News

source: WOLA 

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

to read the entire report please click here