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Updates from Adam Isacson (March 11, 2025)

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This week’s email has the Border Update, a WOLA podcast about the Mexico tariff nonsense, videos of three recent interviews in English, some links to recent coverage of arms transfers in the Americas, some recommended readings, and links to upcoming events. Stay well and thank you for reading.

Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: tariffs, February migration, military role, mass deportation

(Posted Friday, March 7)

  • Read the whole thing here. See past weekly updates here. View a topic index of 2025's Border Updates here.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

  • Citing cross-border fentanyl trafficking, Trump again imposes and then withdraws tariffs on Mexico: President Trump followed up on a threat to impose 25 percent tariffs on all goods from Mexico and Canada. The main reason cited was production and trafficking of fentanyl, which has been declining, though it seems apparent that the President’s disdain for trade agreements is a larger factor. Trump later lifted tariffs on most goods for another month.
  • Vance brings cabinet members to Eagle Pass: Vice President Vance went to the border with the Homeland Security and Defense secretaries. His remarks focused mainly on organized crime in Mexico, not migration.
  • February saw the fewest Border Patrol migrant apprehensions this century, and perhaps since the 1960s: Donald Trump revealed that Border Patrol apprehended 8,326 migrants along the border in February, which would be the fewest since at least 2000, the earliest year for which public data are available. Monthly averages were lower than that from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s and during and before World War II. As occurred during the first months of Trump’s first term, migrants and smugglers are pausing their decisions to try to enter the country.
  • The U.S. military presence grows at the border: With the deployment of a Stryker brigade combat team and general support aviation battalion, the number of active-duty military personnel at the border will soon reach 9,000. The overall number of uniformed personnel could be over four times the number of monthly migrant apprehensions.
  • “Mass deportation” slows a bit, pending new money from Congress: Deportation flights increased modestly in February, and costly military flights have nearly halted since February 21. The Guantánamo Bay naval base is receiving fewer detainees amid cost concerns and interagency coordination issues. The White House is disappointed by its slow start, but a giant spending measure moving haltingly through Congress could remove its funding bottlenecks. Policy changes underway range from easing the firing of immigration judges to expanding expedited removal throughout the country to reopening family detention facilities.
  • Notes on the impact in Mexico and further south: Asylum applications are way up in Mexico even as migrant shelters empty. Numbers of migrants giving up and returning to South America have grown to the point that Costa Rica and Panama are facilitating southbound transportation.

Read the whole thing here.

Support ad-free, paywall-free Weekly Border Updates. Your donation to WOLA is crucial to sustain this effort. Please contribute now and support our work.

WOLA Podcast: Tariffs Won’t Stop Fentanyl: Upending U.S.-Mexico relations for a failed drug-war model

(Posted Wednesday, March 5)

By imposing tariffs on Mexico, “Trump seems not to want even a transactional relationship, but rather to blow up the relationship.” One of the conclusions of a conversation I recorded today with Stephanie and John from WOLA, in the wake of Trump’s imposition of tariffs on Mexico.

Here’s the text of the landing page on WOLA’s website:

In an expected but still stunning escalation, the Trump administration has imposed 25 percent tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, citing cross-border flows of fentanyl as justification. The move has sent shockwaves through U.S.-Mexico and North American relations, rattling markets and generating a general outcry.

In this episode, Stephanie Brewer, WOLA’s director for Mexico, and John Walsh, WOLA’s director for drug policy, unpack the political, economic, and security implications of the tariff imposition and an apparent return to failed attempts to stop drug abuse and drug trafficking through brute force.

Brewer breaks down how the tariffs and other new hardline policies, like terrorist designations for Mexican criminal groups and fast-tracked extraditions, are reshaping and severely straining the bilateral relationship.

Walsh explains why Trump’s focus on supply-side crackdowns is doomed to fail, drawing on decades of evidence from past U.S. drug wars. He lays out a harm reduction strategy that would save far more lives.

The conversation concludes with an open question: is Donald Trump really interested in a negotiation with Mexico? Or is the goal a permanent state of coercion, which would explain the lack of stated benchmarks for lifting the tariffs?

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.

Three videos

Here are videos of three appearances in English last week:

March 5, at Al Jazeera's AJ+, talking about the people who the Trump administration flew to Panama and stranded there. On Instagram this has over 1 million views and 50,000 "likes."

March 7, on San Diego's KPBS, talking about the Trump administration's "mass deportations"

March 8, at NewsNation, talking about several current border issues.

(Posted Tuesday, March 11)

Western Hemisphere Regional

The Trump administration has undone a weak Biden-era restriction on arms sales to countries that might use U.S.-provided weapons in violation of international humanitarian law.

Trump revokes Biden-era policy, prompted by Israel’s Gaza war, restricting US arms sales over human rights concerns

Argentina

The Milei government is taking delivery on an order of F-16 aircraft begun during the Biden administration, and refurbishing U.S.-provided P-3 aircraft.

El ministro de Defensa, Luis Petri, encabezó un acto junto a la aeronave Nº 25, la cual servirá para adiestramiento y no tiene capacidad de vuelo. Cómo son los misiles que llegarán de los Estados Unidos
Se encuentra a la espera de su turno para ser enviado a las instalaciones del aeropuerto de Keystone Heights, ubicado en la localidad de Florida, base aérea donde se realizarán tareas de puesta en servicio de la aeronave militar.

Central America Regional, Dominican Republic

Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, and the Dominican Republic adopted an OAS “Roadmap to Prevent Trafficking in and the Illicit Proliferation of Arms, Ammunition and Explosives.”

Colombia, Peru

Colombia was to buy Swedish-made Gripen fighter planes, but the U.S. government is vetoing the sale of its U.S.-made engines. Colombia may consider Chinese alternatives.

According to SA Defense the US will block the sale of the GE F414-GE-39E engine, a key component of Sweden’s Saab Gripen E fighter jet, to Colombia’s Air Force

Mexico

Several stories about arms trafficking across the U.S. border, the subject of arguments in Mexico’s lawsuit against U.S. weapons companies, which went before the Supreme Court on March 4.

Guns allegedly linked to Dallas native used in assassination attempt of Mexico City police chief, murder of immigration agent, 2 others
The case concerns a lawsuit the Mexican government filed against gun companies seeking accountability for the gun violence epidemic
The country claims Smith & Wesson and other gunmakers are turning a blind eye to hundreds of thousands of high-powered weapons made in the U.S that are illegally trafficked into in the hands of Mexican cartels
Under pressure from Trump, the Sheinbaum administration is demanding that the United States combat the firepower of the cartels. Using judicial documents and official reports, EL PAÍS reconstructs the long chain of arms trafficking, which begins in the weapons industry and ends in the streets of Mexico

Nicaragua

Russia delivered helicopters, planes, and anti-aircraft artillery to Nicaragua.

Helicópteros Mi-17, aviones AN-26 y artillería antiaérea modernizada Zushka se han entregado a la Fuerza Aérea del Ejército de Nicaragua

Venezuela

“Venezuela is a shell of a state, held up by illicit narcotic and oil money as well as Chinese, Russian, and Iranian support and posing no realistic threat to the United States. No amount of advanced Russian warplanes will change that.”

Venezuela’s economic conditions have repeatedly undercut the ability of its military to maintain the planes in its flee

Darién Gap Migration Continues Dropping

(Posted Monday, March 10)

408 people migrated northward through the Darién Gap in February, the fewest in a month since November 2020. An expected result of the disappearance of the right to seek asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. (data table / source / chart)

"More detentions will lead to more deaths, but the Trump Administration has options to conceal the losses."
The Trump administration's aid cutoffs have decimated independent, investigative journalism in Latin American countries that need this vital check on power.
The Petro government has launched a voluntary coca crop eradication plan in the violent Catatumbo region. There is strong reason for pessimism about its ability to carry out this effort.
Reasons for concern about the Homeland Security Department's troubled Office of Intelligence and Analysis, at the border and elsewhere, during the Trump administration.
As democracies backslide, Trump's rhetoric and policies have emboldened Latin American leaders to adopt more authoritarian and nationalist stances.

(Posted Monday, March 10)

(Events that I know of, anyway. All times are U.S. Eastern.)

Monday, March 10

Tuesday, March 11

Wednesday, March 12

  • 12:30-1:30 at Georgetown University: Latin America Research Seminar: Concubines, Lawyers, Cattle and Maps (RSVP required).
  • 2:00 at atlanticcouncil.org: The role of the Panama Canal in global commerce (RSVP required).

Thursday, March 13

And Finally

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Jamie Larson
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