Director for Defense Oversight

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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We will not publish a Border Update on September 4, 2026.

Migrant apprehensions decline only slightly from June to July despite summer heat: Border Patrol’s July migrant apprehensions dropped 6 percent from June, a decline less pronounced than expected for the peak of summer. This may be because some people deported from the U.S. interior after many years in the United States are attempting to return. Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley in south Texas, where the apprehended population is significantly less Mexican than elsewhere, leads all sectors in migrant apprehensions. Recoveries of the remains of migrants who have died in the desert increased from last year in Arizona.

Outcry continues over border barrier construction in protected areas: Empowered by the 2025 “Big Beautiful Bill Act” and a 2025 waiver authority, the Trump administration is moving quickly to build border barriers in Big Bend National Park, the Tohono O’odham Nation’s lands, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Arizona’s San Rafael Valley, Texas’s Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, and other sensitive areas. Litigation continues amid a growing public outcry, which is distinctly bipartisan in the case of Big Bend, where construction is now temporarily halted.

Big increase in deportations of Mexican citizens to Guatemala and Honduras: CBS News revealed that the Trump administration has been deporting citizens of Mexico to Guatemala and Honduras, even though Mexico’s government willingly accepts its own citizens. Guatemala’s president recognized that ICE has flown nearly 2,300 Mexicans there so far this year. A series of alarming media reports have covered what happens to migrants sent to unfamiliar and often dangerous countries in Latin America and Africa, often without even having their identity documents returned to them. ICE deportation flights hit a new record in July, with 18 taking people to third countries.

U.S. military gains new detention powers near the border: A Justice Department memo gives U.S. military personnel stationed at the border permission to detain civilians, including migrants, both within and in the vicinity of a thin fringe of territory along much of the border. This reinterpretation of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act departs from longstanding norms limiting the U.S. military’s non-emergency role in domestic law enforcement.

Migrant apprehensions decline only slightly from June to July despite summer heat

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released monthly data about the agency’s apprehensions of migrants and other security-related measures at the U.S.-Mexico border. It found that:

Border Patrol apprehended 9,295 people between the border’s ports of entry (official border crossings) in July, down 6 percent from 9,855 in June.

3,435 people entered CBP custody at the ports of entry in July, a typically low figure for the Trump administration. Since the administration continues to ban access to asylum (legal challenges continue) and to “meter” noncitizens’ access to the border crossings, port-of-entry migrant encounters now change little from month to month.

Border Patrol’s July migrant apprehensions doubled from July 2025 (4,592), which was the lowest monthly total of the entire Trump administration. While apprehensions have declined for two straight months, the drop is less pronounced than expected at the height of summer, when the border zone’s intense heat usually causes migration to fall. In fact, apprehensions in July 2026 were the third-highest of the Trump administration’s 18 full months.

The Trump administration’s “mass deportation” policy may be a key reason for the relative lack of a summer decline. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is deporting record numbers of people, often into Mexico, after arresting them in the U.S. interior—not the border. Many interior arrests are of people who have spent significant portions of their lives in the United States, and who are now separated from families and communities. One can only hypothesize because data on the characteristics of apprehended migrants are not available, but it is likely that many of those apprehended near the border this summer are people whose deportation implied a genuine uprooting and who have a strong motive to return.

Though July was a relatively busy month at the border by the standards of the second Trump administration, which has cut migration by suspending asylum and cracking down on migrants in the United States, it was still a historically low month for Border Patrol apprehensions. Though the July 2026 total was double July 2025, it was down 84 percent from July 2024 and 93 percent from July 2023.

63 percent of Border Patrol’s apprehended migrants in July were citizens of Mexico. That is generally typical of the second Trump administration, though it is down from a high of 74 percent in March and April, indicating somewhat more diversity in nationalities. While apprehensions of citizens of Mexico, Guatemala, and Cuba declined from June to July, most other nationalities increased.

88 percent of July Border Patrol apprehensions were of single adults, with families and unaccompanied children comprising the rest. This is typical of the second Trump administration.

For the ninth straight month, Border Patrol apprehended the most migrants in its Rio Grande Valley Sector, in south Texas (the agency divides the U.S.-Mexico border into nine geographic sectors). July was the seventh straight month of increased apprehensions in the Rio Grande Valley: they have roughly doubled from 1,273 in January to 2,438 in July. Only 47 percent of migrants apprehended in the Rio Grande Valley in July were citizens of Mexico; Border Patrol also apprehended at least 100 migrants there last month from Guatemala (16%), Honduras (14%), El Salvador (5%), and Ecuador (4%). Like the rest of the border, 85 percent of migrants apprehended in the Rio Grande Valley were single adults.

“Trump Administration Delivers 15 Straight Months of Zero Releases at the Border” (U.S. Customs and Border Protection, August 13, 2026).

The Atlantic’s Nick Miroff sounded an alarm about the future of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) data quality and reporting: Marc Rosenblum, the longtime head of the Department’s Office of Homeland Security Statistics who had worked under both Democratic and Republican administrations, resigned in late July. “Presidential administrations from both parties have tried to spin or delay the release of certain data categories, such as illegal border crossings, when the numbers aren’t favorable,” Miroff noted. “The Trump administration has taken the distortions to extremes.”

Nick Miroff, “The Man in Charge of Immigration Data Just Resigned” (The Atlantic, August 10, 2026).

The Department of Homeland Security has stopped releasing timely, reliable statistics on immigration enforcement

The Department of Homeland Security has stopped releasing timely, reliable statistics on immigration enforcement

The Tucson Sentinel reported that deaths of migrants in Arizona’s deserts, usually from heat and dehydration, are not declining. The Arizona humanitarian group Humane Borders reported recoveries of the remains of 73 people in Arizona in 2026 through August 12, a 24 percent increase over 59 during the same period in 2025. The 2026 total includes 13 remains recovered in June and 19 in July.

Paul Ingram, “Migrants Still Dying in Arizona’s Deserts Despite Drop Border Crossings” (The Tucson Sentinel (Tucson Arizona), August 12, 2026).

While the number of people taken into custody along the U.S.-Mexico has dropped to historic lows, the number of bodies of dead migrants found in Arizona’s remote deserts increased this summer, Humane Borders said Tuesday

While the number of people taken into custody along the U.S.-Mexico has dropped to historic lows, the number of bodies of dead migrants found in Arizona’s remote deserts increased this summer, Humane Borders said Tuesday

David Baker, “Woman Swept Away by Floodwaters After Illegal Crossing Near Arizona Border” (Arizona’s Family, August 6, 2026).

Search crews fear a woman may have drowned after floodwaters swept her away in the San Pedro River near the Arizona-Mexico border

Search crews fear a woman may have drowned after floodwaters swept her away in the San Pedro River near the Arizona-Mexico border

Outcry continues over border barrier construction in protected areas

Funded by over $46.5 billion in last year’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” and enabled by a 2005 authority to waive environmental, cultural, historic preservation, and other laws, the Trump administration is advancing border barrier construction in sensitive areas along the entire border. 287 miles of walls and other barrier infrastructure are under active construction, with about seven miles completed per week. CBP has awarded more than 30 construction contracts since September.

Projects in protected areas are generating vigorous and growing opposition, often bipartisan, from local communities and environmental advocates.

Gaby del Valle, “Trump’s Border Wall Push Is Back — and It’s Destroying National Parks and 200-Year-Old Trees” (The Verge, August 17, 2026).

Border crossings are down. High-tech surveillance is more effective than physical barriers. Still, the Trump administration wants destructive walls anyway

Border crossings are down. High-tech surveillance is more effective than physical barriers. Still, the Trump administration wants destructive walls anyway

Facing a bipartisan firestorm of complaints after bulldozers began clearing land for an access road, CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott announced a pause of all construction activity in Big Bend National Park on August 17, and on August 19 met with local sheriffs and county judges. Scott said he would consider scrapping new road-building plans in favor of using existing roads, and said that vehicle barriers, if installed, could be designed to fit the scenery (he suggested they could be made to resemble petrified trees).

The $1.7 billion Southwest Valley Constructors contract covers vehicle barriers, surveillance technology, and a patrol road: not a 30-foot bollard wall, but enough to disfigure a wilderness visited by tens of thousands each year. Bulldozers cleared terrain near Santa Elena Canyon on August 12–13, followed over the weekend of August 16–17 by contractors digging into Mariscal Mountain.

CBP plans about 230 miles of border wall elsewhere in Border Patrol’s Big Bend Sector, which comprises 517 miles of border. Though that is a quarter of the entire U.S.-Mexico border, migrant apprehensions in the Big Bend Sector are nearly always in a distant last place among Border Patrol’s nine border sectors. In July, the agency apprehended just 98 border-crossers there, about 1 percent of the border-wide total.

Sam Karas, “Texans Urge Agency to Keep Border Walls Out of State Parks” (Big Bend Sentinel, The Texas Tribune, August 19, 2026).

After bulldozers entered Big Bend National Park, hundreds of Texans came to Wednesday’s meeting to ask the agency to keep federal border barriers out of state parks

After bulldozers entered Big Bend National Park, hundreds of Texans came to Wednesday’s meeting to ask the agency to keep federal border barriers out of state parks

Ashley Killough, Maria Aguilar Prieto, “What We Know About the Controversial Border Security Project in and Near Big Bend National Park” (CNN, August 19, 2026).

While the federal government has paused work to build border security infrastructure in Texas’ Big Bend National Park, people opposing such construction in the broader region attended a state commission meeting Wednesday, offering often emotional pleas, hoping to persuade the panel to stop it on state land

While the federal government has paused work to build border security infrastructure in Texas’ Big Bend National Park, people opposing such construction in the broader region attended a state commission meeting Wednesday, offering often emotional pleas, hoping to persuade the panel to stop it on state land

Uriel J. Garcia, “What to Know About Possible Border Barriers in Big Bend” (The Texas Tribune, August 18, 2026).

The Trump administration has said the remote West Texas region needs measures to stop illegal immigration. But a bipartisan group of elected officials is pushing to halt that plan, especially in the national park

The Trump administration has said the remote West Texas region needs measures to stop illegal immigration. But a bipartisan group of elected officials is pushing to halt that plan, especially in the national park

Rodney Scott, “Statement From CBP Commissioner Rodney S. Scott on Big Bend Border Security Projects” (U.S. Customs and Border Protection, August 17, 2026).

Rebecca Santana, “Trump Administration Briefly Pauses Contentious Border Project in Texas’ Big Bend National Park” (Associated Press, Associated Press, August 17, 2026).

The Trump administration says it is temporarily pausing construction of a controversial border construction project in the Big Bend National Park while the head of the agency tasked with building the wall visits Texas to do an “on-the-ground evaluation”

The Trump administration says it is temporarily pausing construction of a controversial border construction project in the Big Bend National Park while the head of the agency tasked with building the wall visits Texas to do an “on-the-ground evaluation”

J. David Goodman, “Border Construction in Big Bend Is Halted After Drawing Criticism” (The New York Times, August 17, 2026).

The Trump administration has been carving a path through some of the beloved national park’s major natural attractions

The Trump administration has been carving a path through some of the beloved national park’s major natural attractions

“Emergency Injunction Sought to Block Big Bend Border Construction Despite Government Pause” (Center for Biological Diversity, August 17, 2026).

J. David Goodman, “Trump Backed Away From a Wall at Big Bend. But the Bulldozers Are Here.” (The New York Times, August 15, 2026).

Over the objections of environmentalists, local sheriffs and some state leaders, the Trump administration appears to be moving ahead with border infrastructure in one of Texas’ most beloved parks

Over the objections of environmentalists, local sheriffs and some state leaders, the Trump administration appears to be moving ahead with border infrastructure in one of Texas’ most beloved parks

Alicia A. Caldwell, Joe Lovinger, “Texas’ Big Bend National Park Getting Border Barriers That Even Some Trump Supporters Dislike” (Bloomberg, The Los Angeles Times, August 14, 2026).

The Trump administration has begun building border barriers, patrol roads and surveillance infrastructure in Big Bend National Park in Texas despite bipartisan concern about environmental damage seen as unwarranted

The Trump administration has begun building border barriers, patrol roads and surveillance infrastructure in Big Bend National Park in Texas despite bipartisan concern about environmental damage seen as unwarranted

Roque Planas, “‘Devastating’: Bulldozers Plough Through Big Bend National Park as Trump’s Border Work Pushes Ahead” (The Guardian (Uk), August 14, 2026).

Heavy machinery seen operating in famous Santa Elena Canyon amid outcry over new wall infrastructure in beloved Texas park

Heavy machinery seen operating in famous Santa Elena Canyon amid outcry over new wall infrastructure in beloved Texas park

Manuela Silva, “CBP Boss Set to Visit Big Bend Region Amid Border Construction Backlash” (NOTUS, August 14, 2026).

Two county sheriffs told NOTUS that Commissioner Rodney Scott’s staff reached out to them this week after the agency began bulldozing in Big Bend National Park

Two county sheriffs told NOTUS that Commissioner Rodney Scott’s staff reached out to them this week after the agency began bulldozing in Big Bend National Park

Ayden Runnels, Gabby Birenbaum, “New Lawsuit Seeks to Stop Big Bend Border Wall Construction” (The Texas Tribune, August 14, 2026).

A tribal nonprofit and an outdoor recreation company filed the federal lawsuit, arguing the work threatens archeological sites and sacred grounds

A tribal nonprofit and an outdoor recreation company filed the federal lawsuit, arguing the work threatens archeological sites and sacred grounds

Billal Rahman, Dan Gooding, “Trump Admin to Dynamite Mountain for New Border Wall” (Newsweek, August 13, 2026).

Trump’s border wall project could require blasting through Mariscal Mountain in Big Bend National Park, drawing backlash

Trump’s border wall project could require blasting through Mariscal Mountain in Big Bend National Park, drawing backlash

Ashley Killough, Ed Lavandera, Rachel Clarke, “Bulldozers Rip Into Big Bend National Park, Driving Anger and Heartbreak” (CNN, August 13, 2026).

Environmentalists and a bipartisan coalition of state officials and border sheriffs are part of a growing chorus of opposition to ongoing border security amid the wilds of Big Bend National Park in Texas

Environmentalists and a bipartisan coalition of state officials and border sheriffs are part of a growing chorus of opposition to ongoing border security amid the wilds of Big Bend National Park in Texas

Arelis R. Hernandez, Jake Spring, John Muyskens, “Bulldozing Begins at Big Bend National Park for Border Construction” (The Washington Post, August 12, 2026).

Environmentalists say the planned patrol roads, vehicle barriers and cameras will irreversibly reshape the renowned park in Texas

Environmentalists say the planned patrol roads, vehicle barriers and cameras will irreversibly reshape the renowned park in Texas

Gabby Birenbaum, “Paxton Stays Quiet on Big Bend Wall as Texas Republicans Revolt” (The Texas Tribune, August 12, 2026).

The attorney general’s campaign said he wants strong border security that considers Big Bend’s “unique characteristics” — but did not say whether he supports building a wall there

The attorney general’s campaign said he wants strong border security that considers Big Bend’s “unique characteristics” — but did not say whether he supports building a wall there

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), “Cornyn Sends Letter to DHS Outlining Stakeholders’ Concerns on Big Bend Park Border Barriers” (U.S. Senate, August 11, 2026).

U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin outlining Texas stakeholders’ concerns on federal plans to construct physical border barriers in Big Bend National Park and Big Bend Ranch State Park

U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Markwayne Mullin outlining Texas stakeholders’ concerns on federal plans to construct physical border barriers in Big Bend National Park and Big Bend Ranch State Park

Peter Holley, “Trump’s Border-Wall Construction Is Set to Bulldoze the Porvenir Massacre Site” (Texas Monthly, August 7, 2026).

It is considered sacred ground for the descendants of those killed in a mass execution. The border wall threatens to erase it from history

It is considered sacred ground for the descendants of those killed in a mass execution. The border wall threatens to erase it from history

“Federal Contractors Begin Border Construction in Big Bend National Park” (Center for Biological Diversity, August 6, 2026).

Bulldozers broke ground today on border barrier and road construction in Big Bend National Park amid widespread bipartisan opposition. Videos shared with the Center for Biological Diversity show contractors plowing through native vegetation along the Rio Grande’s riparian corridor, with the iconic Santa Elena Canyon visible in the background

Bulldozers broke ground today on border barrier and road construction in Big Bend National Park amid widespread bipartisan opposition. Videos shared with the Center for Biological Diversity show contractors plowing through native vegetation along the Rio Grande’s riparian corridor, with the iconic Santa Elena Canyon visible in the background

Tohono O’odham Nation dealt setback in federal court

In Washington, DC federal district court, Judge Richard Leon denied the Tohono O’odham Nation’s preliminary injunction seeking to block the Trump administration from building a wall through its territory, which incorporates 62 miles of the border between Arizona and Sonora, Mexico. Leon’s August 14 decision cited a 1907 “Roosevelt Reservation” proclamation declaring a fringe of land along the U.S. side of the border west of Texas to be federal property.

“Too many critical issues were not adequately addressed, such as inevitable impacts construction will have on the........

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