Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: July migration and drug seizures, “mass deportation,” Mexico

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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Due to staff vacation, there will be no Border Updates for the next two weeks; Updates will resume on September 5.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

• CBP releases July data showing migration hitting new low at the border: Due to the unavailability of asylum and word of a growing crackdown throughout the U.S. interior, the number of migrants entering CBP custody at the border in July fell again, to a level not seen since the 1960s. Zero asylum seekers were released from custody at the border, while Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector saw the most migrant apprehensions. Fentanyl seizures continue to decline sharply, while cocaine seizures are rising. 
• Notes on “mass deportation”: DHS made striking, and hard-to-verify, claims about the number of undocumented migrants choosing to leave the United States voluntarily, and the number of people signing up for employment with ICE. Some of the agency’s online recruitment messaging evoked  20th-century White supremacist themes. Several controversies, including growing public health concerns, surrounded the Florida state migrant detention facility in the Everglades.
• Notes from Mexico: The New York Times followed fentanyl smugglers and found evidence of corruption on both sides of the border. Groups that preyed on migrants in Ciudad Juárez are now preying on the local population and getting more involved in street drug sales. A migrant “caravan” in Chiapas does not seek to reach the United States but intends only to gain the right to live and work elsewhere in Mexico. 

THE FULL UPDATE:

CBP releases July data showing migration hitting new low at the border

Migration

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported another decrease from June to July in the number of migrants its agents and officers encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border. With a near-total ban on asylum access still in place and a growing climate of fear among migrants living in the U.S. interior, numbers are at 60-year lows.

Border Patrol apprehended 4,601 migrants between ports of entry (official border crossings) at the U.S.-Mexico border in July, or 148 per day, down from 6,070 (202 per day) in June and 8,723 (291 per day) in May, and down sharply from 56,400 (1,880 per day) in July 2024.

Data table

Sixty-seven percent of Border Patrol’s apprehended migrants in July were citizens of Mexico, similar to June (68 percent). That is far higher than the 35 percent share of the apprehended migrant population that has come from Mexico since fiscal 2020. Eighty-seven percent of Border Patrol’s July apprehensions were of citizens of Mexico or northern Central America (Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador), much more than those nations’ 61 percent share since fiscal 2020.

CBP’s statement noted that Border Patrol did not release a single asylum seeker or other migrant into the U.S. interior with parole or a notice to appear in July. There have been no such releases since April. All apprehended migrants were detained, deported, or, in the case of unaccompanied minors, sent to the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Border Patrol’s apprehensions of family unit members and unaccompanied minors fell 16 percent from June to July, from 917 to 770 (17 percent of all apprehensions), and by 48 percent from May (1,468). Eighty percent of parents and children (both accompanied and unaccompanied) entering Border Patrol custody in July were from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador, up from 58 percent since fiscal 2020.

Data table

Overall, CBP—which combines Border Patrol agents operating between ports of entry and Field Operations officers operating at the ports of entry—took 7,842 people into custody in July, down from 9,304 in June and 12,449 in May, and down sharply from 104,100 in July 2024. The July 2024 figure had included 45,210 people with CBP One appointments at ports of entry—a program that no longer exists.

Data table

Migrants encountered at the ports of entry remained few in July, as the Trump administration stopped using the CBP One smartphone app to help asylum seekers make appointments. CBP’s port of entry encounters totaled 3,231 people or 104 per day in May, down from a nearly identical 3,234 in June, 3,726 in May, and 47,700 in July 2024.

Data table

Ninety-four percent of migrants encountered at ports of entry in July were citizens of Mexico, similar to 92 percent in June and 93 percent in May. Only 191 in July and 245 in June were from elsewhere.

Of the nine geographic sectors into which Border Patrol divides the border, El Paso, which includes far west Texas and all of New Mexico, was the number one sector for migrant apprehensions for the sixth straight month. The El Paso sector’s 1,099 apprehensions were 24 percent of the July total, similar to 27 percent in June. The Rio Grande Valley Sector (Texas, 951) was second, followed by the Tucson Sector (Arizona, 671), and the San Diego Sector (California, 555).

Data table

Drug seizures

CBP’s July releases also included data about illegal drugs seized at the border. It showed a continued slide in the agency’s seizures of fentanyl. Ten months into fiscal year 2025, fentanyl seizures are on pace to end the year 45 percent below 2024 levels and 56 percent below 2023.

Data table

Seizures of cocaine, however, are up significantly, on pace to rise 36 percent over 2024 levels and 50 percent over 2023.

Data table

Seizures of methamphetamine have been less volatile. They are on pace to drop 9 percent from 2024 levels, which would be 18 percent above 2023.

Data table

Notes on “Mass Deportation”

ICE recruitment

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced on August 12 that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) received 100,000 job applications in the previous two weeks. “New hires will be eligible for a one-time bonus of up to $50,000” and “up to $60,000 in student loan repayment,” the Washington Examiner recalled. There is no way to independently verify that claim, or to predict how many applicants would clear background checks and other recruitment criteria.

DHS also announced on August 6 that ICE is doing away with age restrictions for recruits. Until now, recruits had to be at least 21 years old and no older than 37 or 40, depending on the role. Now they can be as young as 18, and there is no upper age limit. In coverage at the Bulwark, Adrian Carrasquillo raised the specter of “gun-toting, masked teenagers with minimal training and experience… swarming restaurants, shops, factories, churches, and homes looking for immigrants.”

On August 11 DHS posted an ICE recruitment message to Twitter with an image of Uncle Sam and the text “Which way, American man?” This closely parallels the 1978 book Which Way Western Man? by William Gayley Simpson, a white nationalist writer. That book includes virulently antisemitic prose, some of which is cited in Simpson’s Wikipedia entry.

That further moves the boundaries of DHS’s growing use of right-wing meme imagery on social media. Wired reported on the DHS communications team’s often cruel and mocking online messaging using pop-culture references to tout its crackdown on undocumented immigrants. “Along with normalizing mass deportation, they also tap into Christian nationalist narratives and reach young men via callous jokes that have been recycled through the far-right online ecosystem.”

CBP Home and voluntary deportations

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said on August 8 that more than 1 million undocumented migrants have departed the United States of their own volition since President Trump’s term began. This number, too, is impossible to verify. “We’ve seen a complete lack of transparency when it comes to immigration from this administration,” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona) told the Washington Examiner when questioned about Noem’s claim.

A DHS spokesperson told the Examiner that “So far, tens of thousands” of undocumented people have used the “CBP Home” smartphone app to “self-deport,” a method that purports to help fund airfare along with a $1,000 payment. “Last time I looked, it was about 7,000” people who had used the app, White House “Border Czar” Tom Homan told reporters, the Examiner noted. “That was weeks ago.”

Meanwhile, the Census Bureau’s monthly Current Population Survey claims that the population of foreign-born people in the United States dropped by 2.2 million during the first six months of this year. Experts interviewed by USA Today cast doubt on this estimate, noting this survey’s small sample size and the likelihood that many immigrants are refusing to participate out of fear.

Deported Venezuelans in Venezuela

Since January, the United States has deported more than 10,000 Venezuelan citizens back to Caracas, EFE reported. There, according to the Associated Press, most migrants are struggling, often saddled with debt and not earning enough to pull them out of poverty despite working two or more jobs. “Some migrants enrolled in beauty and pastry schools or became food delivery drivers after being deported. Others already immigrated to Spain. Many sought loan sharks.”

Venezuelans deported to third countries

The Trump administration has sent another 2,900 citizens of Venezuela to third countries so far this year, according to a Miami Herald analysis of data obtained by the University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project. Venezuelan citizens make up two out of every five migrants who have been sent to third countries, often Mexico.

Once in Mexico, “They’re put on buses and told they’re going to an office to apply for asylum in Mexico, but that never happens,” South Florida-based immigration attorney Elizabeth Amaran told the Herald. “When they arrive, Mexican officials tell them there’s no such process and just give them a 10-day pass to leave. They can’t go north, they can’t stay. They’re trapped.”

Retroactive credible fear interviews

NPR reported that “dozens of immigrants across the U.S. have received letters in the mail notifying them that their asylum cases have been dismissed” and that they must apply all over again. The stated reason is that when they entered the United States at the border during the pandemic or at times of high migration, they did not receive initial screening through credible fear interviews. As they reapply for such interviews or await further instructions, these asylum seekers no longer have work authorizations and are stuck in limbo.

Judge rules on New York holding facility

Responding to a lawsuit from the ACLU and Make the Road New York, a federal judge ruled on August 12 that ICE had to improve conditions and place limits on detention in a holding facility inside the 26 Federal Plaza building in downtown Manhattan, which has been the subject of many reports of migrants forced to endure extended stays in inhumane, crowded, inadequate circumstances. The Justice Department’s lawyer’s statement conceded that those circumstances have included, as CBS News reported, detainees given only blankets with which to sleep on floors, only two meals per day, toilets amid sleeping areas, no in-person visitations even by attorneys, and no access to needed medications.

The City relayed reports of far worse: “A 20-year-old high school student forced to wear blood-soaked clothing for days when Immigration and Customs Enforcement failed to provide her a maxi pad. Dozens of people crammed in a room so tightly they had to try to sleep sitting up. A man who watched another prisoner have a seizure for a half an hour before medical help came.”

Long detention times even after cases end

At Beyond the Border, Kate Morrissey reported that ICE detention centers have a growing population of people who have already agreed to be deported, but have remained confined for months with no clear end in sight. Many are from nations, like Ecuador or Mexico, whose governments place few limits on the number of deported people they accept.

Flores settlement agreement challenged

Judge Dolly Gee, who oversees the 28-year-old Flores settlement agreement governing CBP’s treatment of children in custody, heard arguments on August 8 about the Trump administration’s ongoing legal effort to dissolve the agreement. Gee sounded skeptical, asking the government’s attorney to explain why, at a time of historically low CBP migrant apprehensions, the agency has been holding children for more than 72 hours—something that the Flores agreement only allows under exigent circumstances.

Detained population

Data published by ICE on August 14 revealed that the agency’s detained population is now a record 59,380. Of that total, 30 percent have prior criminal convictions, 25 percent face charges, and 45 percent have no criminal record.

Florida detention center

That total still does not include those being held in the facility that Florida’s state government has established in the Everglades swamp west of Miami.

On August 7, a federal judge ordered a two-week freeze to new construction at that facility as she considers whether its existence in the ecologically fragile Everglades violates environmental laws. A scientist testified that recent construction has added at least 20 acres of asphalt to the site.

The New York Times and Miami New Times reported on the case of Luis Manuel Rivas Velásquez, a 38-year-old Venezuelan man detained in the Florida facility. According to accounts from detainees, after Mr. Rivas fainted in his cell, guards “left him lying on the floor” and did not seem to know even how to check his pulse. Mr. Rivas eventually recovered—perhaps due to CPR administered by a detainee who had been a nurse in Cuba. This case mainly came to light because, as Rivas has 250,000 followers on Instagram, his sister appealed on the platform to Florida authorities to produce his body after she hadn’t heard from him for two days.

The New Times reported that Mr. Rivas suffered from a respiratory infection, and raised concerns about a possible COVID outbreak in the Florida facility. While “cases across Miami-Dade and Broward counties have increased by more than 50 percent from June to July,” New Times reporter Alex DeLuca could not get Florida officials to confirm or deny whether the disease is prevalent in the facility, despite repeated attempts.

“We are all sick in this jail. Some are worse than others, it is an emergency,” Rivas said in a statement from his attorneys. “They are treating us like dogs, like animals.”

Last week, more than a month after the facility opened, Florida’s state government and ICE “signed an updated agreement spelling out how state corrections officials should handle federal immigration detainees at non-correctional facilities,” the Associated Press reported. A federal judge had demanded to see a document indicating, among other things, whether the state or the federal government had custody of the people detained in the facility.

Claudia Sheinbaum, the president of Mexico, told reporters on August 11 that 81 Mexican citizens were being held in the Florida facility. “Obviously, we are not in agreement with these detention sites, which are run by the states,” Sheinbaum added. Diplomatically, we are working so they stay there the least number of days.”

The state government of Tennessee plans to use a closed prison in the town of Mason as a detention center in coordination with ICE and private contractor CoreCivic, the Washington Examiner reported. “The redesigned facility will hire 240 employees, and pay starts at $26.50 per hour.” Indiana, too, plans to open a 1,000-person migrant detention facility.

Sen. Kelly’s tweet

Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona) posted to Twitter about an August 7 visit to Arizona’s Eloy ICE detention facility, where he met a woman named María. “She’s been in the U.S. for twenty years. Has no criminal history. She was detained at the Marine Base in Yuma. Her son is a U.S. Marine stationed there. He’s married to another Marine. And they have a two-year-old kid, Maria’s grandson. Maria was in Yuma because her son was leaving for training, her daughter-in-law had a hip surgery, and so they needed help watching her grandson. When she came back to the base after a grocery run, she was detained and reported to CBP. Now, she’s being held in an ICE facility.”

POGO on congressional access

David Janovsky of the Project on Government Oversight’s Constitution Project detailed the steps that ICE has taken to avoid congressional oversight, including delaying and circumscribing congressional visits in defiance of written law. This, Janovsky concluded, “puts the situation in stark relief: The agency is hiding abuses from Congress and the public.”

Restaurant raid in Pennsylvania

Video appeared to show ICE agents raiding restaurants outside Pittsburgh, emptying an establishment’s walk-in refrigerator, and loading food into their vehicles. Emiliano’s Mexican Restaurant issued a statement denouncing that ICE “tore through our spaces… Our kitchens were flipped. Our walk-ins emptied. Food trashed. Doors broken. Lives shattered.”

Border Network’s abuse documentation campaign

Border Report profiled the work of the Border Network on Human Rights, an El Paso-based group that for 25 years has had volunteers survey residents about experiences of abuse and mistreatment at the hands of local law enforcement. For its latest abuse documentation campaign, BNHR “is setting up 30 tables near international ports of entry, in churches and businesses in neighborhoods with a high Hispanic or immigrant population from El Paso to Del Rio, Texas, and from Anthony, New Mexico, to Albuquerque.” They will report findings in October.

Meta smart glasses

404 Media reported that a CBP agent participating in a June 30 immigration raid outside a Los Angeles Home Depot was wearing AI-enabled “smart glasses” produced by Meta, the company that runs Facebook and Instagram. “Meta does not have a contract with CBP, and 404 Media was unable to confirm whether or not the agent recorded any video using the smart glasses at the raid.” The revelation still raises regulatory issues even if the agent wore the glasses, equipped with a camera and three microphones, for personal use.

Bakers found guilty of “harboring”

A federal jury in Brownsville, Texas found on August 13 that a couple who ran a beloved bakery in the nearby border town of Los Fresnos was guilty of “harboring undocumented workers,” a crime that could carry a sentence of up to 10 years in prison. “The case was one of the first brought against business owners as Immigration and Customs Enforcement was ramping up arrests of undocumented workers,” the New York Times reported. Critics noted that while large companies usually have to pay fines for hiring undocumented workers, this is an example of “mom and pop” business owners threatened with the greater penalty of imprisonment.

Essays and analyses

“This goes beyond simply getting ‘tough’ on immigration,” wrote Nayna Gupta of the American Immigration Council at MSNBC. “The administration is undertaking an unprecedented realignment of the federal government, turning it into a detention and deportation machine that threatens communities, upends legal norms and shakes the foundation of American democracy.”

Also at MSNBC, David Bier of the Cato Institute presented a recent data analysis finding a “shocking number of Latin American immigrants being arrested on the streets with no criminal convictions, no criminal charges and no deportation orders. Nothing that would have put them on the radar of DHS for removal. No reason to seek them out specifically.” Bier goes on to detail several disturbing recent episodes of DHS personnel roughing up U.S. citizens of Latino descent on U.S. streets.

Notes from Mexico

New York Times on fentanyl smuggling

Amid the decline in border fentanyl seizures discussed above, the August 10 New York Times published an in-depth investigation of how fentanyl smugglers are dealing with increased security. Despite obstacles like higher bribes, more checkpoints, more border security, and more seizures, “cartel operatives said the demand for fentanyl had not waned.” The article makes several mentions of corruption, including payments to Mexican security forces at checkpoints and the alleged role of a corrupt CBP officer at Arizona’s Mariposa port of entry in facilitating the arrival of a shipment in exchange for “tens of thousands of dollars.”

Ciudad Juárez

In Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso, a local official interviewed by InsightCrime estimated that criminal groups, often employing young people, were taking in about $100 million per month from smuggling migrants—and frequently kidnapping them for ransom—during the 2022-2024 migration increase. With the 2025 drop in migration at the border, these criminal groups are now making less money and turning their sights on the local population: the city saw a spike in kidnappings during the first half of the year.

WOLA and the Women’s Refugee Commission noted the same phenomenon in a dispatch from a recent visit to Ciudad Juárez, posted on August 11. Many whom we interviewed “reported that the kidnappings have become increasingly violent, with sexual assault and amputations becoming common means of extorting ransom.”

InsightCrime concluded that the kidnappings have begun to ebb amid a security crackdown and low profitability, and that criminal groups are now resorting to increased street-level drug sales to partially make up for the lost income from migrant smuggling and kidnapping. Still, investigator Victoria Dittmar noted, “migrant smuggling has not disappeared entirely,” and those who still try to cross are paying higher prices to smugglers.

Drone use

Axios reported on the increasing use of drones by law enforcement agencies on the U.S. side of the border, and by criminal groups on the Mexican side. Drones used by the Cochise County, Arizona Sheriff’s Department “have thermal imaging for search-and-rescue and nighttime operations,” while organized crime-operated drones can allegedly “fly for more than 45 minutes, reach more than 100 mph and carry more than 100 pounds.”

Chiapas caravan

More than 300 migrants from at least 12 countries continued a so-called “caravan” along the road leading away from Tapachula, Chiapas, a city near the Mexico-Guatemala border. “This time,” Milenio reported, “the migrants have indicated that the United States is not their destination and that they will seek to remain in Mexico City or reach Monterrey,” where they hope for more economic opportunity and faster processing of asylum claims or work permits. President Sheinbaum said that her government “will present options to the foreigners, such as repatriation to their countries of origin and the possibility of employment.”

A longtime migrant rights activist who accompanied this and previous caravans was released from prison following his arrest several days earlier. A judge determined that there wasn’t enough evidence to hold Luis García Villagrán, whom the Mexican government is accusing of helping migrants obtain false documents for a fee. Mexico’s attorney-general’s office is appealing.

“Luis’ arrest is not an isolated incident, but part of a systematic strategy that seeks to delegitimize the work of those who demand respect for human rights in the context of migration,” read an August 7 statement from the Southern Border Monitoring Collective, a coalition of local civil society organizations.

Cuban citizens stranded along the migration route

Writing for the Columbia Journalism Review, David Adams profiled José Luis Tan Estrada, an independent journalist and professor who fled Camagüey, Cuba, only to find himself stranded in Mexico City by the Trump administration’s asylum shutdown, after traveling through 12 countries, including the Darién Gap.

CiberCuba reported that “the Cuban community in Nicaragua has been steadily increasing” as more are stranded in a country whose ruling regime does not require visas for arriving Cuban citizens. Cuban restaurants are opening all over Managua.

Remittances

The BBVA Foundation reported that remittances—money sent from people abroad to Mexico, mainly from the United States—have dropped 5.8 percent from the same period in 2024. Mexico could end the year with nearly $4 billion fewer total transfers. The drop “is due to a sum of factors led by a drastic change in migration policies in the United States,” Border Report reported.

Other news

• WOLA and the Women’s Refugee Commission released two items related to our recent research visits to sites where the U.S. government is deporting many people who may have information to share about their treatment while in U.S. custody. We published a fourth and final “dispatch” from the Ciudad Juárez and El Paso leg of our trip, and a podcast discussing and explaining our often alarming findings.
• WOLA also published an analysis of revelations that the White House has ordered the Defense Department to prepare to target organized crime groups overseas, which could make Mexico or Venezuela greater priorities for U.S. military action. The piece digs into what the Trump administration is fundamentally misunderstanding about organized crime, and the folly of a mission that puts a military response at the center.
• Axios, drawing from FBI data, reported that 11 U.S. border cities had a combined violent crime rate of 356.5 crimes per 100,000 residents, slightly below the nationwide average of 359.1. “The 11 border communities, all of them majority-Latino, had a homicide rate of 2.5 per 100,000 residents—half of the national average of 5 per 100,000.”
• A federal judge in San Francisco heard arguments about whether, as California’s state government contends, the Trump administration illegally placed the armed forces in a law enforcement role in Los Angeles in June amid protests against intensified ICE operations. Most of 4,000 National Guard personnel and 700 Marines have since withdrawn, “but 250 National Guard members remain,” the Associated Press reported. The law the administration cited only allows federal National Guard deployments in cases of invasion, rebellion, or “danger of a rebellion,” or when there is no other way “to execute the laws of the United States”—conditions that hardly describe June’s mostly peaceful, geographically limited protests.
• On August 7 the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to lift a California federal court injunction blocking ICE from targeting people based on Hispanic appearance, speaking Spanish, or working at a particular type of job. “The government is asking the Supreme Court for express permission to go ahead and engage in racial profiling,” Slate legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern and legal journalist Cristian Farias agreed.
• Tom Cartwright, who has been tracking ICE deportation flights since 2020 for Witness at the Border and has made clear his intention to retire, is handing off this work to Human Rights First, which will call the project the ICE Flight Monitor.
• The planes have become harder for monitors to track, CNN reported, because major ICE contractors have been requesting that their tail numbers be removed from the public databases used by flight-tracking apps, while changing their air traffic call signs. “The air traffic call sign now being used by most of these ICE flights is ‘Tyson’—the same call sign Trump used for his personal plane after he was elected in 2016.”
• The independent Venezuelan outlets Alianza Rebelde Investiga and Cazadores de Fake News unpacked the origins of the unfounded rumor—picked up in far-right media and spread at least 147 times by President Trump—that Nicolás Maduro’s regime deliberately released Venezuelan prisoners, including members of the Tren de Aragua criminal organization, to send them to the United States. A September 2022 Breitbart article citing an unverified DHS “report” provided a bridge from Venezuelan social media to U.S. political discourse. Independent Venezuelan fact checks have repeatedly “agreed that there was no evidence of a Venezuelan government plan to release prisoners and deliberately send them to the United States.”
• By a 2-1 decision, a Washington DC federal appeals court threw out Judge James Boasberg’s finding that there was “probable cause” to hold Trump administration officials in contempt of court for sending planeloads of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador without due process on March 15, despite Boasberg’s order. Two of the three judges were Trump appointees. Judge Greg Katsas argued that Boasberg’s order trying to stop the planes suffered from a “fatal ambiguity.”
• The Department of Justice refused to process a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from American Oversight, a watchdog group, for videos of the March 15 and 16 flights rendering Venezuelan and Salvadoran citizens to El Salvador, where most or all ended up in the Salvadoran government’s notorious Center for Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT) prison. American Oversight is appealing the Justice Department’s refusal.
• Wildlife cameras have repeatedly detected a rare jaguar, known as “Jaguar Number Four,” in southeastern Arizona’s San Rafael Valley, which has not had an active breeding jaguar population in about 60 years, the Washington Post reported. But construction of a 27-mile border wall segment, set to begin later this month, would make that impossible. “Upon the expansion of the border wall, any jaguars south of the border would be unaffected, Wolf [Roberto Wolf, the Mexico general manager of the Northern Jaguar Project] said. But jaguars north of the border, which could still include Jaguar Number Four, would be unable to travel to Mexico and eventually die as the last of its kind in the U.S.”