Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: Data from June, border wall, Fort Bliss detention

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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(This Border Update is a bit late and presented in a truncated form, as staff has been engaged with the release of big report on the Trump administration’s “boat strikes” policy. As Border Updates largely focus on the U.S.-Mexico border and in Latin America, this edition does not narrate the recent cases of ICE misuse of force in the U.S. interior, which are very well covered elsewhere—although we include many links to coverage at the end of this post.)

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

• Notable data releases: Border Patrol reported only a 2 percent May-to-June reduction in migrant apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border, despite the summer heat. TRAC Immigration found U.S. immigration courts denied asylum in 94 percent of closed cases. ICE arrests in the U.S. interior are now happening more frequently than they were during the high-profile urban “surges” of the Trump administration’s first year. ICE operated a record 288 deportation flights last month, although 112 went to Mexico amid a near-total halt in land-border deportations. Two data-driven reports documented serious misuse of force in domestic U.S. immigration enforcement.
• Border wall updates: Links to coverage of flooding sweeping away buoy barriers in Texas; courts hearing opposition to wall construction at the Big Bend and in Tohono O’odham nation territory; and opposition to wall construction at Mt. Cristo Rey west of El Paso.
• Other notable stories linked: Two alarming reports on ICE’s Camp East Montana detention center at Fort Bliss in El Paso. A continuing budget resolution passed by the House of Representatives would allow transfers of additional money to Border Patrol, which is already fully funded. A statement of work for a DHS contract calls for “international staging areas” that could hold up to 1,000 people in other countries.

THE FULL UPDATE:

Notable data releases

Several resources have published important new data about the U.S.-Mexico border or migration over the past two weeks. Some of the data comes from the U.S. government, and some comes from independent investigations.

Border Patrol apprehensions only shrank 2 percent May-June despite summer heat

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) published a monthly update to its statistics about migrant encounters and other border enforcement metrics. As expected, Border Patrol’s apprehensions of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border declined from May to June, following a seasonal pattern of reduced migration as summer heat intensifies. However, that decline was only 2 percent, and June 2026 follows May as the second-largest monthly apprehension count of the Trump administration so far.

For the eighth consecutive month, Border Patrol apprehended more people in its Rio Grande Valley Sector, in south Texas, than in any other of the nine sectors into which the agency divides the U.S.-Mexico border. Apprehensions in the Rio Grande Valley increased 11 percent over May to 2,227, the most measured in a single sector in any month of the current Trump presidency. Nearly all of the increase consisted of single adults from Mexico.

While we can only hypothesize at this point, the modesty of the May-to-June summer decline probably relates to the Trump administration’s growing deportations from the U.S. interior. A larger population of deported people are individuals who had spent years in the United States, establishing roots, families, and livelihoods—not recent border arrests. There is a high probability that some are willing to take great risks to return.

June is the end of the third quarter of the U.S. government’s 2026 fiscal year. Comparing those nine months to the first nine months of fiscal 2025, CBP reported an 11 percent increase in U.S.-Mexico border seizures of methamphetamine, a 5 percent increase in seizures of cocaine, and a 9 percent decrease in seizures of fentanyl.

The year-over-year increase in CBP cocaine seizures (which decreased a modest 2 percent at all U.S. borders and coasts) is particularly notable because the U.S. government has bombed 67 boats suspected of smuggling cocaine in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean since September 2025. The lack of a decline in what CBP finds at the border indicates that South American cocaine is making it through this lethal, unlawful maritime blockade relatively unhindered.

TRAC data about asylum cases

TRAC Immigration obtained data through June about asylum cases in the U.S. immigration court system. The data show the right to seek asylum in the United States under sustained assault. 94 percent of asylum cases in June ended in a denial; during the Biden administration, the denial rate was routinely under 60 percent. The Trump administration pushed increases above 70 percent by March 2025, above 80 percent by January 2026, and above 90 percent by March 2026.

The number of decided asylum cases has also shot upward: 14,035 in June, the second-highest monthly total in TRAC’s database, which goes back to 2000. The record month was March 2026 (14,613).

See also:

• Fernie Ortiz, “Immigration Judge Removal Orders Spike in June” (Border Report, July 21, 2026).

ICE detention and arrest data

For the first time since April, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has released what was meant to be a biweekly statistical report on its detention and arrest operations. (Scroll to the bottom of this page, where there is a link to an Excel spreadsheet.) It is current through the first 11 days of July.

• It shows that the agency arrested 1,319 people per day in the U.S. interior in June, and 1,474 people per day during the first 11 days of July.
• Those daily averages are by a significant margin the largest of the Trump administration. During the period of aggressive “surges” in U.S. cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis under the tenure of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who left in March, ICE exceeded 1,200 arrests per day only once (December 2025).
• The New York Times reported in early July that ICE had begun reaching the milestone of 2,000 arrests per day.
• By contrast, in June 2024, during the Biden administration, average daily arrests (245) were less than a fifth of the June 2026 total.

The report notes that 65,765 people were in ICE’s system of mostly privately-run detention centers as of July 11. That is not the largest detained population ever (70,766 in ICE’s report for January 25, 2026), but it is over 5,000 more than ICE’s last reported number, in April.

Among those in detention, “the largest group continues to be immigrants with no criminal history whatsoever,” immigration data analyst Austin Kocher wrote. Of those in detention who had been initially arrested by ICE, 31 percent had been convicted of a crime (violent or non-violent), 32 percent faced pending criminal charges, and 37 percent had no criminal record.

The report notes that ICE removed 356,389 people from the United States so far in fiscal 2026, which began last October 1. That is 122,153 more than in ICE’s last report covering the fiscal year through April 4. That makes an average of 1,255 deportations per day so far in fiscal 2026, and 1,246 per day since April 4.

ICE Flight Monitor and dashboard

Human Rights First’s ICE Flight Monitor project released its latest monthly report on ICE deportations through June 2026. It finds that ICE contractors removed migrants aboard a record 288 flights last month. However, 112 of those flights went to Mexico, because since April 13, the Trump administration has mostly stopped deporting Mexican citizens across the U.S.-Mexico land border. The report points out that flights to countries other than Mexico were 7 percent fewer than in June 2025.

The project has not documented any deportation flights to Venezuela since June 24, when the South American country was hit by two devastating earthquakes. Earlier that day, a deportation flight with 146 aboard had landed in Caracas. Many are feared dead after the hotel where the Venezuelan government lodged them sustained heavy damage in the quake.

In lieu of a monthly appendix of PDF tables, ICE Flight Monitor has created an online dashboard allowing users to search the project’s database, which goes back to 2020. A tab for “forced third country” deportation flights reveals that a record 17 planes took migrants in June to countries other than their own.

Misuse of force in immigration enforcement

“Charting the Crackdown,” a resource created by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) and the Human Rights Center at the University of California at Berkeley (HRC), documents “412 unique misuse of force incidents at immigration enforcement protests” between June 2025 and May 2026 in deep statistical detail.

The incidents occurred across 16 cities in 13 states. The resource focuses on agents’ misuse of crowd-control weapons. “Chemical irritants, kinetic impact projectiles, and stun grenades make up the bulk of the crowd-control weapons used,” the narrative notes. DHS personnel were 64 percent of the likely perpetrators. “Agents of CBP and the Federal Protective Service (FPS) together comprised the same share of DHS agents involved in misuse as ICE.”

Focusing on misuse of force more broadly, a data-driven ACLU report, “Agents of Chaos and Cruelty,” examined over 1,200 immigration-enforcement incidents in 2025 across eight states, finding 432 examples of misconduct by agents. “The abuses detailed in this report are about more than immigration,” the ACLU’s report concludes. “They reveal a blueprint for expanding authoritarian rule in the United States, with profound consequences for everyone in America.” It recommends separating immigration functions from DHS and “dismantl[ing] the national deportation policing force.”

See also:

• Austin Kocher, ““They Are Going to Kill Somebody.” ACLU Research Finds ICE Too Broken to Be Fixed, Calls for New Agency to Replace It” (Austin Kocher, July 23, 2026).

Border wall updates

Mild Rio Grande flooding in central Texas sweeps away buoys being staged for aquatic “wall” installation

• Sandra Sanchez, “Texas Floodwaters Inundate Areas Cleared for Border Wall Construction” (Border Report, July 23, 2026).
• Michael Karlis, “Razor-Laden Border Buoys Swept Away by Texas Downpours Being Sold for Scrap in Mexico” (San Antonio Current, July 20, 2026).
• Sandra Sanchez, “CBP Says It’s Not Responsible for Runaway Border Buoys” (Border Report, July 20, 2026).
• Sandra Sanchez, “Dislodged Buoys Prompt Closures of World Trade Bridge in Laredo” (Border Report, July 19, 2026).

Tohono O’odham Nation challenge to border wall in DC federal court

• Ryan Knappenberger, “Tohono O’odham Nation Faces Uphill Battle in Blocking Early Phases of Border Wall Construction” (Courthouse News, July 22, 2026).
• Paul Ingram, “Tohono O’odham Lawsuit Over Border Wall Faces 1st Hearing in D.C. Court” (The Tucson Sentinel (Tucson Arizona), July 22, 2026).

Presidio, Texas (Big Bend Sector) in DC federal court

• Rebecca Santana, “From the Mexican Border to Washington: A Tiny Texas Town Fights Trump’s Wall Plan” (Associated Press, Associated Press, July 22, 2026).
• “Editorial: There Is No Need for a Border Wall in Big Bend. Don’t Taint the Park’s Majesty” (The San Antonio Express-News, July 20, 2026).
• Diana Spechler, “‘I’ve Never Worked With So Many Conservatives’: The Texans Fighting the Big Bend Border Wall” (The Guardian (Uk), July 15, 2026).

Mount Cristo Rey, west of El Paso

• Mandy Taheri, “Map Shows Area Trump Wants to Take From Catholic Church for Border Wall” (Newsweek, July 22, 2026).
• Teofilo Alvarado, “Intensifican Vigilancia en Inmediaciones de Cristo Rey para Frenar a Migrantes” (Norte (Ciudad Juarez Mexico), July 22, 2026).

Two alarming reports on ICE’s Camp East Montana detention center at Fort Bliss in El Paso, from Human Rights Watch and the ACLU, and from the New Yorker

• ““You’re Only Getting Out Deported or Dead”” (ACLU, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights Watch, July 15, 2026).

Human Rights Watch and the ACLU found that people detained at Camp East Montana endured conditions of confinement that amounted to enforced disappearance, cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment, excessive use of force including one extrajudicial killing, life-threatening medical neglect, barriers to legal representation, and coercive third-country removals

Jonathan Blitzer, “Inside ICE’s Largest Detention Center” (The New Yorker, July 13, 2026).

On a military base in West Texas, where the government has built a sprawling tent complex to hold thousands of immigrants, deprivation and dire conditions are part of the design

Continuing budget resolution passed by the House of Representatives, which aims to keep the government funded through December 4, would allow transfers of additional money to Border Patrol, which is already fully funded through the June “reconciliation” bill

• “Republican Continuing Resolution Allows Billions for Border Patrol With No Reforms” (House Appropriations Democrats, U.S. House of Representatives, July 21, 2026).

Any – or all – funds provided for other components of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) under the continuing resolution could be transferred to the Border Patrol at the discretion of Secretary Mullin

DHS Statement of Work for contract calls for “international staging areas” in other countries

• Charles R. Davis, “Exclusive: ICE Eyes 1,000-Bed Detention Facilities in Foreign Countries” (The Redoubt, July 13, 2026).

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is looking for private contractors that could help set up “international staging areas” abroad… ISAs may be up to 1,000 bed facilities

Readings

• Nick Miroff’s analysis of DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s internal troubles, published at The Atlantic: “I was surprised when a conservative former DHS official told me that he expected Trump to seek a major immigration compromise before the end of his term, as a legacy-building project and a bid to bring Latino voters back to the Republican Party. Mullin, who has impeccable MAGA credentials and improbably friendly relations with key Democrats, would be the ideal person to make such a deal, he told me.”
• “Some ICE Officers Take Issue With Trump Approach to Immigration Enforcement,” by Anna Giaritelli at the Washington Examiner: “ICE is pushing the new recruits into the street as opposed to desk work… ICE does not have an approved traffic stop or vehicle pursuit policy”
• “What ICE Should Have Known When It Hired David Brouillette,” by three reporters at Mother Jones: “The officer who killed a young father in Maine had been accused of abuse by two ex-wives. He was also eligible to skip weeks of training in Georgia”
• “Ice Arresting Relatives Trying to Take Custody of Migrant Kids,” by Uriel J. García and Alex Nguyen at the Texas Tribune: “Those changes have led to prolonged stays in shelters for unaccompanied children. Some advocates say the changes allow ICE to use kids as ‘bait’ to arrest their potential caregivers.”

Other News

• Alicia Inez Guzman, “A New Section of the Billion-Dollar Border Wall in Arizona Is Bent Out of Shape” (High Country News, July 21, 2026).

A section of newly built border wall was mysteriously damaged for months. But it wasn’t until a High Country News reporter asked about the damage that Customs and Border Protection maintained the section had already been repaired

David Brunnstrom, Emma Farge, Olivia Le Poidevin, Simon Lewis , “Diplomatic Efforts Seek to Avert Trump Split With UN Refugee Agency, Sources Say” (Reuters, Reuters, July 20, 2026).

UNHCR urged supporters to press U.S. officials, sources say

Silvia Blanco, “Mexico Leads Latin America’s Pushback Against Trump’s Migrant Crackdown” (El Pais (Spain), July 20, 2026).

Mexico’s decision to pursue criminal legal action over the deaths of 17 Mexican nationals at the hands of ICE represents the region’s strongest response yet to the Republican’s immigration policy

Kimberly Rocio Lopez, “Asi Cambio Trump el Perfil de los Migrantes Deportados a Guatemala” (Plaza Publica (Guatemala), July 16, 2026).

A partir del segundo mandato del presidente Donald Trump, el perfil de los migrantes guatemaltecos que son forzados a volver a Guatemala cambió

“Belize Receives First Migrant Under Safe Third Country Agreement” (Love FM (Belize), July 14, 2026).

Belize has officially received its first migrant under the country’s Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States

Justin Gest, Lucas Nunez, Sanggyu Suh, “The Trump Effect: US Immigration Policy and Transit Migrants in Central America” (Sage Publications, July 12, 2026).

Links: “mass deportation” and human rights in the U.S. interior

• Alejandro Serrano, “Paxton, Talarico Visits Lay Bare Border Voters’ Complex Feelings” (The Texas Tribune, July 23, 2026).

Residents along the U.S.-Mexico border said they want crossings under control and the state’s next senator to actually do something on immigration policy

Aaron Steckelberg, Douglas Macmillan, Leslie Shapiro, N. Kirkpatrick, “ICE Officials Warned of Dangerous Crowding. See How They Kept Packing People In.” (The Washington Post, July 22, 2026).

Alex Nguyen, Lomi Kriel, Uriel J. Garcia, “ICE Shooting Passengers Say Agents Rammed Van Before Firing” (The Texas Tribune, July 21, 2026).

The newly-released, handwritten statements by two men who saw Lorenzo Salgado Araujo’s shooting say he never threatened ICE agents

Gwynne Hogan, “Deportation Orders Soar in NYC as Trump ‘Mega Master’ Hearings Accelerate” (The City Reporter, July 21, 2026).

A new report finds removal orders for people who missed hearings more than doubled in New York City in June, as a new tactic of hastily scheduled court dates rolled out

Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling, “Man Who Died Running From ICE Was Tourist With a Ticket Home” (The New Republic, July 20, 2026).

The man has been identified as Juan Jairo Coronilla Duran, who was in the U.S. on a tourist visa and already had a plane ticket to go back to Mexico

Jim Carroll, “Renewed ICE Killings Are Inevitable Result of Mass Deportations Rooted in Incendiary Claims of Immigrant Invasion” (Flux, July 20, 2026).

Democrats must pair opposition to ICE lawlessness with unsparing attacks on the GOP’s dehumanizing anti-immigrant hatred and propaganda

Whitney Curry Wimbish, “Trump Administration Routinely Violating Immigrant Children’s Rights” (The American Prospect, July 20, 2026).

The 1997 Flores ruling requires immigrant children be released from detention after 20 days. Trump is keeping some for as long as 323 days, new filings in a lawsuit state

Radley Balko, “Suing Stephen Miller” (The Watch, July 20, 2026).

It’s time to put everyone from Stephen Miller and Tom Homan to the most recent ICE hire on notice: a reckoning is coming

Hanna Rosin, “‘Turning Up the Heat on the Streets’” (The Atlantic, July 20, 2026).

The problem with ICE and traffic stops

Devlin Barrett, Hamed Aleaziz, “Federal Agents Were Told F.B.I. Will No Longer Investigate ICE Confrontations” (The New York Times, July 19, 2026).

Senior officials deny such a change is in the works, despite guidance shared with agents around the country in recent days

Margaret Brennan, “Transcript: Border Czar Tom Homan On “Face the Nation With Margaret Brennan,” July 19, 2026” (CBS News, msn.com, July 19, 2026).

• “ICE Officers to Use Body Cameras During Vehicle Stops, Trump ‘Border Czar’ Says” (The Guardian (Uk), July 19, 2026).

Tom Homan’s comments come amid scrutiny over federal immigration agents’ fatal shooting of two men in six days

Shaila Dewan, “D.H.S. Won’t Name Agents Who Kill. Local Police Agencies Are More Open.” (The New York Times, July 19, 2026).

The department will not name the agent who killed a Colombian immigrant in Maine. Some large police agencies recognize a public right to know the identities of officers involved in violence

Danny Hakim, “Failed Immigration Cases Leave Chicago Prosecutor’s Office Reeling” (The New York Times, July 19, 2026).

Prosecutors have fled the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago, angry about the cases they’ve been told to bring against protesters and immigrants

Anna Giaritelli, Christian Datoc, “Some ICE Officers Take Issue With Trump Approach to Immigration Enforcement” (The Washington Examiner, July 19, 2026).

ICE officers who spoke with the Washington Examiner said morale is lower under President Donald Trump than it was during the Biden administration

Ray Sanchez, “Video Evidence in Gabriel Hurtado-Cariaco Case Contradicts Feds’ Account” (CNN, July 18, 2026).

Days after Gabriel Hurtado-Cariaco was arrested by federal officers in Nebraska last summer, government officials branded the Venezuelan delivery driver with incendiary labels: “a criminal illegal alien,” “a known Tren de Aragua terrorist” and even alleged he slammed one agent’s head into the ground and choked her

Alexandra Berzon, Danny Hakim, Jazmine Ulloa, Lauren Mccarthy, Mike Mcintire, “They Were Charged With Assaulting ICE Agents. The Cases Are Crumbling.” (The New York Times, July 18, 2026).

The Trump administration has lost or abandoned hundreds of criminal cases against protesters and immigrants, a Times investigation found

Rachel Reyes, “My Son Was Killed by ICE. I Want Accountability.” (The New York Times, July 18, 2026).

I deserve accountability and transparency, and so does the public

Jessica Washington, “In the Wake of Fatal ICE Shootings, Democrats Drag Their Feet” (The Intercept, July 17, 2026).

The Democrats’ response to the shootings of Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo has been lackluster

David Corn, “ICE and DHS’s Growing Record of Deception” (Mother Jones, July 17, 2026).

When their agents shoot and kill people, they shouldn’t be allowed to run the investigation

Andrea R. Flores, “Latino Americans Are in Shock. Can Democrats Finally Do Something?” (The New York Times, July 17, 2026).

For decades, Democrats have misunderstood Latino voters. Trump’s deportation campaign offers a chance for them to get it right

Meg Satterthwaite, Sang-Min Kim, “Key Trump Deportation Strategies: Removing, Replacing, and Pressuring Immigration Judges” (New York University School of Law, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Independence of Judges and Lawyers, Just Security, July 17, 2026).

Although Slaughter may have emboldened the executive branch, the Trump administration had already begun exercising this type of unfettered executive control in another system: the U.S. immigration courts

Andrew Turley, John Ewers, “Why It’s Wrong to Involuntarily Mobilize Reserve JAGs for Immigration Cases” (Just Security, July 16, 2026).

Federal law specifies that involuntary mobilization is to be used only to provide military forces for war or national emergencies

Radley Balko, “ICE Is Out of Control. Here’s What to Do About It.” (The New York Times, July 16, 2026).

Congress must push back against our inhumane immigration tactics

Noah Lanard, “What ICE Didn’t Say About Its Latest Killing” (Mother Jones, July 16, 2026).

The agency is no longer even claiming its officers feared for their lives

Isabela Dias, “Trump’s Deportation Policing Force Is Killing People. It Was “Foreseeable in the Most Tragic Way.”” (Mother Jones, July 16, 2026).

The ACLU tracked 1,200 immigration enforcement incidents in a year and found a pattern of misconduct and rights violations

Cole Reynolds, “We Looked at DHS Immigration Enforcement Involving Motorists. Here’s What We Found.” (The Washington Post, July 15, 2026).

At least 17 motorists have been shot during immigration operations as the Trump administration ramped up enforcement, a Washington Post analysis finds

Eddie Gaspar, Lomi Kriel, “Houston ICE Shooting Shows Likely Law Enforcement Policy Violations” (The Texas Tribune, July 15, 2026).

More than a dozen attorneys and former law enforcement officials reviewed footage of the deadly ICE car pursuit for The Texas Tribune. They said ICE’s tactics were breaking with best practice and possibly the law

Esme E. Deprez, Shaila Dewan, “Video Pushed Local Police to Come Clean. D.H.S. Is Ignoring the Lessons.” (The New York Times, July 15, 2026).

The father of Joan Sebastian Guerrero, the man fatally shot by a federal immigration agent on Monday, said his son had been working two jobs to support his wife and daughter

Joseph Gedeon, “White House Overturns DHS Halt to ICE Traffic Stops Despite Killings of Two Men” (The Guardian (Uk), July 15, 2026).

Move comes after Trump rebuked his own homeland security department and insisted ICE maintain policy

Nick Miroff, “The Shooter in Maine Was a New ICE Recruit” (The Atlantic, July 14, 2026).

The agency’s second killing this month prompted an abrupt policy change on vehicle stops

Hamed Aleaziz, Madeleine Ngo, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, “ICE Ordered to Cease Most Vehicle Stops After 2 Killings in a Week” (The New York Times, July 14, 2026).

Agents fatally shot a man in Houston and another in coastal Maine, both in their vehicles. The killings were the latest in a string of ICE shootings during President Trump’s second term

Christina Morales, Jacey Fortin, Jenna Russell, “Colombian Immigrant Killed by ICE in Maine Had Legal Status, Father Says” (The New York Times, July 14, 2026).

The father of Joan Sebastian Guerrero, the man fatally shot by a federal immigration agent on Monday, said his son had been working two jobs to support his wife and daughter

Jose Olivares, “ICE Agents Kill Man in Maine as Senator Says Victim Not Target of Arrest” (The Guardian (Uk), July 13, 2026).

Killing of man – identified by rights groups as 26-year-old Colombian – comes days after man killed by ICE in Texas

Orlando Mayorquin, Pooja Salhotra, “Houston to Investigate How ICE Agent Came to Kill a Mexican Immigrant” (The New York Times, July 10, 2026).

The agency said Lorenzo Salgado Araujo tried to ram agents with a van before one shot him dead. A lawyer for his passengers said that was untrue