Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: October 3, 2025
Adam Isacson
Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: October 3, 2025
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:
- Government shutdown projected to have a light impact on border and migration enforcement: Congress failed to pass a budget by September 30, triggering the first U.S. government shutdown since 2019. While all federal employees face delayed pay, nearly all DHS personnel—including over 93% of CBP and ICE staff—are deemed essential and are required to continue working. Military personnel deployed to the border will also continue operations, though National Guard members in particular risk hardship in a prolonged shutdown. Immigration courts may be forced to postpone cases if the shutdown drags on.
- Abuses continue to accompany “mass deportation” operations: The Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago has led to more than 800 arrests, highly visible federal deployments, violent response to protests at an ICE facility in Broadview, and a late-night raid that traumatized residents of an apartment complex. Similar incidents in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, and Washington, DC show a pattern of increasingly aggressive enforcement. Detention numbers remain near record highs, with growing shares of non-criminal migrants held in poor or secretive conditions. Civil liberties concerns are mounting over warrantless arrests, data-mining surveillance tools, and the Supreme Court’s green light for racial profiling.
- Notes from Mexico: About 1,200 mostly Cuban migrants left Tapachula, Chiapas on October 1 in a caravan bound not for the United States but for Mexico City. Meanwhile, Mexico’s former migration chief issued a court-ordered apology for the 2023 Ciudad Juárez detention fire that killed 40, which victims’ families condemned as inadequate. At the border, officials continue to block asylum processing as Border Patrol sought to debunk smugglers’ online disinformation.
THE FULL UPDATE:
Government shutdown projected to have a light impact on border and migration enforcement
The U.S. government’s 2025 fiscal year ended on September 30, and Congress was unable to agree on an appropriations bill to keep the government running. Until that changes, the federal government is “shut down” for the first time since 2019. Government employees are working without pay, although those deemed “essential” are required to report to work. Federal employees receive back pay after shutdowns conclude; however, a prolonged shutdown can cause financial hardship for those without significant savings.
Approximately 95 percent of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees, or nearly 258,000 workers, are expected to continue working as the government shuts down, as the Department’s contingency plan designates them as essential. That includes over 93 percent of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) employees, whose agencies are flush with cash from the giant “big beautiful bill” appropriation that Congress passed in early July.
At the U.S.-Mexico border, Border Patrol agents and CBP officers will continue working during the shutdown. Border Patrol agents will also remain in Chicago and Portland, Oregon, where the Trump administration sent agents “due to violence outside ICE facilities” late last week, the Washington Examiner reported.
The Defense Department, listing the U.S.-Mexico border as one of its top priorities, announced that military personnel deployed there will not be furloughed during the government shutdown. Active-duty troops and reservists will continue their border activities, with pay halted after October 15, according to the Washington Examiner. That may be a major hardship for many National Guard personnel, who typically serve part-time and are already pulled away from their civilian jobs. The Examiner, citing the Defense Department, noted that “a total of 8,500 military personnel assigned to the Joint Task Force Southern Border remain on duty.”
Elsewhere in the immigration system, a prolonged shutdown could force the immigration court system (Executive Office for Immigration Review, within the Department of Justice) to reschedule “tens of thousands of cases,” according to the American Immigration Council.
Abuses continue to accompany “mass deportation” operations
Chicago
The Trump administration’s “Operation Midway Blitz” immigration crackdown, launched on September 8 in Chicago, continues at an intense pace. Arrests now exceed 800, according to DHS. Border Patrol agents and other federal law enforcement personnel, their faces often covered, were highly visible in the city’s downtown and tourist areas over the weekend of September 27-28. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) called them “jackbooted thugs roaming around a peaceful downtown.”
The administration announced that it is deploying 100 National Guard troops to protect federal facilities. Those likely include an ICE processing center in the Chicago suburb of Broadview, which has been the site of regular protests and escalatory official responses. Local officials, including the mayor and police chief, have voiced alarm at the violent nature of agents’ response to protesters, particularly their liberal use of tear gas and chemical agents, and have opened three criminal investigations.
Incidents under local investigation include two hit-and-run vehicle strikes of pedestrians, and what appears to be the totally unprovoked firing of a pepper ball at a CBS News Chicago reporter inside her vehicle on September 28. “People were peacefully standing behind the fence and for absolutely no reason, pepper balls were fired” on September 26, a pastor on the scene at Broadview told Reuters.
“The relentless deployment of tear gas, pepper spray, and mace at the ICE facility is endangering nearby village residents, harming police officers, harming firefighters, and American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights,” said Mayor Katrina Thompson. “I was offended,” said Police Chief Thomas Mills, citing ICE agents verbally abusing his officers. “I’ve worked with a lot of federal agencies on criminal investigations, that has never happened. We may not have always seen eye to eye, but we’ve always been able to work it out for the good of the community.”
“This is not Putin’s Russia,” Mayor Thompson added. “This is America.”
Nearly 300 ICE, Border Patrol, and other federal agents conducted a late-night raid on September 30, replete with military weapons and tactics, in an apartment building on Chicago’s South Shore, leading to the arrest of 37 people accused of drug trafficking, weapons crimes, and immigration violations. Residents and neighbors described it as a “traumatic event” as agents in camouflage uniforms and carrying heavy weapons pulled nearly every one of the building’s occupants from their apartments regardless of their age or state of undress, leaving many of the apartments badly ransacked, the local ABC affiliate and Chicago public radio reported. DHS claimed that the apartment’s neighborhood was “a location known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua members and their associates,” referring to the Venezuelan criminal organization, but provided no evidence to back up that assertion.
Eboni Watson, a neighbor, told ABC of hearing several flash-bang grenades. “‘They was terrified. The kids was crying. People was screaming. They looked very distraught. I was out there crying when I seen the little girl come around the corner, because they was bringing the kids down, too, had them zip tied to each other,’ Watson said. ‘That’s all I kept asking. What is the morality? Where’s the human? One of them literally laughed. He was standing right here. He said, ‘fthem kids.’’”
As dozens of onlookers watched and recorded, Border Patrol agents detained a family of asylum seekers from Guatemala while the children, aged eight and three, were playing in a fountain in Chicago’s lakefront Millennium Park on the afternoon of Sunday, September 28. Authorities sought to detain the family under a July 8 order to deny bond even to documented asylum seekers if they had entered U.S. territory without inspection. A federal judge ordered the release of the mother and kids on October 1, but the father is now detained in Texas. “There were a lot more people there [at the park], but the agents came directly to us because of how we look,” the mother told the Chicago Tribune. “It’s not fair.”
The Washington Post spoke to “four experts with decades of experience in criminal justice” who reviewed footage of the September 12 incident during which an ICE agent shot and killed a 38-year-old Mexican father, Silverio VIllegas-González, in the Chicago suburb of Franklin Park. They had strong criticisms of the way the agents chose to confront Villegas-González and their subsequent use of force.
“We don’t stop in front of the vehicle for routine stops,” said a senior Northern California police official. “That’s just an officer safety issue.” Another criticized agents’ decision to reach into a vehicle that might start moving and observed that shooting at the vehicle, as an agent did, is not “a reliable way of actually stopping that vehicle.” By hitting the driver, the agent “just created an uncontrolled, unguided missile.”
Other cities
In New York City, an ICE agent returned to duty on September 29, just three days after being caught on video grabbing a distraught Ecuadorian woman who was clinging to her detained husband, then roughly throwing her to the floor of a corridor at the 26 Federal Plaza building that houses Manhattan’s immigration court. ICE had announced on September 26 that the unnamed agent was “being relieved of current duties as we conduct a full investigation,” but he has been reinstated. The status of any investigation is unclear.
Four days later, citizen video caught ICE agents violently throwing two photojournalists to the ground in the Federal Plaza hallway. One had to be hospitalized. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) wrote on Twitter: “Masked ICE agents shoved and injured journalists today at Federal Plaza. One reporter left on a stretcher. This abuse of law-abiding immigrants and the reporters telling their stories must end. What the hell are we doing here?”
In Van Nuys, California, a 79-year-old car wash owner has filed a $50 million federal claim alleging he was body-slammed and detained by masked ICE and Border Patrol agents during a September 9 raid at his business. Rafie Allah Shouhed suffered multiple broken ribs, elbow injuries, and a traumatic brain injury, according to the claim, despite his attempts to show proof of his employees’ work authorization. The claim asserts that agents responded, “You don’t f— with ICE. We are here.”
In Chelsea, Massachusetts, Reuters reported, ICE dragged a Guatemalan permanent resident out of her car while she was accompanying a relative to an immigration court hearing, then threw her to the ground. “Reuters captured images of the woman on the ground, her hands pinned behind her back, being detained by federal agents while her son stood nearby crying.”
The New York Times looked at how Washington, DC has become “a testing ground for ICE,” as the agency arrested about 1,200 people between early August and mid-September, up from 85 between January 20 and the end of July. It largely did so by targeting immigrants during minor traffic stops alongside the city’s police force and the U.S. Park Police.
Profiling
Several Washington-based immigrant rights defense groups and Washington, DC citizens filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court seeking to stop practices like these, which they say rely on racial profiling. “In some instances, the racial profiling is blatant and explicit,” the suit reads, recounting several cases of agents holding citizens and legal residents for hours or more based on their appearance. Among examples is that of plaintiff José Escobar Molina:
Agents immediately handcuffed Mr. Escobar Molina, grabbed him by the arms and legs, and called him “illegal” repeatedly. When he responded that he has “papers” (in other words, immigration status), they replied, “No you don’t. You are illegal.” After the agents put Mr. Escobar Molina into a vehicle, when Mr. Escobar Molina told them again that he had “papers,” the driver of the car yelled at him, “Shut up, b—-! You’re illegal.”
At a Slate podcast, legal analysts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern recalled the September 8 Supreme Court ruling allowing immigration enforcement personnel to target individuals based solely on their apparent race, ethnicity, language, location, or employment while lower-court challenges proceed (see WOLA’s September 12 Border Update). In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh had stated that resulting stops of U.S. citizens would be “typically brief.” As cases of prolonged and abusive stops of citizens and residents accumulate, commentators are commonly referring to them with the ironic term “Kavanaugh stops.”
The New York Times identified at least 15 cases since January of U.S. citizens arrested or detained in immigration sweeps. They are usually Latino men mistakenly detained and questioned. Despite declaring their citizenship, many have been ignored, handcuffed, and held in immigration facilities without access to a lawyer or phone call. “You’ve got no rights here. You’re illegal, brother,” a Florida state trooper, recorded on mobile phone video, said to 18-year-old U.S. citizen Kenny Laynez-Ambrosio. Leonardo Garcia Venegas, who was born in Florida, was stopped twice in less than two months.
Gregory Bovino, the chief of Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector who is now a “commander-at-large” and the face of operations in Los Angeles and Chicago, faced criticism for comments he made to WBEZ public radio reporter Chip Mitchell. Shortly after agents chased a man, Mitchell asked Bovino why agents thought the man was undocumented. Bovino replied, “There’s many different factors that go into something like that. It would be agent experience, intelligence that indicates there’s illegal alienage in a particular place or location. Then obviously the particular characteristics of an individual, how they look. How do they look compared to, say, you?” Mitchell is a middle-aged White man. “How do they appear in relation to what you or other people look like?”
Gov. Pritzker accused Bovino’s forces of “harassing people for not being white.” Bovino said that Mitchell took his comments out of context, calling them “grossly inaccurate,” but WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times produced the recording and transcript.
Bovino was at the center of another news story, from his time heading the mass-deportation operation in Los Angeles over the summer. The acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California in Sacramento, career prosecutor Michele Beckwith, told the New York Times that she was fired for insisting that Border Patrol agents obey an injunction (not applicable to Los Angeles) prohibiting agents from carrying out indiscriminate raids in central California.
Her firing occurred shortly after she issued that warning to Bovino. The Times reported that on July 15, “she emailed Mr. Bovino to reiterate she expected ‘compliance with court orders and the Constitution.’ Hours later, her work cellphone went dark. Then her computer did, too. She checked her personal email account,” where she got a message—six hours after sending a message to Bovino—informing her of her immediate firing from the Department of Justice after 15 years of service.
Bovino shared with the Times a statement: “The former Acting US Attorney’s email suggesting that the United States Border Patrol does not ALWAYS abide by the Constitution revealed a bias against law enforcement.” (In fact, federal judges in two cases this year have found the behavior of agents under Bovino’s command to be at odds with the Constitution.) The Los Angeles Times noted, “Two days later on July 17, Bovino and his agents moved into Sacramento, conducting a raid at a Home Depot south of downtown.”
Detention
The latest numbers from ICE, released on September 25 and current as of September 21, show a population of 59,762 in the agency’s network of detention facilities, a number that may exclude many currently held at some state governments’ new detention sites. The overall population number remains slightly down from the 61,226 detained people noted in ICE’s August 29 report, which was likely a record.
Of the 46,015 in detention on September 21 who ICE had arrested in the U.S. interior, 36 percent had no criminal record, up from 6 percent at the end of the Biden administration. That category exceeded the other two reported statuses (34% “convicted criminal” and 30% “pending charges”). This is the first time that migrants with no criminal record have been the largest category during the Trump administration, according to immigration data analyst Austin Kocher.
The Guardian reported on deplorable conditions at a new, hastily opened, and not fully licensed detention center, run by the ICE contractor CoreCivic, in California City, California. Detained people cited a lack of access to hygiene supplies, inadequate food and medications, chronically backed-up toilets and sinks, and mistreatment by staff, including threats of solitary confinement. “This place is built to break us,” said a detained person from Cambodia. “There is nothing but harassment and torture here. It’s inhumane, unsanitary, and a health hazard every single day… Please, please help us, please.”
A Huffington Post investigation by Matt Shuham highlighted the Trump administration’s expansion of a network of state-run immigration detention centers, with the massive facility that Florida opened in the Everglades as a prototype. These detention sites are operating under murky legal authority, routinely restrict detained people’s access to legal counsel, and have notoriously harsh conditions, while those held there often fail to turn up in ICE’s locator database and are effectively missing. Reports include lack of medical care, sanitation failures, exposure to extreme elements as punishment, and hunger strikes. Similar facilities are popping up in Texas, Nebraska, Louisiana, and Indiana.
“Would the world know if someone died in Alligator Alcatraz?” Shuham asked, using the name that Florida’s government uses to refer to its Everglades facility. “After at least one medical emergency last month, when a man collapsed at the site, attorneys and activists aren’t so sure.” Two of those interviewed called the Florida facility a “black site.”
ICE is transferring many in detention to other facilities across the country, despite available space at nearby sites, the Los Angeles Times reported. The practice degrades detained people’s access to legal representation and medical care. Some are being moved multiple times within a short period. “Transfers have been used as a retaliatory tactic for those who make requests, file complaints, or stage protests such as hunger strikes,” noted reporter Gabrielle Lamarr Lemee. Between January and July, 12 percent of those in the detention system had been moved at least four times, up from 6 percent during the same period in 2024.
Miguel Ángel García, who was shot by a sniper while being held in a vehicle outside a Dallas ICE facility, died of his wounds on September 30. He is the second fatal victim of the September 24 incident. Brought to the United States from Mexico as a child, García was 31, and his wife is expecting their fifth child. Juan Proaño of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) told the Washington Post that while he lay unconscious for the previous several days, “García’s wife was allowed twice daily visits for two hours while a Department of Homeland Security officer guarded her husband’s hospital bed, and that officers kept soft restraints on his arms and shackled him.”
Cybersecurity and DHS data mining
ICE has purchased access to surveillance tools from contractor Penlink, known as Tangles and Webloc, which track the locations of hundreds of millions of mobile phones every day, including data from social media, according to 404 Media. The outlet has broken several stories about ICE data technology purchases that raise concerns about privacy and civil liberties. “The Biden Administration shut down DHS’s location data purchases after an inspector general found that DHS had broken the law. Every American should be concerned that Trump’s hand-picked security force is once again buying and using location data without a warrant,” read a statement to 404 Media from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon).
In-depth analyses
- A New York Times Magazine piece by Bruce Schoenfeld discussed the tension between the Los Angeles Dodgers and their Latino fan base since ICE raids increased in the city in June. The team’s initially “strangely quiet” stance on the issue led to backlash and accusations of betrayal.
- A report from the Migration Policy Institute documented the Trump administration’s radical expansion of expedited removal, a 29-year-old procedure, from a border-focused process to a nationwide means of fast-tracking asylum seekers’ cases and deporting most of them. Expedited removal “could, in theory, be applied to at least 2.5 million noncitizens,” estimate authors Muzaffar Chishti and Kathleen Bush-Joseph. The number includes asylum seekers and individuals granted temporary protections, such as Temporary Protected Status and humanitarian parole, that the Trump administration has revoked.
- At his “Huddled Masses” column at the Bulwark, Adrián Carrasquillo highlighted the increase in detainee deaths since the Trump administration began. “They’re incarcerating people and allowing them to die, not providing medical facilities. There are no standards. It’s horrific,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington), the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, told Carrasquillo. The column cited body camera footage of a September 4 arrest of a documented migrant in upstate New York, in which a Border Patrol agent discussed how he routinely denies detainees permission to leave cells, even for medical issues, concluding, “They’re animals anyway. That’s what I would tell my kids all the time.”
- Writing for Workday Magazine and the American Prospect, Sarah Lazare contended that the Chicago crackdown has created fear and intimidation among workers, hindering their efforts to improve working conditions and to organize for labor protections.
- At Vox, Christian Paz discussed the September 24 shooting at the Dallas immigration facility, drawing attention to Democratic Party politicians’ cautious, “splintered” response, even as President Trump and other Republicans pushed talking points blaming Democrats’ past criticism of ICE for inspiring the violence. “Republicans are all-in on ICE, while Democrats are coming to realize that they need to decide what to say, and what to propose to do, about the agency,” Paz concluded.
- At her newsletter, former Biden administration official Andrea Flores discussed the Democratic Party’s lack of focus on comprehensive immigration reform, asylum policy, and border issues. “The Biden administration failed to confront the Republican governors busing migrants to Democratic states. They chose not to use their power and resources to direct new arrivals toward communities that needed workers and were willing to host them.” She contrasted that to Donald Trump’s far clearer anti-immigration vision, focused on restrictionist policies. Flores called for a more inclusive approach to immigration that addresses economic hardships faced by voters.
Notes from Mexico
“Caravan” protest in Chiapas
About 1,200 migrants, the majority of them citizens of Cuba, set out on foot from Mexico’s southern border-zone city of Tapachula, in the state of Chiapas, in a so-called “caravan” protest. The intended destination of this journey, which began on October 1, is not the United States: it is Mexico City.
Reporting from Tapachula, Bryan Avelar of Spain’s El País noted that the “Trump effect”—the fear of the anti-immigrant climate in the United States—has made Mexico the place where “caravan” participants now wish to settle. “And why would I want to go to the United States? They hate us there!” said a woman from Cuba.
Instead, participants, who appear to be leaderless and to have organized themselves on social media platforms, are prodding the Mexican government to speed the issuance of documentation to live and work in Mexico, and to leave Chiapas, Mexico’s poorest state. Corruption is an obstacle, even in asylum cases, Avelar reported: “According to migrants, the slowness of the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance is due to a corruption network: outside the facilities, there are always one or two lawyers offering to expedite the process in exchange for a fee that can vary from 3,000 to 20,000 Mexican pesos ($150 to $1,000).”
Humanitarian aid organizations have observed an increase in the number of migrants establishing more permanent lives in Mexico, as noted by Mie Hoejris Dahl in a piece at the New Humanitarian. “Before, we didn’t see children enrolling in school,” said Joanna Williams of the Kino Border Initiative in Nogales. “There is more permanence now.” The article notes that the Trump administration’s foreign aid cuts forced a 60 percent cut in funding for UNHCR’s Mexico operations, which assist many humanitarian and migrant integration efforts, between February and June of this year.
Ciudad Juárez fire apology
The former head of the Mexican government’s National Migration Institute (INM), Francisco Garduño, issued a public apology to the victims of a March 2023 fire at the Ciudad Juárez immigrant detention station, in compliance with a court ruling. The fire killed 40 citizens of countries other than Mexico as INM guards vacated the facility with the migrants locked inside. Garduño, as the agency’s head, had faced homicide charges for the incident, but those were reduced to a minor offense requiring a court-ordered public apology.
“Reducing the responsibility of the former head of the INM to simple formal and administrative omissions is, for the victims and their families, an incomprehensible offense, a denial of the very seriousness of the events, of the value of the lives of the people who died there,” read a statement from the Fundación para la Justicia, which represents several of the victims. The Fundación called it “a case of selective justice and protection of the hierarchical structure.”
23-year-old Wilson Juárez Hernández, who suffered neural damage from smoke inhalation and cannot speak or walk properly, told Garduño “that he knew his apology was for his own personal benefit, as it would free him from criminal prosecution,” La Verdad de Juárez reported. “The difference between you and me, Garduño, is that you can walk.” Added a relative of one of the deceased, “We cannot accept an apology until there is a thorough investigation into what happened and who was responsible.”
MSF leaving Tamaulipas
Doctors Without Borders (MSF), one of the few migrant aid groups operating in Tamaulipas, regarded as Mexico’s most dangerous border state, will be ending its assistance project in Reynosa and Matamoros after eight years. MSF cited a need to reorganize its presence, in part a consequence of reduced migration to the United States since the Trump administration’s crackdowns began.
U.S. gun trafficking agreement with Mexico
The U.S. and Mexican governments announced a new initiative, “Mission Firewall,” that will take steps to address southbound weapons trafficking from the United States into Mexico. Measures include increased information sharing, more southbound inspections, and expanded Mexican access to a secure database called eTrace. “U.S. federal authorities in 2023 seized more than 1,100 pistols and rifles being smuggled to Mexico through southbound land U.S. ports of entry,” noted Border Report. “This year, that number is less than 600, according to Customs and Border Protection data.”
Border Patrol cites smugglers’ disinformation
Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector held a press conference in Spanish to seek to debunk misinformation spread by Mexican migrant smugglers on social media. The misleading messaging claims that the U.S. border is open and that new asylum laws allow for safe, easy entry. One viral video claims that, as of September 21, U.S. borders are open to migrants who have valid passports, lack significant tattoos, and can prove that they are fleeing their countries of origin. Another shows people covered with some sort of mesh, billed as a “new technique” for crossing the Rio Grande without being detected by radar.
The Trump administration continues to suspend all asylum processing at the border, though a court ruling allows people who arrive at the border claiming fear of return to their countries to seek “withholding of removal” or Convention Against Torture protections (see WOLA’s August 8 Border Update). Even those seeking such protections are ending up detained. “The days of turning yourself in and being released are over,” said supervisory Border Patrol agent Jesús Vasavilbaso.
Other news
- Fallout continues from revelations that Tom Homan, the White House “border czar,” was filmed in September 2024 accepting a $50,000 cash payment from FBI agents. The agents were posing as businesspeople seeking contracts related to border and migration enforcement in the event that Donald Trump won the election last year. Homan associate and former ICE agent “Julian ‘Jace’ Calderas allegedly proposed to the agents—who were posing as businessmen—that Homan, in exchange for $1 million, could help them win lucrative federal contracts if Donald Trump became president again,” reported MSNBC, which initially broke the story. A ProPublica investigationhighlighted Homan’s past work as a consultant advising companies seeking contracts from immigration agencies. The role played by another close Homan associate in steering potential contracts, particularly for companies that build temporary detention facilities, “raises fresh questions about the integrity of the billion-dollar contracting process for immigration enforcement, ethics experts say.”
- Immigration Judge Philip P. Taylor denied Kilmar Abrego García’s request to reopen his deportation case, stating there was insufficient evidence to show that the Trump administration would send him to Uganda—even though DHS has declared, in writing, its intention to send him to that African nation or the southern African kingdom of Eswatini. In a 2019 decision, an immigration judge had granted Abrego Garcia withholding of removal to El Salvador, citing likely threats to his safety, which his why a court compelled the Trump administration to bring him back from that country’s prisons—where he says he was tortured—after erroneously sending him there. Now, the administration is seeking to send him to a third country.
- The Guardian reported on the Trump administration’s waiver of environmental laws to move forward with the construction of a 27-mile section of border wall in the San Rafael Valley in southeastern Arizona, despite ongoing legal challenges. The 30-foot barrier will disrupt the natural habitat and migration patterns of several major wildlife species in “one of the most biodiverse regions in North America,” including jaguars, ocelots, bears, and mountain lions. Some smaller animals are using 8-by-11-inch “doggy door”-sized openings placed at the bottom of the fence, Border Report reported.
- Their inability to settle firmly in other countries, including the United States during the Trump administration, is causing some Venezuelan migrants to choose to return home, Bloomberg reported. The article cites a “coyote” who charges southbound Venezuelan people $2,500 each to cross from El Paso into Ciudad Juárez and then fly to Mexico City and Medellín, Colombia, even without visas or passports.
- CGIAR reported on crop failures reducing yields in rural Guatemala, a consequence of climate change, that are leading to increased migration. “For women, the pressures are magnified,” ranging from lost work time to domestic abuse.
- At the New Yorker, Jon Lee Anderson portrayed the current Cuban migration crisis as the largest exodus since the 1959 Cuban Revolution. However, those who fled to the United States as part of the most recent wave face an increasingly hostile immigration regime, even as Donald Trump continues to enjoy strong support among Florida’s Cuban-American community. Many members of that community even support deportations to Cuba, a position that often reflects racial and class divides. “A lot of Miami Cubans refer to Trump in the same way the island’s revolutionaries refer to Fidel Castro: as their savior, the man who will take us out of our misery,” said exiled writer Abraham Jiménez Enoa.
Adam Isacson (he/him), Director for Defense Oversight
WOLA: Advocacy for Human Rights in the Americas (www.wola.org)
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