Defense Secretary Visits Border (Newsletter)
New warning signs go up
THE WEEK’S US BORDER NEWS IN BRIEF:
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s second trip to US Southern Border:
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth arrived at Fort Bliss in El Paso on Friday during his second trip to the Southern Border since being appointed to that position. The Secretary travelled to a newly-designated 170 square-mile “National Defense Area” in New Mexico and showed reporters signs in English and Spanish warning against entry. In a most unusual expansion of domestic military roles, soldiers in this zone will now be able to detain and search migrants and conduct crowd control measures, if needed.
US Northern Command assigned US Army Stryker Crews to remote areas of the US Southern Border with Mexico last month. (US Border Patrol Photos) Controversies continue over renditions to El Salvador:
Courts, including the Supreme Court, continue to block the Trump administration’s invocations of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to expel Venezuelan migrants to a mega-prison in El Salvador. The amount of advance notification individuals must receive has been an area of sharp contention. A Maryland federal court continues to pursue “intense discovery” in the case of erroneously expelled Salvadoran migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia. A senator who visited Abrego Garcia in El Salvador provided new details about his confinement.
Number of people expelled under “Alien Enemies Act” authority:
As far as can be determined, since March 15, the Trump administration has sent 252 Venezuelan and 36 Salvadoran migrants from U.S. immigration authorities’ custody to El Salvador. All these individuals' names are unknown, and their loved ones have received no official word from the U.S. or Salvadoran governments.
Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agent assigned to Enforcement & Removal Operations (ERO) guards aircraft boarded by a migrant being deported from the US (ICE Photo) Notes on “mass deportation”:
Congress is about to consider a historically massive spending package to fund border hardening and the Trump administration’s planned mass deportation campaign. A U.S. citizen whom Border Patrol arrested in Arizona ended up in immigration detention for 10 days. Unaccompanied children as young as four years old are now defending themselves in immigration court asylum cases as the Trump administration has canceled legal aid funding. Family detention centers are now confining not just people detained at the border, but families who have been in the United States for years.
Notes from the migration route:
As migration levels remain very low amid the impossibility of obtaining U.S. asylum, shelters on Mexico’s side of the border are empty and reeling from U.S. aid cuts; they may fill again once the Trump administration’s mass deportations get truly underway. Migration through the Darién Gap remains very low as well. Costa Rica and Panama have offered short-term migratory status to asylum seekers from other continents whom the Trump administration expelled to those countries in February.
NOTE: This weekly summary was adapted from a far more comprehensive one by WOLA.org, which you can read in full HERE.
(If you found this summary helpful, I invite you to financially support WOLA’s work).
FINALLY, IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
(Stories US Border News published during the past week):
241 Migrants Caught Off California Coast in 2025 (So Far)
Sea smuggling continues
US Border: Top General Arrives as Illegal Crossings Plunge
Fallen Marines Also Honored
US Border: Troops Now Guard "National Defense Area"
170 Square Miles of New Mexico is now a military zone
Sharia Schools? Texas A.G. vs "EPIC City" Battle Heats Up
Plano ISD Investigated
(Related stories)
Texas Governor Opposes "Sharia City" Near Dallas (Feb 25, 2025)
Texas Governor vs "Sharia City" Battle Heats Up (March 31, 2025)
I remain committed to delivering a US Border Newsletter that is not only educational and insightful but also engaging and easy to digest in five minutes or less.
(How am I doing? Let me know in the comments!)
Abrazos,
Jack Beavers
