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Updates from Adam Isacson (March 18, 2025)

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This week’s email points to the Border Update and a timeline of this weekend's likely defiance of a judicial order that sought to stop the administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to send Venezuelan people to El Salvador's prisons. Also, some links to recent coverage of organized crime-tied corruption in the Americas, some recommended readings, and links to a few upcoming events. Stay well and thank you for reading.

Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: February migration, ICE arrests, Guantánamo empties, Panama releases

(Posted Friday, March 14)

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

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

  • CBP publishes February border data: As the Trump administration shut down asylum access at the border and canceled the CBP One program, the number of people entering CBP custody at the border has plummeted. There are now at least four uniformed security personnel for every apprehended migrant. Migration is also way down in the Darién Gap. Fentanyl seizures are also very low.
  • “Mass deportation” updates: ICE arrested 32,809 people in the U.S. interior during the first 50 days of the Trump administration. Congress is considering budget measures to make deportations truly “massive.” ICE is increasingly targeting families as it reopens family detention facilities.
  • Active-duty deployment nears 9,600 soldiers: Troops keep arriving at the border, playing supporting roles.
  • Guantánamo base is currently empty: The entire population of 40 detainees at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station has been returned to the United States. The operation’s cost so far has averaged $55,000 per detainee.
  • The impact in Panama and elsewhere: On short-term visas, Panama’s government released 112 Asian, African, and European migrants whom the Trump administration had sent there despite their fears of return. It isn’t clear what their next steps are.
  • Congressional opponents grow more vocal: Letters and statements from congressional Democrats voiced more alarm and outrage about Trump administration anti-immigration measures, even as a CNN poll showed respondents narrowly approving of Trump’s performance on migration policy.

Read the whole thing here.

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Timeline of What Appears to be Defiance of a Judicial Order: Applying the Alien Enemies Act to Venezuelans Sent to El Salvador’s Prisons Without Due Process

(Posted Sunday, March 16 with subsequent updates)

This is the most-visited post to my personal site all year so far. Like the Border Update above, it is very graphics-heavy and may not work in an e-mail, so I'm only posting a link to read it online.

When Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited El Salvador on February 3, President Nayib Bukele offered to take third-country prisoners shipped from the United States and hold them in his government's massive prison system for a fee. In our February 7 WOLA Border Update, we warned:

This offer, combined with the possible use of the Alien Enemies Act discussed below, raises the possibility of non-citizens being detained in the United States on suspicion of ties to organized crime groups—like Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua—and then sent straight to Bukele’s prisons without a hearing or any other due process.

That is exactly what happened on Saturday afternoon and evening. On Sunday I sat down with lots of collected social media posts and FlightAware data to try to figure out the timeline of when the White House invoked the Alien Enemies Act against suspected members of the Venezuelan criminal group, when a judge ordered expulsions to El Salvador's jails to stop, and when the planes were in the air and could have turned around.

Here is the timeline that I maintained, which got linked from some busy sites. It sure looks like there was plenty of time to turn the planes back in compliance with Federal Judge James Boasberg's order—but the administration chose not to.

The Washington Post (with good graphics) and Associated Press have since built similar timelines. And this is shaping up to be a big constitutional crisis.

(Posted Tuesday, March 18)

“For drug-related crime, state capture is an essential element of doing business. It guarantees that all stages of the logistics chain run with limited risk of seizure or arrest.” Meanwhile, “Mexico is now Latin America’s emblematic case of corruption and co-option by organised crime.”
The winner of a special gubernatorial election in Colombia’s southern department of Putumayo, a major coca-producing zone, faces “allegations of alleged support for his campaign from questionable politicians and of alleged support from the Comandos de la Frontera, a FARC dissident group that controls a large part of Putumayo.”
Argues that Latin America’s criminal organizations now seek relationships at the local level—states/provinces or municipalities/counties—rather than seek to corrupt the topmost levels of government.

Laura Sanchez Ley, Agente Fronterizo de Eu Hacia Tours para ‘Coyotes’ (Milenio (Mexico), Tuesday, February 18, 2025).

Héctor Hernández, a Border Patrol agent in San Diego, allegedly gave Tijuana migrant smugglers “tours” of the border showing them the best sites for crossing migrants, charging them “$5,000 per tour and entry.” That ended in 2023 when Hernández gave a “tour” to an undercover Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent.
The oft-cited expert discusses the major legal issues following Chief Judge Boasberg's ordering a temporary block to the presidential proclamation.
Tells the stories of several of the asylum seekers sent to Panama by the Trump administration, and now stuck there.
Gustavo Petro's government has announced what sounds like an ambitious coca substitution program in the embattled Catatumbo region, in Colombia's northeast. But there's little reason for optimism.
"This funding freeze has led to operational challenges, layoffs, and the closure of various programs essential to promoting democracy and transparency in El Salvador"—including a severe hit to 11 independent media outlets trying to oversee the Bukele regime's misdeeds.
A 50-year survey of terrorist activities committed by foreign-born individuals in the United States. It finds that such attacks are exceedingly rare, with a 1 in 4.6 million chance of dying in a terrorist attack committed by a foreign-born person. The annual chance of dying in a terrorist attack committed by an asylum seeker drops to 1 in 1.5 billion.

(Posted Tuesday, March 18. Just a few this week: Congress is out and think-tank schedules are a bit thin.)

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

Monday, March 17

Wednesday, March 19

  • 12:30-2:00 at George Washington University: Authoritarian Regimes, Gender Based Violence: How Right Wing Governments use the ‘Protective Discourse’ to Justify Their Harms Against Women and Girls (RSVP required).

Friday, March 21

  • 4:00-7:30 at American University: 3rd Annual Changing Aid Conference (RSVP required).

And Finally

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