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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Our March 20 Border Update may be delayed or truncated as we publish a new report during the same timeframe.

With Kristi Noem’s departure, turmoil continues at a partially shut-down DHS: Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s controversial tenure came to an abrupt end on March 5, just after some combative hearing appearances in the House and Senate and allegations of obstruction of the Department’s inspector-general. DHS, meanwhile, remains shut down amid an impasse in Congress.

Border wall coming to the Big Bend: CBP plans appear to call for the building of some physical border wall in Big Bend National Park, a wilderness area that sits in the quietest, least-populated part of the entire U.S.-Mexico border. A growing outcry among residents is decidedly bipartisan. Updates point to a proliferation of opposition to planned or ongoing barrier projects all along the length of the border.

ICE detention expansion, warehouses, and in-custody deaths: Ten people died in ICE’s migrant detention system in January and February. The sprawling tent encampment at Fort Bliss may be slated to close after three deaths and a measles outbreak. Alarming reports continue to emerge about conditions in the Dilley, Texas family detention center. Widespread and often bipartisan outrage is accompanying ICE’s plan, unconsulted with host communities, to establish a $38 billion network of “warehouse” detention centers.

ICE recruitment and training: Whistleblower reports allege, and documents confirm, that in its rush to grow quickly, ICE has cut training for recruits from 72 to 42 days. ICE and CBP spent at least $144 million on new weapons and ammunition in 2025.

Notes from Mexico: New reports on conditions in Mexico include a Refugees International investigation of the U.S. government’s third-country deportations, a University of Texas Strauss Center report on conditions in Mexican border cities, and a report from several U.S. and Mexican organizations about the population being deported into Mexico as “mass deportation” accelerates.

With Kristi Noem’s departure, turmoil continues at a partially shut-down DHS

Secretary Noem is out

As this Border Update was nearing completion on March 5, President Donald Trump announced that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem is departing her position. Trump wrote on his social media site that Noem will now serve as “Special Envoy for the ‘Shield of the Americas,’” a Western Hemisphere security initiative being inaugurated in Florida this weekend with a gathering of like-minded Latin American presidents.

Trump’s nominee to replace Noem at DHS is Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R). Mullin does not sit on the Senate Homeland Security Committee; he is an appropriator but not a member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security.

“The decision capped an embattled two-year arc for the former governor of South Dakota, in which she went from a contender for vice president to the first cabinet member to be ousted from Mr. Trump’s second stint in the White House,” the New York Times observed. Her departure came after many calls for an end to her tenure, especially after the violent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) operations in Minneapolis that killed two U.S. citizens in January. An impeachment resolution filed by Rep. Robin Kelly (D-IL) had 188 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, all Democrats.

Rough hearing appearances

On March 3 and 4, Noem was the sole witness in some particularly combative hearings before the Senate and House Judiciary Committees.

Some strong criticism came from Republicans. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), who is retiring this year, called Noem’s leadership “disastrous.” He confronted Noem directly on the agency’s aggressive operations in Minneapolis: “We’re beginning to get the American people to think that deporting people is wrong. It’s the exact opposite. The way you’re going about deporting them is wrong.”

Noem refused to retract her characterizations of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, U.S. citizens shot to death by ICE and Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis in January, as “domestic terrorists,” a claim that she had made after each incident. In the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin pressed Noem on this six times, but Noem offered only variations of “condolences” rather than a direct answer. Raskin noted that acting ICE director Todd Lyons had already testified he had no knowledge that either was a domestic terrorist.

Sen. John Kennedy (R-Louisiana) confronted Noem about a $220 million advertising campaign that included a subcontract awarded to Ben Yoho, husband of former DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin, for a company formed 11 days before it was selected.

Inspector General alleges obstruction

Hours before the Senate hearing, DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari released a letter to Congress outlining at least 11 investigations in which DHS leadership has denied his office access to records, calling the pattern “systematic obstruction” and, in the case of non-cooperation with a criminal investigation, “particularly egregious.”

The outcry is especially notable from Cuffari, an appointee from Donald Trump’s first term who has come under heavy fire for past ethical lapses and a decidedly non-aggressive approach to investigating wrongdoing at DHS agencies.

DHS set conditions on the Inspector-General’s access to a database in the criminal investigation; those conditions might have required disclosing details to people close to those being investigated. ICE revoked the Inspector-General Office’s (OIG) 10-year access to its Enforcement Integrated Database. Noem asked the OIG to provide a list of all pending investigations “so that she may consider whether any audits, inspections, or investigations should be terminated”—a very rarely invoked authority.

Tillis held up Cuffari’s letter at the hearing: “Does anybody have any idea how bad it has to be for the OIG in this agency to come out and do this publicly?”

Bovino under investigation

The Hennepin County, Minnesota (which includes Minneapolis) Attorney’s Office announced on March 2 that Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol sector chief who until January was reporting directly to Noem as an “at-large” commander of roving mass deportation efforts, is among 17 federal agents under criminal investigation for conduct during Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis. Evidence includes footage showing Bovino throwing a gas canister at protesters and observers on January 21.

The CBP Office of Professional Responsibility separately opened an internal investigation into Bovino’s reported antisemitic remarks about Minneapolis U.S. Attorney Daniel Rosen. Bovino was apparently frustrated with Rosen’s observance of Shabbat, at a time when he was pressing prosecutors to charge protesters more aggressively. Weeks later in Minneapolis, Bovino would declare that his agents killed a disarmed and subdued Alex Pretti because the Minneapolis nurse “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”

With Bovino’s departure from the spotlight, the administration’s “mass deportation” effort—now more closely managed by hardline White House “Border Czar” Tom Homan—will be at least as intense, but much less flashy and social media-ready. “No more Bovino bull—t. That show is shut down,” an unnamed Homeland Security official told CNN.

DHS, meanwhile, remains shut down, as Congress has not been able to agree on an appropriations bill for the agency since a February 13 deadline lapsed. (As explained in WOLA’s February 20 Border Update, DHS’s border and migration law enforcement components, ICE and CBP, remain funded and not shut down, as they are spending money from the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that Congress passed last July.)

Democrats continue to withhold support for the full-year DHS appropriation, demanding reforms to ICE and CBP after a rash of high-profile allegations of human rights abuses. In the House, Democratic leaders were urging “no” votes on a DHS funding bill as of March 3, arguing it contains no new restrictions. Republicans cited an “enhanced terror threat” following Donald Trump’s attacks on Iran as they demanded that Democrats yield and allow DHS to be fully funded. In the Senate, where at least seven Democrats would have to vote with Republicans to break a filibuster, only Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania) appears willing to advance the bill.

Border wall coming to the Big Bend

Amid plans to build what it called a “smart wall” barrier in the remote Big Bend region of far west Texas, CBP has reclassified a planned 111-mile segment as a “primary border wall system,” awarding construction contracts with a 2028 completion target. This area includes Big Bend National Park, a wilderness site along the Rio Grande that is a major tourist attraction. A nearby 175-mile segment is also slated to receive a so-called “smart wall” barrier.

Using an authority granted by the REAL ID Act of 2005, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem signed waivers of 28 federal laws, including the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, to allow wall construction to proceed. “This is the biggest incursion on the integrity of national parks since the construction of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park more than a century ago,” Bob Krumenaker, a former superintendent of Big Bend National Park, told Texas Monthly.

The Big Bend sector, the least populated part of the entire border, is the quietest of Border Patrol’s nine U.S.-Mexico border sectors. 3,096 of Border Patrol’s 237,538 migrant apprehensions in 2025 (1.3%) took place in the sector, which incorporates 517 of the border’s 1,950 miles.

“A border wall in the Big Bend region is an absurd, wasteful, counterproductive idea that is loathed by nearly every person who has ever lived or visited there,” wrote Isaac Saul, the founder of the nonpartisan political newsletter Tangle, who lives in the region. Saul pointed out that any border-crosser who made it into the United States in this sparsely populated area would “have nowhere to go.” He noted that when the Brewster County judge, a Republican, recently pledged to a room full of Republicans that he would oppose wall construction in the area, he got a standing ovation.

Even Trump-supporting Republicans in the Big Bend area are largely opposed to building a wall there, Texas Monthly, the Big Bend Sentinel, and others reported. Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), who represents the region, texted Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson, “175 miles of smart wall approved. I’m pushing back against a physical wall because we already have a natural one.”

Dodson and Terrell County Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland, joined by Presidio and Hudspeth County sheriffs, signed a statement urging federal authorities to consult with them before building physical border security infrastructure in their part of the Big Bend region. Interviewed by the Big Bend Sentinel, both were skeptical of the “smart wall” branding, with Dodson suspecting it means a traditional steel-bollard wall after stopping contractors and asking them directly.

“This should not be a partisan issue,” Cleveland, a former Border Patrol agent-in-charge with 44,000 Facebook followers, wrote. “A wall accompanied by stadium lighting and an extensive road network would permanently alter one of the last truly unspoiled stretches of borderland in the country.”

Reports of alarm about proposed wall construction are proliferating along the border’s entire length.

In Brownsville, Texas, about 50 protesters gathered to oppose CBP’s ongoing project to install what may eventually be 265 miles of cylindrical buoys down the center of the Rio Grande. “The first 17 miles of buoys will cost $96 million and will include fiber optic technology to detect if someone or something is on the objects,” Sandra Sánchez of Border Report reported.

Elsewhere in southeast Texas’s Rio Grande Valley region, CBP is clearing vegetation from islands in the Rio Grande near Roma, in Starr County. “CBP is planning to build a border barrier through Roma and place buoys in the river to block people from crossing, according to online maps,” Inside Climate News reported. At the Texas Observer, Scott Nicol recalled that past legislative language protecting historic and natural sites in the Rio Grande Valley was not included in the 2025 “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that provided $46.5 billion for new border wall construction, which places those “irreplaceable border treasures” at risk.

In Laredo, where the Trump administration is preparing to seize private riverfront property through eminent domain proceedings, Mayor Victor Treviño told a newly convened advisory panel: “No. 1, the city does not support border walls, especially in sensitive areas. No. 2, the city has chosen to negotiate with the federal government under the guidance of outside legal counsel.”

In the biodiverse San Rafael Valley in southeast Arizona, the Sky Island Alliance projects that plans to build an additional 24.7 miles of border wall may reduce wildlife crossings by 86 percent. This could eliminate jaguars, only five of which have been documented in Arizona since 2011, from the United States.

In San Diego County, California, hikers planning to walk the 3,000-mile Pacific Crest Trail to the Canadian border can no longer begin their journey by touching the border wall, which is now off-limits as part of a “National Defense Area,” the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. The Trump administration considers a 60-foot fringe of public land near the border to be part of a military base, and is prosecuting “trespassers.”

In the nearby Jacumba Wilderness along the California-Baja California border, scientists and conservationists worry about the effect of new barriers on the migration of bighorn sheep.

Writing about the explosion of CBP and ICE contracting at the New Yorker, Garrett Graff noted that CBP has issued $11.4 billion in new border barrier construction contracts since Donald Trump took office, “part of a goal of hitting two hundred and fifty miles of additional barriers by September.”

ICE detention expansion, warehouses, and in-custody deaths

10 deaths so far this year

Ten people being held in ICE’s migrant detention system died there during the first two months of 2026, a pace of in-custody deaths that is far beyond record-setting. News of the latest three emerged in late February and early March.

Emmanuel Damas, a 56-year-old Haitian asylum seeker who was being held at the Florence Correctional Center in Arizona, died on March 2 at a Scottsdale hospital from complications of an infected tooth. He first reported tooth pain on February 12 and was given only ibuprofen; a fellow detainee reportedly heard staff “laughing and saying he was faking” as Damas cried for help. Ultimately, he collapsed and went septic. ICE had arrested Damas, who entered the United States using the Biden administration’s Humanitarian Parole program and had a pending asylum claim, in Boston last September, and held him at Florence for four months. Arizona Daily Star reporter Emily Bregel cited a January report from the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project that had already documented dental care wait times of six months or more at Arizona facilities, with root canal treatments denied in favor of extraction only.

Alberto Gutiérrez Reyes, a citizen of Mexico, died at the ICE facility in Adelanto, California. His wife said he had diabetes and high cholesterol; “When my son went to go see him Sunday, my son goes every Sunday, he would tell me, ‘Mom, Dad’s skin is yellow. His face is yellow.’”

Jairo Garcia-Hernandez, a 27-year-old man from Guatemala being detained in Miami, died on February 16.

“There is no way to reconcile the claim,” expressed in ICE’s announcement of Gutiérrez Reyes’s death, “that ICE detention provides the best healthcare many detainees have ever received with what Emmanuel Damas experienced in the weeks before he died,” wrote immigration policy analyst Austin Kocher.

Kocher counts 39 deaths in ICE custody since the Trump administration began. That would make 29 in 2025, although Apurva Mahajan, Colleen Deguzman, and Lomi Kriel, writing for the Texas Tribune, counted 32 (which would make 42 deaths so far during the Trump administration). Nearly a quarter of their count occurred in Texas.

Camp East Montana (Fort Bliss) under measles quarantine, may close

The Washington Post revealed that ICE is taking steps to close Camp East Montana, the sprawling facility at the Fort Bliss army base in El Paso, which for months has been the largest facility in ICE’s network of detention centers. Camp East Montana opened in August 2025, and the Post noted that it was “once seen as the model for a new breed of makeshift tent encampments.”

DHS said publicly that “no decisions have been made,” but the facility’s population has already declined to about 1,500, roughly half its peak in January 2026.

An internal ICE document indicates that the agency is drafting a letter to terminate the $1.24 billion contract with Acquisition Logistics LLC (a Virginia company, headquartered at a modest residence in the Richmond, Virginia suburbs, with no prior detention experience). No timeline or reason was given, although Acquisition Logistics’ contract was to run through September 2027.

At Camp East Montana, the Post’s Douglas MacMillan wrote, “detainees live in enormous white tents, each as long as two football fields. Inside, temporary walls divide the cavernous spaces into smaller pods… Because the pods are open on top, without ceilings, the conversations, outbursts, and cries of hundreds of people create a cacophony day and night.”

Camp East Montana is now under full quarantine through March 19 or........

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