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    Border Update 17 Oct 2025

    Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: Big border wall contract, Mexico updates, Chicago and elsewhere

    Mexico, United StatesMigration
    Adam Isacson, Director for Oversight at WOLA

    Adam Isacson
    Adam Isacson, Director for Oversight at WOLA

    Adam Isacson

    Director for Defense Oversight

    Adam Isacson has worked on defense, security, and peacebuilding in Latin America since 1994. He now directs WOLA’s Defense Oversight...

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    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.

    Your donation to WOLA is crucial to keeping these paywall-free and ad-free Updates going. Please contribute now and support our work.

    THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

    • Waivers and contracts enable massive border wall-building plans: DHS awarded $4.5 billion in contracts to build nearly 230 miles of new land and aquatic border barriers (about $20 million per mile). The construction is enabled by waivers of multiple laws, including environmental protections.
    • Updates from Mexico: A new report has detailed the harms caused by the Mexican military’s involvement in migration control. The hardened border has disrupted services for people with substance abuse disorders in Ciudad Juárez. Organized crime is being more aggressive toward migrants who remain in Mexico. A “caravan,” which seeks only to reach Mexico City, has walked about 100 miles through Chiapas.
    • “Mass deportation” human rights updates: A collection of links concerning serious use of force issues as “Midway Blitz” continues in Chicago; National Guard deployments in Illinois and elsewhere; troubling reports about detention conditions and “self-deportation”; issues with social media platforms and ICE; and numerous analyses of the organizational culture at ICE and CBP.

    THE FULL UPDATE:

    Waivers and contracts enable massive border wall-building plans

    The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) awarded ten construction contracts in September, valued at a combined $4.5 billion, that “will add 230 miles of Smart Wall and nearly 400 miles of new technology” in seven of Border Patrol’s nine U.S.-Mexico border sectors (all except Big Bend and Laredo, Texas). The term “smart wall” refers to 30-foot “steel barriers, waterborne barriers, patrol roads, lights, cameras, and advanced detection technology.”

    DHS awarded seven contracts to BC Construction Group (BCCG, based in Michigan), two to Barnard Spencer Joint Venture (Montana), and one to Fisher Sand and Gravel (North Dakota). The notice lists projects totaling

    • 104 miles of “smart wall”
    • 80 miles of “waterborne barrier systems” in the Rio Grande
    • 9 miles of replacement barrier
    • 29 miles of secondary border wall
    • 400 miles of “system attributes”

    The new barriers would cost an average of $20 million per mile. The funding comes from a $46.5 billion outlay for border wall construction that was part of the massive funding legislation passed by congressional Republicans in early July.

    The administration’s goal is to wall off “1,422 miles along the boundary, more than double the current length,” The Hill reported. (The border totals about 1,954 miles.) CBP has posted a map and table illustrating its construction plans.

    The wall construction is made possible by waiving laws that would generally prohibit or require approvals and consultation before beginning such a large construction project. Waivers, made possible by a provision in the REAL ID Act of 2005, allow DHS to elide many environmental laws, including those protecting migratory endangered species. The October 14 Federal Register includes nine PDFs of waiver notifications, each comprehensively covering all construction in one of Border Patrol’s nine U.S.-Mexico border sectors.

    Environmental defenders are voicing strong concerns about the new barrier construction.

    • Yale Environment 360 reported that new walls could block the return of jaguars, which disappeared from the United States in the mid-20th century.
    • Migratory pollinators like butterflies and bees could also be disrupted by the presence of a border barrier, reported Inside Climate News. “Among the challenges for native pollinators: habitat destruction and the walls themselves, which sometimes prevent flying insects from crossing… Some pollinators have exclusive relationships with certain plants, meaning if they don’t pollinate them, nothing else will.”
    • The Travel reported on the potential impact in Texas of legislation, promoted by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), that would allow border wall construction on federally protected land, including national parks and wildlife preserves.

    “Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s choice to ignore basic contracting and procurement laws threatens to foster more corruption at a time when border wall construction has already created devastating harm,” read a statement from Lilian Serrano, director of the Southern Border Communities Coalition.

    NPR’s “All Things Considered” looked back at the first-ever example of barrier construction along the border: the fence built to separate Nogales, Arizona from Nogales, Sonora in 1918, during World War I and the Mexican Revolution, after a violent incident involving both countries’ authorities.

    Updates from Mexico

    The Fundación para la Justicia, a prominent Mexico City-based human rights organization, published Bajo la Bota II, a 300-page sequel to its May 2022 report on the Mexican military’s increasing involvement in internal migration enforcement. Numerous new testimonies from victims indicate that “the participation of the National Guard,” a new military branch, “in coordination with other civilian security forces, normalizes the use of force and violence against those who migrate, increasing their vulnerability.”

    The Trump administration’s hardening of the border and pressure on Mexico to deploy more security personnel have made it difficult for healthcare and harm-reduction workers to reach people suffering substance abuse disorders in Ciudad Juárez, Jason Buch reported for Puente News Collaborative and the Texas Observer.

    The mayor of Ciudad Juárez, Cruz Pérez Cuéllar, criticized the Mexican army’s installation of checkpoints at the city’s main highway entrances, after revealing that soldiers detained him at a roadblock on the evening of October 12. “I’m going to send a note to the new head of the Military Zone to express my concern. I’ve never believed in the effectiveness of checkpoints: criminals evade them because they are very noticeable, and they’re not stupid.”

    Even as the Trump administration’s crackdowns have reduced the number of people seeking to migrate to the United States, those who do seek to cross Mexico remain vulnerable to exploitation and abuse by the country’s criminal organizations, noted Parker Asmann at InSightCrime. “In border cities dominated by organized crime groups, such as Ciudad Juárez, criminal networks that once relied on smuggling migrants have now turned to kidnapping the migrants that remain, as well as local residents, to generate income.”

    The Mexican daily La Jornada reported on October 10 that a “caravan” of migrants, which departed Mexico’s southern border-zone city of Tapachula on October 1, had walked 150 kilometers (about 93 miles) through Chiapas, the country’s southernmost state.

    “We are very tired, especially women and children, but we will keep going. Migration has offered us nothing more than to return to Tapachula, but we’re not going back; we’re moving forward,” said a Cuban migrant. The group, which totaled roughly 1,000 people, most of them from Cuba, intends to get as far as Mexico City, where they will petition for documentation to live, work, and seek asylum in Mexico.

    On October 9, agents from the Mexican government’s National Migration Institute (INM) sought to board women and minors in the “caravan” onto trucks, “but upon hearing the cries for help, the rest of the caravan came to their rescue,” the daily Milenio reported. Those whom INM sought to detain were “members of the caravan who had separated from the contingent,” according to La Jornada.

    An October 14 DHS statement claimed that “Criminal organizations in Mexico have begun offering thousands of dollars for the murder of” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel, listing an alleged “tiered bounty system” of reward money for doxxing, assaulting, kidnapping, or killing agents and officials. “We are requesting information” about the bounties allegation, “but there is none,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on October 15. “We learned of this, just like you, via [the DHS] publication.”

    Former U.S. officials and a former Sinaloa Cartel figure told The Guardian that the allegation is dubious: Mexican criminals would be unlikely to issue such a threat because it would draw attention that would disrupt their illicit business.

    Milenio reported that videos shared on social media, many with several million views, are spreading confusion and misinformation about false opportunities to enter the United States. Topics of social media misinformation include mythical work visas for university students approved by President Donald Trump and free passage for undocumented migrants in California.

    ”Mass deportation” human rights updates

    While WOLA continues to closely monitor the Trump administration’s “mass deportation” operations in the U.S. interior, these have expanded to such an extent that we lack the staff resources necessary to produce a weekly narrative. We present this section as a categorized list of links to key sources.

    Chicago and “Operation Midway Blitz”

    Community rejects harsh tactics
    TV producer detained, released
    Rammed SUV and neighborhood protest
    Teen “tossed to ground”
    Resident fined $130 for not carrying papers
    Fallout from September 30 military-style raid of entire apartment building
    Silverio Villegas’s children moved to foster care
    Chief Bovino murder solicitation claim

    Elsewhere

    The U.S. military role: appeals court decision partially limited the National Guard deployment’s scope in Illinois
    A lower court had halted the deployment completely, accusing the administration of misrepresenting facts
    The U.S. military role: some “overweight” Texas National Guard replaced
    Los Angeles declares state of emergency
    Border Patrol agents in interior U.S. cities
    Portland ambulance driver
    Honduran mom with four U.S. citizen children “disappeared” in Portland
    Clarinetist arrested in Portland
    Fort Bliss detention facility grows by 250 beds per week
    InSightCrime found that Nashville ICE raids netted few gang members
    Irwin, Georgia facility—notorious for involuntary surgeries on women—is reopening
    13-year-old in Massachusetts
    DC signs: “ICE Kidnapping Happened Here”
    Trump invents account of “hand-to-hand combat” between National Guard and gangs
    “CBP Home” benefits for “self-deportation” —used by 25,000 people—fail for many, particularly Venezuelan citizens
    Mixed-status couples face “self-deportation” separation
    A nearly $1 billion contract to manage “self-deportation” went to a new, inexperienced company
    Plan to offer unaccompanied children $2,500 to “self-deport”
    ICE targeting of immigration courts
    Gun cases are down because ATF personnel have been reassigned to immigration enforcement

    In cyberspace

    Facebook group taken down
    ICE contract solicitation to scrutinize social media

    Organizational culture issues

    ICE’s often violent tactics
    “Cavalier and aggressive”
    WRAP full-body restraints used in deportations
    People visiting loved ones in detention subjected to invasive strip searches
    Pregnant women suffering, neglected in ICE detention with little transparency
    Recruitment ads and social media videos
    Border Patrol video with anti-Semitic lyrics

    Essays and analysis

    “It’s Crisis construction,” writes former ICE chief of staff
    “It’s never been this bad” for migrants’ rights defenders and service providers
    Why conservatives should oppose current policies
    Speaker Johnson says ICE hasn’t “crossed the line”
    White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s role
    An “opening” for Democrats

    Other news

    • Border Patrol reported finding the remains of 35 migrants in its El Paso Sector, which includes far west Texas and New Mexico, during fiscal 2025. That is “a steep drop from 176 deaths in the previous year,” the El Paso Times’s Jeff Abbott reported. The frequency of migrant deaths is about the same, though, since overall migration flows decreased in 2025. In fiscal 2024, Border Patrol found 68.7 remains for every 100,000 migrants that the agency apprehended in the sector; in fiscal 2025, it found 70.2 remains for every 100,000 apprehensions. (This estimate extrapolates apprehensions for September 2025, which CBP has not reported yet.) The organization No More Deaths reported 47 remains in the sector during fiscal 2025 and 213 in 2024.
    • A spokesperson for the U.S. Embassy in Mexico warned on October 15, “We will apply a new fine of $5,000 to anyone who crosses the United States illegally.”
    • Writing for New York, Tanvi Misra investigated the plight of migrants from other continents whom the Trump administration “dumped” in Panama in February. With Panama unwilling to offer asylum or other long-term statuses, including the ability to work legally, most have left: not for their countries of origin, where they fear returning, but to seek asylum elsewhere, often in Mexico.
    • Guatemala’s migration authority announced that it has received its first U.S. deportation of third-country citizens since it agreed to a Trump administration request to accept them. An October 10 ICE deportation flight carried 56 Guatemalan and 3 Honduran citizens to Guatemala City. The three Hondurans were transferred directly to their home nation, which neighbors Guatemala.
    • A Border Patrol vehicle pursuit on western El Paso’s Paisano Drive, a road that closely follows the border, resulted in a rollover crash that killed two migrants from Guatemala and Mexico and injured the 18-year-old driver and four passengers, citizens of Guatemala and Honduras. Vehicle pursuit deaths, a longtime danger in the border region, had dropped after the Biden administration issued guidelines calling for more caution and restraint, especially in populated areas.
    • The detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is receiving migrants from ICE again, after being emptied at the beginning of October. About 20 migrants of unknown nationality arrived at the U.S. naval base there on October 13, the New York Times reported. “The operation raised to about 710 the number of migrants who had been temporarily held at the base since the Trump administration’s deportation operations began in early February.”
    • In “The End of Asylum,” an essay at the New York Review of Books, Mae Ngai reviewed the history of the right to asylum in the United States, including the restrictions on this right that began to be implemented during the Trump I and Biden administrations and its “near erasure” today. The author concludes, “Distinguishing ‘political’ from ‘economic’ migration has long been arbitrary and nonsensical, but it is an even greater folly today, when so much migration is the result of civil violence and climate-related disasters.”
    • “The Trump administration is considering a radical overhaul of the U.S. refugee system that would slash the program to its bare bones while giving preference to English speakers, white South Africans and Europeans who oppose migration,” the New York Times reported.
    • The U.S. government shutdown is causing hours-long delays at border crossings between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, EFE reported, because of “a reduction of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents assigned to checkpoints.”
    • The scandal surrounding White House “Border Czar” Tom Homan, whom the FBI caught on video accepting a bag of cash from agents posing as would-be contractors in September 2024, two months before the election, remains alight because it “has more red flags than a May Day parade,” wrote Mark Lee Greenblatt, until recently the Interior Department’s inspector general, at the New York Times. Greenblatt questioned how Homan received a high-level security clearance while under investigation for bribery, and whether the “Czar” declared the $50,000 payment on his tax return, which he would be legally required to do.
    • The legal saga continues for Kilmar Abrego García, the Salvadoran man wrongfully sent to his country’s notorious CECOT prison in March. DHS notified Abrego García on October 9 that it intends to deport him to the West African nation of Ghana. Later, it told the Salvadoran man’s attorneys “that the notice was ‘premature’ and asked them to disregard the document,” while the Ghanaian government stated that it would not take him, ABC News reported. The government of Eswatini, the southern African nation where ICE has also threatened to send Abrego García, has not consented to his removal there either. One of his attorneys said that Abrego García would be willing to be deported to Costa Rica, where the government has indicated that it would receive him. At Reason, the Cato Institute’s Mike Fox argued that among the issues at stake in Abrego García’s case is whether “the threat of rendition to a foreign country is another legal leverage for prosecutors.”
    • During the administration of President Gustavo Petro (2022-2026), Colombia’s efforts to register and integrate more than 2.8 million Venezuelan migrants have stagnated, according to a report from the Venezuelan human rights group PROVEA and the Center for Human Rights at Venezuela’s Universidad Católica Andrés Bello. The report is summarized by local outlets Tal Cual (Venezuela) and La Silla Vacía (Colombia). The Trump administration’s severe cancellations in foreign aid caused over 1,000 job losses at humanitarian groups assisting the Venezuelan migrant population, with 60 percent of organizations facing a possible end to their operations. If they are unable to settle firmly in Colombia, many Venezuelans may seek to migrate again, perhaps to the United States.
    • David Bier of the Cato Institute shared an amicus brief from the organization, filed to support litigation challenging the White House’s January ban on asylum access, debunking the administration’s argument that it inherited a border in such a state of disorder that it was forced to adopt this emergency measure.

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