Adam Isacson Defense, security, borders, migration, and human rights in Latin America and the United States. May not reflect my employer’s consensus view. About Me
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Privacy Policy 08.15.25 Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: August 15, 2025 08.14.25 WOLA Podcast: “We Are in the Middle of a New Family Separation Crisis” 08.13.25 From WOLA: Five Reasons Why Trump’s Anti-Cartel Military Plan Will Fail 08.13.25 There’s Something About the D.C. Federal Crackdown 08.13.25 “Did Not Dispute” 08.13.25 Off By a Factor of Two 08.13.25 July Migration Data 08.12.25 Six Calls, Nine-Plus Emails 08.12.25 Non-Response 08.12.25 Gotta Verify Those Chatbot Results Archives August 2025 (17) July 2025 (9) June 2025 (9) May 2025 (12) April 2025 (20) March 2025 (38) February 2025 (18) January 2025 (16) December 2024 (16) November 2024 (32) October 2024 (45) September 2024 (28) August 2024 (35) July 2024 (20) June 2024 (11) May 2024 (37) April 2024 (38) March 2024 (49) February 2024 (52) January 2024 (44) December 2023 (45) November 2023 (35) October 2023 (35) September 2023 (66) August 2023 (19) July 2023 (16) June 2023 (11) May 2023 (9) April 2023 (15) March 2023 (28) February 2023 (27) January 2023 (33) December 2022 (34) November 2022 (39) October 2022 (26) September 2022 (24) August 2022 (16) July 2022 (30) June 2022 (35) May 2022 (34) April 2022 (25) March 2022 (6) February 2022 (13) January 2022 (30) December 2021 (20) November 2021 (18) October 2021 (20) September 2021 (22) August 2021 (20) July 2021 (20) June 2021 (37) May 2021 (43) April 2021 (54) March 2021 (67) February 2021 (66) January 2021 (63) December 2020 (59) November 2020 (72) October 2020 (44) September 2020 (52) August 2020 (19) July 2020 (45) June 2020 (55) May 2020 (84) April 2020 (98) March 2020 (106) February 2020 (83) January 2020 (75) December 2019 (24) November 2019 (17) October 2019 (11) September 2019 (37) August 2019 (23) July 2019 (12) June 2019 (28) May 2019 (31) April 2019 (58) March 2019 (46) February 2019 (29) January 2019 (59) December 2018 (36) November 2018 (35) October 2018 (76) September 2018 (73) August 2018 (86) July 2018 (38) June 2018 (37) May 2018 (73) April 2018 (36) March 2018 (29) February 2018 (16) January 2018 (57) December 2017 (43) November 2017 (33) October 2017 (51) September 2017 (62) August 2017 (47) July 2017 (72) June 2017 (85) May 2017 (94) April 2017 (106) March 2017 (105) Categories Admin Updates (60) Border Updates (384) Charts and Infographics (72) Email Updates (37) Events (252) Links and Announcements (102) Longer-Form Posts (88) Maps (1) Music (369) Notes and Comments (187) Photos (23) Podcast (85) Press (4) Uncategorized (2,779) Video (44) RSS Feeds RSS - Posts RSS - Comments
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Writing “About” pages, including e-mail list signup. Search the site—it’s slow, but it works. Read posts by category (the post’s type or format), by tag (the topic), or by the month I posted it. And link to the RSS feed. 🟧 Week of August 11: I have a heavy meeting and podcasting schedule Monday-Wednesday, and a Border Update to write Thursday. I’ll be somewhat hard to contact but will do my best. August 15, 2025 — 0 Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: August 15, 2025 CBP releases July data showing migration hitting new low at the border; Notes on “mass deportation”; Notes from 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.
Your donation to WOLA is crucial to keeping these paywall-free and ad-free Updates going. Please contribute now and support our work.
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: Read More August 14, 2025 — 0 WOLA Podcast: “We Are in the Middle of a New Family Separation Crisis” Podcast: <meta name="description" content="In late July and early August, researchers from WOLA and the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) visited cities in Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico that are key deportation hubs, to learn what migrants are experiencing while in U.S. custody. Our preliminary findings were disturbing.
Here’s a new episode of WOLA’s podcast, recorded with colleagues from the Women’s Refugee Commission with whom I traveled to Honduras, Guatemala, and three cities in Mexico in late July and early August.
If you’ve been reading this site, you’ve seen a lot of posts about this trip—but Zain Lakhani and Diana Flórez do an even better job of explaining the importance of what we were seeing and hearing. This is a very good episode.
Here’s the text from WOLA’s episode landing page:
Since January, the United States’ migrant detention and deportation system, which was already troubled, has become increasingly opaque. Access to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities is restricted, internal oversight agencies have been hollowed out, and credible information about conditions inside is scarce. Yet reports that have emerged, some from those who have recently been deported, tell a troubling story echoing the darkest moments of recent U.S. immigration history.
In late July and early August, researchers from WOLA and the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC) set out to pierce this “black box” by visiting cities in Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico that are key deportation hubs. There, they interviewed deported migrants, service providers, advocates, experts, and government officials to learn what they are hearing about conditions in U.S. detention.
The findings are disturbing. They point to a resurgence of family separations, cruel treatment, miserable, unhealthy conditions, and deportation processes that violate migrants’ rights and dignity. With transparency mechanisms dismantled, these abuses are happening out of public view.
In this episode, host Adam Isacson talks with two colleagues from WRC with whom he traveled:
Zain Lakhani, WRC’s director of Migrant Rights and Justice.
Diana Flórez, a consultant to WRC, an attorney and expert on gender, transitional justice, development, and peacebuilding.
During their travels, Isacson, Lakhani, and Flórez shared photos and initial findings in four “dispatches” published to our organizations’ websites, from Honduras, Guatemala, Tapachula, and Ciudad Juárez.
We heard consistent accounts of:
Family separations: A larger number than expected of parents deported without U.S. citizen children, often without being given the choice of being removed with them. The crisis is approaching the scale of the “zero tolerance” family separations that shocked the nation in 2018.
Inhumane conditions: Overcrowded cells, lack of medical care, and verbal and physical abuse by guards.
Threats to the health of pregnant and lactating women and their children: Insufficient and poor-quality food, difficulty in obtaining medical attention, and even being forced to sleep on floors. (The podcast refers to a July 30 report on abuse in detention, especially of pregnant women and children, by the office of Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia).)
Targeting of vulnerable populations: Harassment of LGBTQ+ individuals, especially trans individuals who are now detained with the gender to which they were assigned at birth.
As Lakhani notes, “Historically… we were able to enter detention centers and visit them and speak with migrants,” but “now we’re seeing the deliberate creation of a black box.”
We hope that the WOLA–WRC delegation’s findings will guide future, more intensive on-the-ground research enabling advocates to refer egregious abuses requiring legal action, build a rigorous archive of known cases, and inform public opinion and policymakers.
Download this podcast episode’s .mp3 file here. Listen to WOLA’s Latin America Today podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or wherever you subscribe to podcasts. The main feed is here. August 13, 2025 — 0 From WOLA: Five Reasons Why Trump’s Anti-Cartel Military Plan Will Fail After the New York Times revealed that the White House has directed the Defense Department "to begin using military force against certain Latin American drug cartels," the team at WOLA got to work cobbling together a forceful, deeply informed response.
After the New York Times revealed that the White House has directed the Defense Department “to begin using military force against certain Latin American drug cartels,” the team at WOLA got to work cobbling together a forceful, deeply informed response. Here it is.
This one only gives a nod to the “sovereignty” and “history of U.S. military interventions” angle, which unfortunately don’t resonate much among “serious national security” types. Instead, this piece digs into what the Trump administration is fundamentally misunderstanding about organized crime, and how useless and doomed a mission is if it puts a military response at the center.
The five reasons are:
The objective is not clear.
One cannot shoot and bomb organized crime out of existence, and trying to do so will be a bitter experience for the Trump administration. If it follows through on plans to use the U.S. military to fight organized crime overseas, expect a lot of “Mission Accomplished” moments followed by embarrassing setbacks.
Fighting organized crime like it’s an anti-government insurgency or terrorist group fundamentally misunderstands the adversary and is a recipe for failure.
Combining “plata” with “plomo” makes organized crime far harder to fight than insurgencies or terrorists through military force alone. The “enemy” is so interwoven with the security forces, the justice system, government at all levels, and the legal economy, that it becomes very hard to distinguish friend from foe.
Sending out the U.S. military to fight “cartels” won’t achieve anything that the drug war has not already done, repeatedly, with no lasting effect–despite enormous bloodshed.
Not only do new leaders keep coming, but illegal drugs remain readily available despite decades of effort to stem production and supply. The purity and inflation-adjusted price of a gram of cocaine on U.S. streets has barely budged in more than 30 years of measurement.
Achieving this “same result” would come at a huge cost. There are significant reasons why the United States has avoided pursuing military operations in non-adversary countries without the host government’s consent.
The foreseeable rupture in relations with Mexico, for instance, would undermine or end cooperation on a wide range of issues, including any potentially productive strategies to address crime and violence.
If non-consensual military operations were to occur in an adversary country, such as Venezuela, the outcome would be even more complicated.
Again, it is difficult to discern the objective here.
Read the whole thing, including an equally forceful discussion of what to do instead, at WOLA’s website.
See also:
Organized Crime-Tied Corruption in the Americas: Links from the Past Month
New Report: Migrants in Colombia: Between government absence and criminal control
Ecuador Didn’t Suddenly Become a Cocaine Transshipment Corridor
“I was a witness to the 1973 U.S.-backed coup in Chile. It changed my life.” August 13, 2025 — 0 There’s Something About the D.C. Federal Crackdown It sure looks like the target isn’t violent criminals but unhoused people, panhandlers, and others who, though not breaking the law, don’t “belong” in those parts of the city.
As the Trump administration orders federal law enforcement and National Guard soldiers to fan out across Washington DC, these posts on BlueSky show patrols in U Street NW, H Street NE, Trinidad, and Georgetown.
These are not DC homicide epicenters. They are all neighborhoods with lots of bars and restaurants and/or rapid gentrification, but not much violent crime.
It sure looks like the target isn’t violent criminals but unhoused people, panhandlers, and others who, though not breaking the law, don’t “belong” in those parts of the city. This isn’t “hotspot policing”: it’s policing anyone who’s seen as a nuisance in tony hotspots.
See also:
Border Patrol Agents Are Masked Now, Too
UN Report Reveals the United States to be Just Another Country with Endemic Human Rights Problems August 13, 2025 — 0 “Did Not Dispute” These are the detention conditions that the government did not dispute.
These are the detention conditions that the government did not dispute.
On Tuesday morning, Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Oestericher said the government did not dispute that detainees at the facility only received blankets, not beds or sleeping mats. He confirmed detainees get two meals each day — not three — and that the toilets for detainees are inside the same area where they sleep. Oestericher said the facility does not permit in-person visitations due to its “layout” and noted the government did not dispute claims that detainees lack access to medication.
That’s from CBS News, regarding litigation over conditions at ICE’s 26 Federal Plaza holding facility in New York City. August 13, 2025 — 0 Off By a Factor of Two The White House hilariously claimed 300,000 arrests of migrants in the U.S. interior during the past six months.
From yesterday’s White House press briefing:
Already, the Trump administration has arrested more than 300,000 illegal aliens in 2025. Again, more than 300,000 illegal alien criminals have been arrested in the interior of our country in the first six months of this administration. And despite many false reports in the media, nearly 70 percent of these arrests have been criminal aliens with criminal charges or prior convictions.
Meanwhile, back here on Planet Earth, ICE’s own data show 158,724 arrests of migrants during the first 6 months of the Trump administration (February-July).
Of those, 132,548 were “in the interior of our country” (ICE arrests), and 54 percetn of July’s detained population—not “70”—had ever been convicted or even just charged with a crime.
If you had someone in your life who lied this often and this carelessly, would you loan them money? Let them watch your kids? Hire them for any job with deadlines and deliverables?
See also:
July Migration Data
No, Emergency Money to Shelter Migrants Isn’t Preventing Disaster Relief
Texas Gets No Credit for 2024’s Drop in Migration
Deterring Asylum Seekers: an Increasingly Bipartisan Idea that Won’t Work August 13, 2025 — 0 July Migration Data CBP’s data through July, published yesterday, shows the impact of unlawfully shutting down asylum at the border and creating a climate of fear in the U.S. interior.
CBP’s data through July, published yesterday, shows the impact of unlawfully shutting down asylum at the border and creating a climate of fear in the U.S. interior.
There were 7,832 combined Border Patrol apprehensions and port-of-entry encounters in July, the fewest this century and probably the fewest since the 1960s.
Data table
While Border Patrol’s apprehensions between the ports of entry have fallen, the starkest drop is in arrivals at the ports of entry (official border crossings), where asylum seekers can theoretically seek protection “the legal way.” The Trump administration’s cancellation of the CBP One smartphone app’s use to make appointments at the ports caused this channel for “orderly” asylum seeking to drop off a cliff:
Data Table
With the legal right to asylum suspended at the border by an unlawful White House executive order, the number of kids and families entering Border Patrol custody fell to 770 in July. Many—not all, but many—of those coming in the past were arriving with urgent protection needs.
Data table
More border infographics are here, though I’m way behind with updating. You can always use this tool to make your own tables, which I’ve updated with CBP’s most recent dataset.
See also:
The Trump Administration is Deporting a Quarter of Mexican Citizens to Mexico’s Southernmost States
Did Joe Biden Encourage the Big 2021-2023 Migration Increase?
Chart: Border Patrol Apprehensions by Country at the U.S.-Mexico Border Since October 2013 August 12, 2025 — 0 Six Calls, Nine-Plus Emails A brilliant example of "stalker journalism" here regarding a possible COVID outbreak at the Florida Everglades detention facility, by Alex de Luca at Miami New Times.
A brilliant example of “stalker journalism” here regarding a possible COVID outbreak at the Florida Everglades detention facility, by Alex de Luca at Miami New Times.
On July 14, New Times contacted the FDH to ask about possible COVID cases at Alligator Alcatraz. We called the state office six times and followed up via email approximately six times. On the sixth call, we got in touch with someone in IT who said that they would look into the matter. Then, on July 22, we finally received an email from FDH press secretary Isabel Kilman: “The Florida Division of Emergency Management is handling all media inquiries related to Alligator Alcatraz.”
New Times first contacted FDEM spokesperson Stephanie Hartman via email on July 22 to ask about potential COVID infections at Alligator Alcatraz. After receiving no reply, we followed up the next day — and, as we’ve done multiple times before, asked for a phone number to reach her (Hartman’s email signature includes no contact number).
Again, we received no response.
On August 8, we emailed Hartman again, asking whether she could comment on reports that detainees were being denied medical care “as an outbreak of a serious illness spreads through the facility,” and whether she could answer our prior COVID-related questions.
She promptly responded: “These claims are false. Detainees have access to a 24/7, fully staffed medical facility with a pharmacy on site.”
However, she didn’t respond to New Times’ question about whether COVID is spreading in the facility. Nor has she replied to several follow-up emails.
All this comes as COVID-19 infections appear to be on the rise. August 12, 2025 — 0 Non-Response
Here’s a non-response that should not fill us with confidence. From the New York Times. August 12, 20

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