Director for Defense Oversight

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

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Border data, halfway into fiscal year 2026: An ongoing asylum shutdown and “mass deportation” crackdown have slowed migrant apprehensions at the border to a pace not seen since 1967. However, apprehensions increased by 25 percent from February to March, likely due to seasonal factors. Drug seizures at U.S. borders remain at 2025’s pace, despite a campaign of lethal boat strikes.

Congress may try to fund ICE and Border Patrol for years on a simple-majority vote: Part of DHS has been “shut down” since February 13 as Senate Democrats demand human rights reforms to ICE and CBP. But Republicans have a plan: to pass a bill funding all but those agencies for 2026, and to fund an unreformed ICE and CBP separately for at least three years, using a complicated parliamentary maneuver that allows a party-line, simple-majority vote.

The leadership transition at DHS: Investigations, based on numerous interviews, portray a Department of Homeland Security with remarkably low morale as Markwayne Mullin takes over as secretary. As the Trump administration backpedals on its most visibly aggressive “mass deportation” policies, which have proved unpopular, it is pursuing quieter but perhaps even more effective efforts—bureaucratic hurdles, long stays in miserable detention conditions—to encourage migrants to abandon the United States.

Conditions at ICE detention centers remain dire: Amid that backpedaling, ICE’s arrests and detained population have declined. However, reports are proliferating about abusive and inhumane conditions in the agency’s network of detention facilities, where a remarkable 16 people have now died in custody since the start of the year.

Border wall construction updates: An east-to-west survey of controversies surrounding border wall construction projects along the border, as CBP and its contractors spend out a $46.5 billion appropriation that could leave nearly the entire border blocked by barriers from coast to coast.

Updates from further south along the migration route: Links to articles about the situation of migrants, and about security challenges, in Mexico, Central America, Panama, Ecuador, and Venezuela. Several cover the Trump administration’s increasing deportations of citizens from third countries.

Border data, halfway into fiscal year 2026

An April 9 monthly release from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) covers migration, drug seizures, and other border enforcement data through March. As the 2026 fiscal year began on October 1, we now have statistics for the first half of the year.

During that half-year, Border Patrol apprehended 42,757 migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, and CBP’s Office of Field Operations encountered another 20,975 migrants at ports of entry (official border crossings).

The Border Patrol figure is on track to make 2026 the lowest year for migrant apprehensions since 1967 (73,973). The ports-of-entry figure is on track to be the fewest since at least 2012, the earliest year for which we have data.

The reasons for the continued drop include the impossibility of accessing asylum at the border, as the Trump administration’s January 2025 proclamation suspending asylum remains in effect while legal challenges continue. This, together with a climate of fear in the U.S. interior amid the administration’s “mass deportation” campaign, has suppressed new arrivals.

Notably, Border Patrol apprehensions increased 25 percent from February to March, from 6,598 to 8,268 people. As noted in WOLA’s April 3 Border Update, which reported a smaller January-to-February increase, this appears to reflect a seasonal pattern: non-asylum-seeking migration tends to increase in the spring and often in the fall, when the weather is milder, only to drop in the summer and winter. It is reasonable to expect further increases in Border Patrol apprehensions in April and May, followed by a drop.

The diversity of nationalities coming to the border continues to decline. Of the March Border Patrol apprehensions, 74 percent were of citizens of Mexico, and 92 percent were citizens of Mexico plus four Central American nations (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua). During the 2020s, those proportions were higher only in the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Of nationalities with more than 50 apprehensions in February or March, three exceeded the 25 percent border-wide threshold: Mexico (34%), Venezuela (33%), and Ecuador (28%). Apprehensions of citizens of India declined by 60 percent, and those of individuals from countries CBP lists as “Other” declined by 11 percent.

So far in fiscal 2026, 13 percent of Border Patrol’s apprehensions have been of children or family unit members. That is the smallest proportion since 2012. Child and family migration, at first mainly from Central America, began to increase in 2013, and especially in the spring of 2014. Now, though, with the possibility of seeking asylum at the border all but eliminated, few children or families are coming: Border Patrol’s apprehended population in March was just 10 percent kids and parents.

For the fifth month in a row, the Rio Grande Valley Sector in South Texas recorded the most apprehensions among the nine sectors into which Border Patrol divides the U.S.-Mexico border.

Five sectors saw February-to-March increases greater than the 25 percent border-wide amount:

Del Rio (mid-Texas, 5th place) 47 percent

Tucson (Arizona, 2nd place) 44 percent

Laredo (south Texas, 3rd place) 35 percent

El Centro (7th place) 35 percent

Rio Grande Valley (1st place) 29 percent

It is unusual to see Laredo in third place: the sector, across from what may be the most violent part of Mexico’s northern border, is often quiet, in seventh place so far this century. The only sector to see a decline in apprehensions from February to March was El Paso (far west Texas and New Mexico, -3%), which had been the fastest-growing from January to February.

CBP’s release noted that March was the 11th consecutive month in which Border Patrol did not release any protection-seeking migrants into the U.S. interior: all were detained or removed from the United States.

At the ports of entry, only 12 of 3,464 people who entered CBP custody were reported as “credible fear inadmissibles”—people seeking protection. That is the fewest since the Trump administration began and indicates that almost nobody who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border was able to seek protection from threats to their life or freedom.

Charting port-of-entry encounters clearly shows the impact of the Trump administration’s abrupt January 20, 2025, cancellation of the CBP One program, which the Biden administration had used to allow protection-seeking migrants to approach ports of entry via smartphone app appointments.

The release also includes data about CBP’s seizures of illicit drugs at the U.S.-Mexico border and other land, air, and coastal borders. For all major drugs, seizures appear to be almost exactly continuing their 2025 pace: no significant increases or decreases.

CBP’s seizures of fentanyl at the border declined, often sharply, between mid-2023 and early 2025, a likely indicator of reduced supply. Since then, though, the declines stopped, and seizures have been flat. Halfway into fiscal 2026, fentanyl seizures (5,797 pounds) are almost exactly half of 2025’s full-year total (11,486 pounds).

Similar to past years, 95 percent of 2026 fentanyl seizures have taken place in California (62%) or Arizona (33%). Since fiscal 2020, 96 percent of fentanyl seizures took place in California (49%) or Arizona (47%). For unclear reasons likely having to do with Mexican organized crime patterns, few seizures take place in Texas or New Mexico.

Halfway through fiscal 2026, CBP’s cocaine seizures at all U.S. borders are just over half of 2025’s full-year total (36,700 pounds in the past six months versus 70,100 pounds all of last year). At the U.S.-Mexico border specifically, cocaine seizures are running at 97 percent of their 2025 pace (19,771 pounds versus 40,949 pounds all of last year).

This is significant because it shows no apparent impact on cocaine supply after at least 49 lethal strikes on civilian vessels that the U.S. Defense Department alleges were carrying drugs—probably cocaine—from South America. Those strikes, which began on September 2, 2025, have killed at least 178 people as of April 15, 2026.

Data similarly show no significant movement since 2025 on seizures of methamphetamine or marijuana.

Border marijuana seizures have plummeted to about one-twentieth of what they were in 2018, a result of many U.S. states—including three out of four U.S.-Mexico border states—legalizing and regulating recreational cannabis.

Texas is the only border state that prohibits recreational cannabis, and 94 percent of 2026 seizures took place there (technically, “Texas and New Mexico,” as New Mexico is considered part of Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector and CBP’s El Paso Field Office). As recently as 2020, Texas had accounted for a much smaller share (60%) of marijuana seizures.

Congress may try to fund ICE and Border Patrol for years on a simple-majority vote

Much of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—but, for the most part, not Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and CBP—remains officially shut down, as it has been since February 13. By moving funds around, the Department managed to pay employees who were working without a paycheck, but it may not be able to do so again.

As noted in WOLA’s April 3 and earlier Border Updates, Senate Democrats have refused to support a 2026 appropriations bill that fails to include key human rights reforms to ICE and Border Patrol. These are “common sense” safeguards that are “what every police department uses and when you ask the American people, they’re on our side,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York). Negotiations, however, have stalled.

The Republican-majority Senate had passed a bill to fund all of DHS except ICE and Border Patrol, which have separate money from last year’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” The Republican-majority House, however, has not taken it up, and House leadership will not do so unless the Senate—using a complicated, infrequently invoked budget maneuver called “reconciliation”—moves ahead with a bill that would keep ICE and Border Patrol funded for at least the next three years.

“Reconciliation,” which can only be used for tax and spending bills, allows legislation to skirt the Senate’s filibuster rule and pass by a simple majority. This was the vehicle used to pass the “One Big” bill in July 2025. It has never been used before as a substitute for a regular annual appropriations bill.

The reconciliation process starts with the Senate passing a budget resolution that assigns overall amounts. In a subsequent bill, committees would then decide what those amounts pay for. The process is moving fast: Senate Republican leadership could bring the budget resolution—the first step—before the full Senate next week, bypassing the Budget Committee to go straight to the Senate floor.

Because the Republicans’ majority in both houses is narrow and they cannot afford to lose many dissenters’ votes, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) is indicating that the bill will be “skinny”: it may include only the funding for ICE and Border Patrol, and no other Republican priorities. It is unclear how many years of funding the bill would seek to provide. “Some Republicans want to fund immigration enforcement for the rest of Trump’s term, and others have floated funding for up to 10 years,” Politico reported.

The Republican majority is hoping for a quick replay of the process that provided more than $170 billion in additional border and migration funding through 2029 through the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” That bill passed by a very narrow margin, and it remains unclear whether Republicans in both chambers will be as united this time. “Pots of money for ICE and Border Patrol ‘aren’t really popular things’ with Americans” right now, House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-Missouri) told Punchbowl News.

If the budget resolution goes to the Senate floor next week, the arcane “reconciliation” rules call for an hours-long, often overnight, session of votes on amendments. Schumer said that Democrats would use the so-called “vote-a-rama” procedure to hold Republicans’ “feet to the fire on DHS, on the war, on so many other issues.”

The leadership transition at DHS

Sworn in on March 24, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin is assuming command of a 260,000-person cabinet department where, by most accounts, morale is remarkably low.

“Low morale has plagued agencies across the federal government amid downsizing and policy shifts over the past year, but DHS conditions worsened sharply under former Secretary Kristi Noem,” current and former officials told Bloomberg Government. Noem and her special advisor, former Trump campaign official Corey Lewandowski, had bruised the agency with “heightened monitoring of employees, strict controls on spending, and rhetoric about eliminating parts of the department and firing ‘people who don’t like us,’” the Bloomberg report continued, with one DHS official speaking of “a real sense of paranoia” among the workforce. “You have to watch what you say and who you say it to—you don’t know who you can trust.”

A Washington Post investigation detailed allegations of contracting misconduct, political interference, and governance failures during Noem and Lewandowski’s tenure at DHS. These include giant contracts for private jets and advertising campaigns featuring Noem.

Exhaustion with the Department’s “chaotic, dangerous, and ineffective” management was a frequent theme of a deeply reported New York Times Magazine feature drawing on interviews with more than 80 current and former employees of DHS, its component agencies, and the Justice Department’s immigration court system.

Even agents ideologically sympathetic to strong enforcement expressed exhaustion, moral distress, and skepticism about sustainability. One former DHS executive gave the piece its title:........

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