Adam Isacson

Adam Isacson

Director for 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.

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Due to the Thanksgiving holiday, and then to staff work travel during the first week of December, WOLA will not publish Border Updates for the next two weeks. The next edition will appear on December 12.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

THE FULL UPDATE:

CBP published statistics on November 14 detailing the agency’s encounters with undocumented migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in October 2025. The data indicate that last month was quite similar to September.

October was the sixth straight month in which CBP did not release a single migrant into the U.S. interior. In the past, most releases were of people seeking asylum in the United States; now, a January 2025 White House proclamation has suspended access to the U.S. asylum system at the border. (This suspension continues to face judicial challenges.) Any migrants allowed to pursue protection at the border, for instance under the Convention Against Torture, appear to be awaiting adjudication while in detention.

Combining Border Patrol apprehensions between ports of entry (official border crossings) with CBP’s encounters at the ports of entry, the agency encountered 11,710 people at the border in October, or 378 people per day, similar to 11,647 in September (388 people per day). CBP’s Border Patrol component apprehended 7,989 people between the ports of entry in October (258 people per day), down from 8,386 in September (280 people per day).

While all of these numbers are at or near 60-year lows, Border Patrol’s apprehensions had jumped 83 percent from July to September. That they leveled off in October may indicate a return to seasonal migration patterns among migrants who seek to avoid apprehension: migration increases, often sharply, in fall and spring, and declines in summer and winter. Unlike that apprehension-evading population, asylum seekers—who cannot access protection at the border right now under the Trump administration’s near-total suspension of asylum—tended to arrive regardless of weather conditions: those intending to turn themselves in to U.S. agents were less vulnerable to prolonged extreme weather exposure.

October’s CBP encounter total, combining Border Patrol and ports of entry, was 9 percent greater than the monthly average during the Trump administration’s first eight full months (February-September). Most nationalities’ numbers were greater than the Trump-era average in October, although Honduras and CBP’s “Other Countries” category measured notable declines.

Between the ports of entry, Border Patrol’s apprehensions were 10 percent above the February-September average.

October’s all-CBP encounters with members of family units, and especially with unaccompanied children, were greater than the February-September average by double-digit margins, while encounters with single adult migrants were close to the Trump-era average.

For the second straight month, Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector, in Arizona, led all of the agency’s nine U.S.-Mexico border geographic sectors in apprehensions. The number two through four sectors in October were all in Texas.

Five sectors reported apprehensions in October that were higher than the February-September average. El Paso (west Texas and New Mexico) and San Diego (California) measured double-digit declines from the Trump-era average.

A Reuters report noted the quieter conditions in Border Patrol’s San Diego sector, with shelters nearly empty there and in Tijuana, and injuries from falling off the border wall dropping from 1,210 in all of 2024 to 44 through October 2025. Before the Trump administration eliminated the possibility of seeking asylum at the border, some asylum seekers would scale the first layer of San Diego’s double border fence and wait to turn themselves in to agents; many would fall from the 30-foot structure.

In the five sectors where apprehensions exceeded their Trump-era average (by a cross-sector total of 28 percent), the most significant growth was in apprehensions of citizens of Mexico, Guatemala, and northern South America.

In those five sectors that experienced growth in October, family unit members increased the most (32%). However, 80 percent of the apprehended population in those sectors was single adults, a much greater share than during the 2014-2024 fiscal years (63%).

The U.S. Supreme Court will review an appeals court decision that had prohibited CBP from restricting asylum seekers’ access to the U.S.-Mexico border’s ports of entry. Under this practice, called “metering,” CBP officers stationed at the borderline—including in the middle of bridges over the Rio Grande—were preventing all who do not show proof of documented status in the United States, or some other official permission to enter, from setting foot on U.S. soil. Officers performing metering turn back all who cannot show such documentation, including those claiming fear for their lives or freedom in Mexico or their countries of origin.

Section 208 of the Immigration and Nationality Act affords the right to seek asylum to “any alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States.” U.S. law and policy discourage asylum seekers from “arriving” by crossing the border between the official ports of entry, which is a misdemeanor even when the intent is to surrender to Border Patrol agents to seek protection. Instead, asylum seekers are expected to approach a port of entry and, once on U.S. soil, request protection from CBP officers inside the port facility.

That is impossible to do, however, when CBP officers are “metering.” The practice first emerged in 2016, when the Obama administration placed officers on the line in San Diego during a large-scale arrival of Haitian citizens. The first Trump administration revived metering in 2018, expanding it to the entire border.

“Metering” was later eclipsed, in most cases, by the pandemic-era “Title 42” policy that mandated the automatic expulsion of all asylum seekers, and then by the Biden administration’s adoption of a smartphone app, CBP One, that required asylum seekers to make appointments, often months ahead of time, at ports of entry. As officers on the line turned away nearly all asylum seekers who lacked CBP One appointments, rights advocates derided the policy as “digital metering.”

Litigation brought by the San Diego- and Tijuana-based group Al Otro Lado and several asylum seekers largely struck down the “metering” policy, as courts declared it illegal because it prevents people who may face a risk of grave harm from “arriving” as intended at ports of entry. (The plaintiffs in the Al Otro Lado v. Noem case are represented by the American Immigration Council, the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies (CGRS), the Center for Constitutional Rights, Democracy Forward, and the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection.)

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California upheld the ban on metering, even as subsequent policies—Title 42, CBP One, and now the Trump administration’s blanket ban on asylum discussed above—made it irrelevant. Still, the Trump administration in July requested that the Supreme Court review the lower courts’ decision, citing a desire to have flexibility in limiting access to ports of entry, to “retain the option of reviving that practice when border conditions justify doing so.”

The Supreme Court granted the administration’s request on November 17. Especially at issue will be what Section 208 means by “physically present” and “arriving” in the United States.

“The government’s turnback policy was an illegal scheme to circumvent these requirements by physically blocking asylum seekers arriving at ports of entry and preventing them from crossing the border to seek protection,” reads a statement from the plaintiffs. “Vulnerable families, children, and adults fleeing persecution were stranded in perilous conditions where they faced violent assault, kidnapping, and death. We look forward to presenting our case to the Court.”

“The court will hear arguments in the case next year,” probably in the spring, “and hand down a decision by the end of June,” CNN

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