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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Migrant encounter data: numbers remain low, though a spring uptick is likely: Border Patrol’s apprehensions of migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border remain at their lowest levels since about 1966 amid a shutdown of the right to asylum and fear of the Trump administration’s “mass deportation” crackdown. Encounters remain quite low in Mexico and Panama as well. Apprehensions inched up in February in what may be a seasonal springtime uptick.

DHS remains partially shut down as Republicans consider funding ICE and CBP for three years: Democratic legislators’ demands for reforms to the Homeland Security Department’s ICE and Border Patrol components have held up 2026 funding for all of DHS, even as those specific agencies have separate funding from the giant appropriation that Congress passed last July. Passage of a bill to fund everything but ICE and Border Patrol appears imminent, while Republican leaders are considering using the “reconciliation” budget maneuver to guarantee three years of funding for ICE and Border Patrol without reforms.

DHS has new management and lower profile, but the mission is unchanged: As Markwayne Mullin takes over as DHS secretary, Greg Bovino retires, and investigations look into allegations of unethical contracting practices, much coverage speculates that Mullin and White House “Border Czar” Tom Homan will be more effective in carrying out “mass deportation” but without the high-profile stunts and provocative rhetoric that marked the tenure of former secretary Kristi Noem. Mullin is pausing, for re-evaluation, a $38 billion plan to build a network of giant warehouses to detain people.

Deaths in ICE custody at record-setting pace: Fourteen people have died in ICE’s detention centers so far in 2026: one every six days, as concerns proliferate about abusive and neglectful conditions in the agency’s network of mostly contractor-run facilities.

Mounting evidence of harm to children: Data show that at least 11,000 U.S. citizen children had their parents arrested or deported during the Trump administration’s first seven months. The population held at the Dilley, Texas family detention center has dropped sharply amid a major public outcry about conditions and about the idea of “family detention.” DHS detained and deported at least 363 pregnant, postpartum, or nursing mothers during the first 13 months of the Trump administration.

Updates about deportations: Because of the sharp drop in border encounters and the gradual nature of ICE’s increasing capacity inside the United States, the Trump administration has been deporting fewer people to Mexico than the Biden administration. However, Mexico has been receiving about 1,000 people per month deported from third countries, nearly half of them citizens of Cuba. Costa Rica has agreed to accept removals of about 25 third-country citizens per week.

Asylum and TPS, in the courts and Congress: The Supreme Court heard arguments about “metering” asylum seekers at the border and birthright citizenship, and will soon hear arguments about the Trump administration’s attempt to end Temporary Protected Status for citizens of Haiti. Another conservative appellate court has upheld the administration’s memo ordering mandatory detention for potentially millions of people who arrived in the United States by crossing the border improperly.

Border walls and buoys: Three miles of new border wall are now being built every week. Links to coverage, going west to east, point to activity at the terminus of the Continental Divide Trail; on Mt. Cristo Rey west of El Paso; in Big Bend National Park; in Laredo; and in the Rio Grande Valley.

Migrant encounter data: numbers remain low, though a spring uptick is likely

On March 20, just after WOLA published its most recent Border Update, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released data on migration and enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border through February 2026. It showed U.S. authorities’ encounters with migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border remaining near 60-year lows.

The sharp decline is the result of the Trump administration’s suspension of the right to seek asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, which remains before the federal courts, and a climate of fear that “mass deportation” operations have spread among migrants within the United States.

During the first five months of fiscal year 2026 (which began in October 2025), Border Patrol reported apprehending an average of 6,897 people per month near the U.S.-Mexico border. That is the lowest monthly average since 1966.

Despite this, a March 26 Federal Register notice from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proclaimed that “an actual or imminent mass influx of aliens is arriving at the southern border of the United States and presents urgent circumstances requiring a continued federal response.” That notice is “a legal trigger that expands federal authority, especially the ability to deputize state and local law enforcement under an ‘immigration emergency,’” immigration attorney Chris Thomas explained to Forbes.

Border Patrol’s apprehensions of migrants did increase in February, for the first time in five months, to 6,603 from 6,074 in January (9%). As has been the pattern since the Trump administration began, most of those apprehended were from Mexico (69%), and 88 percent were from Mexico or the three northernmost Central American countries (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador).

The January-to-February increase probably indicates a reversion to a seasonal pattern that appears typical of non-asylum-seeking migration. This is evident in the graphic below, which depicts Border Patrol apprehensions by geographic sector since October 1999.

A close look at that chart shows that from the beginning of the century until the mid-2010s, migrant apprehension totals exhibited regular spikes in apprehensions each spring, followed by drops during the hot summer months, a leveling off or a small increase in the fall, and another drop during the cold winter months.

That pattern became blurred starting in the mid-2010s as asylum seekers began to make up a larger share of the migrant population. Unlike migrants who seek to evade Border Patrol, people seeking to apply for asylum aim to turn themselves in to CBP officers or Border Patrol agents. As that method of entry does not involve long desert or wilderness journeys on the U.S. side of the border, asylum seekers have tended to arrive regardless of season.

While it is a small data sample, the chart of the last 13 months’ Border Patrol apprehensions further above points to a possible return to a seasonal pattern: numbers inched up during the spring of 2025 (though not dramatically, as the new administration launched its initial crackdown), fell during the summer, rose in the fall, and fell again in the winter.

If this “seasonal” hypothesis is correct, then CBP will report increased migrant encounters in March through May, and we may even see reports speculating that the Trump administration’s border crackdown is softening. However, the non-asylum-seeking migrant population is likely to decline again in the summer.

In February, the increase in Border Patrol apprehensions between the border’s ports of entry (official border crossings) was offset by a drop in migrant encounters at the ports of entry themselves, from 3,665 to 3,018 encounters. As a result, the parent agency CBP—which incorporates both Border Patrol and Office of Field Operations personnel at the ports—saw 108 fewer migrants in February (a shorter month) than in January.

Of those who ended up in CBP custody in February, 90 percent were single adults, the largest proportion of adults since the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic in mid-2020. The drop in the number of families and children owes to the unavailability of asylum: while single adults seek asylum too, the vast majority of families and children arriving at the border were asylum seekers, not people seeking to avoid Border Patrol in the desert.

With no possibility of applying for protection at the U.S. border, the share of families and children has plummeted. So far in fiscal 2026, just 14 percent of people apprehended between the ports of entry by Border Patrol have been children or families.

That is the smallest share since 2013. A year after that, in the spring of 2014, the Obama administration was surprised by a large-scale arrival of families and children from Central America; significant numbers of asylum seekers, particularly families and children, were a large part of the migrant population from then until the Trump administration’s January 20, 2025 proclamation suspending asylum.

In February, for the fourth straight month, the Rio Grande Valley Sector in southeast Texas ranked first in Border Patrol apprehensions (1,377) among the nine sectors into which the agency divides the U.S.-Mexico border. Apprehensions increased there by 8 percent over January. The fastest month-on-month growth, though, occurred in the El Paso Sector, at the opposite end of Texas and New Mexico, where apprehensions rose by 22 percent over January, totaling 1,264.

Migrant encounters remain near longtime lows further south along the U.S.-bound migration route. Through January 2026, Mexico’s authorities have reported encounters at their lowest level in about 15 years.

Since March 2025, Mexico has apprehended between 3,900 and 6,000 migrants per month, down from totals that exceeded 120,000 during a spring 2024 crackdown. Most have been from Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras, or Cuba.

Some signals point to a modest increase in non-Mexican migration in Mexico.

In Veracruz, Mexican authorities found 229 mostly Central American migrants packed into a truck, described by CBS News as “the first such encounter in months.”

In Mexico’s southern border-zone city of Tapachula, Chiapas, about 500 migrants staged a so-called “caravan” protest, departing northward from the city. As with all caravans over the past seven years, their participants have almost zero hope of reaching the U.S.-Mexico border; instead, they are pressuring the Mexican government to permit them to find work elsewhere in the country while the Mexican government’s backlogged agencies process their asylum or other immigration claims.

CBS, citing the Associated Press, noted that shelters in southern Mexico “have once again begun to take in Central Americans heading north, although in very small numbers.”

In the treacherous Darién Gap region between Panama and Colombia, where migrant encounters peaked at over 80,000 in August 2023, migration has all but stopped. Between April 2025 and February 2026, Panamanian authorities reported an average of just 28 northbound encounters per month.

Of 53 migrants reported in January and February, all but 5 were from Venezuela, Colombia, or Ecuador, indicating a near-total halt to U.S-bound migration from continents beyond the Americas.

DHS remains partially shut down as Republicans consider funding ICE and CBP for three years

Much of DHS has been shut down since February 13, as Senate Democrats—demanding reforms to DHS law enforcement agencies in the wake of the January killings of two U.S. citizen protesters in Minneapolis—have refused to vote to allow debate to begin on the Department’s 2026 budget appropriation. Under the Senate’s “filibuster” rule, 60 senators must vote to allow a bill to move forward; Republicans hold 53 seats, so at most seven Democrats’ objections are enough to block a bill.

The DHS shutdown is partial because Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and CBP have a mammoth amount of separate funding available through 2029 as a result of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that Congress passed last July. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, revealed that 62 percent of DHS employees have been getting paid during the shutdown, including 86 percent of ICE personnel, 85 percent of CBP and Border Patrol, and 85 percent of the Coast Guard.

However, only 4 percent of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers have been receiving paychecks. The resulting chaos at airports as TSA personnel quit and called in sick led President Donald Trump to order ICE agents to help screen passengers, and then to issue a dubiously legal executive order to pay TSA workers.

As noted in WOLA’s March 20 Border Update, slow-moving negotiations on ICE reforms had appeared to show Republicans giving a bit of ground on body-worn cameras, limiting enforcement at sensitive locations, visible officer identification, and congressional oversight visits to detention facilities. However, they remained unmoved on other issues, like agents’ masking and entering homes without judicial warrants.

On March 27, as legislators prepared to exit Washington for a two-week Easter recess, the Senate passed a bill—similar to what Democratic leaders had been proposing while negotiations over reforms continued—that would fund all of DHS except ICE and Border Patrol for the rest of the fiscal year. House Republicans rejected that bill later in the day, as President Trump told Fox News, “In my opinion, you can’t have a bill that’s not going to fund ICE.” The DHS shutdown persists.

As of April 2, it appeared that House Republicans had reversed themselves, with Trump’s support, and endorsed passing a bill without funding for ICE and Border Patrol. This is an outcome of a general perception that the Republicans, amid a spectacle of disarray and infighting, were bearing most of the political damage from the shutdown. “Let’s be abundantly clear—this record-breaking, 44-day DHS funding impasse has turned into a political disaster for Republicans,” read a multi-author March 30 piece at Punchbowl News, which focuses on congressional politics. “At one point, Republicans seemed to be breaking through with their message that Democrats instigated the DHS fight over undocumented immigrants. But now, House and Senate Republicans are publicly warring with each other over who’s at fault for last week’s debacle.”

Trump called on congressional Republicans to send him a “reconciliation” bill by June 1 that would, among other priorities like the Iran war, fund ICE and Border Patrol (if not all of DHS) for the remainder of his term. The term “reconciliation” refers to an infrequently invoked budget maneuver that—to simplify a complex process—allows a bill with strictly budgetary implications to skirt the filibuster and pass by a simple majority. This was the vehicle used to pass last year’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” It has never been used before as a substitute for a regular annual appropriations bill.

This is an idea that Senate Republicans have been floating over the past two weeks. “We’re taking this off the table. That’s enough of this with the Democrats,” Sen. John Hoeven (R-North Dakota), an appropriator, said on March 30. “What’s coming next is going to supercharge deportations,” Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Missouri) said in Senate floor remarks.

As the midterm elections draw near and President Trump’s popularity wanes, a reconciliation bill’s passage by June 1, if at all, is far from guaranteed. “A few Republicans, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former party leader, have expressed reservations about funding agencies this way,” the New York Times observed. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida), an immigration policy hawk, said, “This idea that they’ll get funded through a reconciliation package is a pipe dream. We’re not going to get a reconciliation package done,” according to Migrant Insider.

DHS has new management and lower profile, but the mission is unchanged

On March 23 the Senate confirmed Markwayne Mullin, a senator from Oklahoma, as Trump’s pick to succeed Kristi Noem as Secretary of Homeland Security. Mullin lost one Republican vote—that of Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), with whom he has feuded—but gained two Democratic votes, those of John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania) and Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico).

Much press coverage indicated that, though Mullin is no less conservative or loyal to Donald Trump than Noem was, he is expected to carry out the administration’s hardline border and immigration agenda in a more low-key, less flashy, and less controversial manner.

Among immediate changes at the Department:

Rescinding Noem’s policy of requiring the Secretary’s personal approval of all contracts over $100,000—a threshold that held up about 31 percent of all DHS contracts. Mullin is raising the “secretary’s signoff” level to $25 million, covering about 1 percent of contracts.

Bringing several members of his Senate staff to the Department, and reinstating Troy Edgar, who had been deputy DHS secretary until being nominated to be ambassador to El Salvador (still pending Senate confirmation).

“Department officials believe Mr. Mullin will allow heads of agencies like ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection to have more latitude to make key decisions,” unnamed officials told the New York Times.

As a nominee, Mullin told senators that he would instruct ICE agents not to enter residences without a judicial warrant, except in cases of hot pursuit. ICE has been using self-issued “administrative warrants” to enter homes when the agency believes that undocumented immigrants are inside. If the new Secretary has announced that policy change, though, WOLA has not seen it.

Pausing a plan to build a network of giant warehouses in which to hold detained migrants, in order to re-evaluate it (see below).

Career DHS management is relieved to see Noem go, reported Anna Giaritelli of the Washington Examiner. Mullin “has the opportunity to be like a prince or knight in shining armor as he comes riding over the hill and saves everybody from this freaking chaos,” a senior DHS official told Giaritelli on March 25. “All he has to do, literally, is put things back in a normal order.”

“Pay-to-play” allegations

In particular, Noem and her close advisor, Corey Lewandowski, are under scrutiny about alleged contracting irregularities. Lewandowski, who managed Donald Trump’s campaign for some of 2016, served as a “special government employee”—a status that is meant to last for 130 days—but enjoyed significant power at the top of DHS.

NBC News reported that, during the 2024-25 presidential transition, Lewandowski allegedly told George Zoley, founder of the GEO Group—a massive private detention company—that he wanted payment (a “success fee”) in exchange for protecting contracts. Zoley refused twice, calling it improper, and two GEO contracts subsequently shrank, and some of its migrant detention facilities have remained unused despite the administration’s “mass deportation” buildup.

Lewandowski denies this and other allegations detailed in the NBC News investigation.........

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