would-be deportees,” the Washington Post reported. “Those sites are unlikely to meet ICE safety and detention standards.”
Homan has also pledged to set up a phone line that citizens might call to report the suspected presence of undocumented migrants. In fact, such a line “has existed for more than twenty years, and it takes 15,000 calls a month,” Adrian Carrasquillo reported at the Bulwark.
Behind the scenes, CNN reported, Homan has been telling Republican legislators that the initial mass deportation effort would not be as vigorous as the new administration’s rhetoric indicates. The infrastructure to carry it out is not in place and won’t be for some time, while many migrants will seek to challenge their deportation orders.
Some of the tough messaging, Carrasquillo wrote, simply seeks to spread fear out of a “hope that immigrants in the country illegally, many for years, will be so scared by the aggressive enforcement messaging that they will choose to leave of their own accord.” Sources similarly told Rolling Stone’s Asawin Suebsaeng that much of the current “shock and awe” rhetoric coming from the new administration intends to inspire undocumented people to “self-deport.”
As the “mass” deportation effort ramps up, officials like Homan say they plan to start out by targeting undocumented people with final removal orders and past legal offenses in their backgrounds. Those with final removal orders and not in ICE detention totaled 1.45 million people in November.
After this initial focus, though, Homan “has also promised that the effort’s reach would eventually be broader,” using new technologies to track down people in the United States without authorization, the New York Times reported.
Mass deportations—from the border, from the U.S. interior, and perhaps of third countries’ citizens—will profoundly impact Mexico, which shares a 1,950-mile land border with the United States. It could potentially mean millions of deportations into the country’s northern border cities and a sharp decline in remittance funds sent home from people who had been working in the U.S. interior.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters that her government has “a well-elaborated plan” to support deported Mexican migrants, but that its details were secret pending the Trump administration’s first steps.
“Mexico is racing to provide extra shelter capacity for tens of thousands of people in cities along the U.S. border,” the Financial Times reported, with officials seeking to prepare short-term shelter for at least 60,000 people. The city of Tijuana declared a state of emergency to enable spending to receive deportees. The state of Chihuahua is implementing emergency plans including three new shelters, two in Ciudad Juárez, where charity-run shelters are currently at about 40 percent capacity. Piedras Negras, Coahuila, across from Eagle Pass, Texas, plans to convert warehouses formerly used as maquiladora factories into temporary shelters for deported migrants. The federal government plans to implement a “panic button” app that Mexican migrants can use inside the United States to alert consulates about raids and deportation operations.
This is all happening, the Financial Times recalled, as Mexico’s federal government implements “double digit-budget cuts for the foreign ministry and National Migration Institute” in 2025.
The Los Angeles Times noted that a “less clear, and more problematic” challenge for Mexico’s government is a possible Trump administration demand that Mexico accept more deportees of non-U.S. citizens from the border (as Mexico currently is doing for some citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela) or even from the U.S. interior.
In Mexico’s southernmost state of Chiapas, reporters from the Mexican daily Milenio spoke to migrants, some of them participating in impromptu “caravans,” who say they remain determined to come to the United States, despite the Trump administration’s policy changes, because the conditions they are fleeing in places like Venezuela are even worse.
Guatemala, too, is preparing an operation to receive deportees, dubbed “Return Home.” According to Milenio, “the plan contemplates three phases and the setting up of temporary shelters in different parts of the country to ensure a dignified return of Guatemalans.”
On Thursday and Friday, Mexico’s Foreign Ministry hosted a closed-door meeting with diplomats from 11 Latin American countries to discuss responses to the new U.S. administration’s migration policies. Mexico agreed “to expand support to other Latin American and Caribbean nations as part of a regional migratory response,” the Associated Press reported. However, few details about this additional support are currently evident.
In a January 17 vote, the Senate passed the 60-vote “filibuster” threshold (out of 100) needed to end debate and proceed to consideration of the Laken Riley Act, a Republican-introduced bill that would enable more detention of migrants in the United States and empower state attorneys-general who object to federal immigration policies. The bill, named for a Georgia nursing student murdered by a Venezuelan migrant last year, appears certain to pass and get signed into law by President Trump.
The Act requires that migrants—including those with documented status like DACA and TPS recipients, and people with pending asylum cases—be detained until an immigration judge resolves their cases, which could take a year or more, if they are accused of minor crimes like shoplifting. The word “accused” is key: the text of the law reads “is charged with, is arrested for,” so the migrant subject to the Act does not have to be found guilty in court. Hypothetically, a false accusation of petty theft that leads to an arrest would be enough to send the migrant to detention.
The bill also would give state attorneys-general powers to sue to block aspects of U.S. immigration law, distorting the federal government’s ability to carry out immigration policies. As the New Republic’s Greg Sargent pointed out, this could even cause a schism among Donald Trump’s supporters. Trump backers who oppose legal immigration, like Steve Bannon, have been in a public fight with Trump’s tech-sector backers, like Elon Musk, over visas for skilled overseas workers. Bannon will need only enlist an attorney-general like Texas’s Ken Paxton to sue to block migrants from countries like India, from where companies like Musk’s hire many immigrants.
Because it would require so much more detention, the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Democratic staff calculated that the Laken Riley Act would cost $83 billion over the next 3 years to implement, Semafor revealed. ICE would need $3.2 billion just for the remainder of fiscal 2025 (through September 30) for “118,500 additional detention beds, 40,000 more personnel, and a 25 percent increase in deportation flights,” according to Vox and Axios.
Of 45 Democrats who cast cloture votes, 10 voted in favor of the Laken Riley Act. All (except, arguably, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia) came from tightly contested “swing states.” Noah Lanard of Mother Jones observed, “The willingness of Democrats, particularly those in swing districts and states, to support the bill is a sign of how vulnerable many in the party now understand themselves to be on immigration.” Added New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, “Democrats have a terrible habit, during moments of right-wing backlash, of voting for Republican legislation that they don’t seem to truly believe in and eventually live to regret.”
The U.S. Border Patrol apprehended 47,330 migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in December, the Biden administration’s last full month, according to CBP. At 1,527 people per day, that is the smallest per-day average of any month of the Biden presidency.
Data table
A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) fact sheet recalled that Border Patrol’s apprehensions—which are of migrants who cross the border improperly between ports of entry—have dropped 60 percent since May 2024. This is mainly due to a June 2024 Biden administration rule that places asylum out of reach for most people who cross the border this way. Since June, CBP reported, “the number of individuals released by the U.S. Border Patrol pending immigration court proceedings is down 89 percent.”
The rule makes asylum available mainly to people who use the CBP One app inside Mexico to await appointments at U.S. border ports of entry. As a result, November and December 2024 were the first times ever that more migrants were encountered at ports of entry than apprehended by Border Patrol.
Combining port-of-entry encounters and Border Patrol apprehensions, a total of 96,048 people without documentation entered U.S. custody at the border in December.
Data table
Border Patrol divides the U.S.-Mexico border into nine geographic sectors. For the first time since May 2024, its sector in San Diego, California, was not the busiest. The agency apprehended slightly more migrants in south Texas’s Rio Grande Valley region, which saw apprehensions double to 10,128 from November’s 5,120. (San Diego measured 10,117, just 11 fewer.) The state of Texas, in fact, was the only border state to measure an increase in Border Patrol apprehensions from November to December: Texas was up 21 percent month-to-month, while New Mexico dropped 17%, Arizona dropped 8%, and California fell 6%.
The DHS fact sheet also revealed that Border Patrol’s estimate of migrants who evaded capture, known as “gotaways,” dropped approximately 60 percent from fiscal 2023 to fiscal 2024, and that Border Patrol migrant encounters during the first half of January were 50 percent lower than during the same period in January 2021, when Donald Trump was still president.
“The 7-day daily average of encounters currently sits at 1,150 and has been below 1,500 for 21 consecutive days,” it adds. Should the average remain below 1,500 for 28 days, the Biden administration’s June 2024 asylum rule gets suspended, and asylum access resumes, at least partially, between the border’s ports of entry—unless the new Trump administration finds another way to block asylum seekers.
We can expect migration at the border to remain low for much of 2025. The first months of Donald Trump’s last term, in 2017, saw the smallest monthly migration totals of the entire 21st century. Apprehensions and encounters recovered to near earlier levels, though, by the end of that year, and grew to exceed them by mid-2019.
Subscribe to get the latest on analysis and policy
View all
Washington Office on Latin America
1666 Connecticut Ave NW, Suite 400
Washington, DC 20009
(202) 797 2171
info@wola.org
Subscribe with your email to receive exclusive reports and expert research directly to your inbox every week.
(Your privacy is important to us; your information will be kept confidential and secure.)
