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 .

Your donation to WOLA is crucial to keeping these paywall-free and ad-free Updates going. Please contribute now and support our work.

Due to staff travel, we will produce no Border Updates for the next two weeks. Updates will resume on June 13, 2025.

THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

THE FULL UPDATE:

“Reconciliation” funding bill passes House, moves to Senate

Shortly before 3:00 AM on May 22, the full House of Representatives took up and began debating H.R. 1 , an enormous package of tax cuts, deep cuts to social programs, and mammoth increases in spending to harden the U.S.-Mexico border and multiply interior migration enforcement. Shortly before 7:00 AM, the House passed the bill by a 215-214 vote , with all Democrats and two Republicans voting against.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) overcame internal disagreements on taxation and spending (unrelated to the border and migration) within the chamber’s Republican majority, and forced the vote through about a day earlier than expected.

The bill would create a long list of steep fees that applicants for asylum, Temporary Protected Status, humanitarian parole, and other immigration statuses would have to pay in order to have their cases considered. It would also impose a 5 percent tax on non-citizens’ transfers of overseas remittances.

As noted in past weeks’ Border Updates, the House bill would add more than $160 billion in new spending on border security and interior migration enforcement between now and fiscal 2029. This is a staggering amount: currently, the annual budgets of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) add up to less than $30 billion. It would lavish resources on the Trump administration’s promised “mass deportation” campaign.

The image below summarizes the bill’s many border and migration provisions. (Click it to expand it, and note that its alt text reproduces its contents.)

At the last minute, House leadership added $12 billion to the bill for “State Border Security Reimbursement.” This responds to repeated requests , from Texas’s Republican state government and political leaders, for a federal government payout to reimburse Gov. Greg Abbott’s “Operation Lone Star” border crackdown, which began in 2021 and has cost Texas taxpayers at least $11 billion.

The bill now goes to the Republican-majority Senate, where under normal procedure, legislation must win 60 out of 100 votes to end debate and move to a final vote—a procedure known as the filibuster. However, this bill is going under a special rule called “reconciliation” that would allow it to pass by a simple majority , without a single Democratic vote, as long as the Senate’s Parliamentarian rules that each of its provisions have direct impact on the federal budget. For this reason, the legislation often gets called the “reconciliation bill.”

The foreseen spending and fees for the border and mass deportation would likely meet that definition. However, in a piece at his Migrant Insider newsletter, Capitol Hill-watcher Pablo Manríquez voiced concern that current Senate leadership might ignore some of the Parliamentarian’s dictates and bend the rules in ways that could allow simple-majority passage of more fundamental changes to immigration law.

The reconciliation bill may not sail easily through the Senate. Key Republicans are already balking at some of the ways the bill would add to the federal deficit. While few Republicans have commented on its border and migration provisions, one important senator has: Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), the libertarian-leaning chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, has criticized the House bill’s $46.5 billion for border wall construction, viewing it as excessive.

Calculating that building a thousand miles of border wall might cost $12 billion, Paul told Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem at a May 20th hearing , “The number’s way off. We can’t just throw $30 billion out there and say ’Things cost a lot.’” Another Homeland Security Committee member, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), told Noem, “Sharpen your pencil. It’s more than you need.”

WOLA published a May 22 analysis of the bill’s contents, using comparisons to other public spending needs and giant projects to show the sheer scale of the bill’s foreseen spending on border security, migrant detention, deportations, CBP and ICE hiring, and Operation Lone Star reimbursement. The bill’s border wall spending, for example, could pay for over a year of universal preschool for all U.S. children; its detention spending could build stadiums for all 30 Major League Baseball teams; its deportation spending could build 18 Empire State Buildings; and its hiring budget could feed 123 million people at risk of famine.

Many other groups have published incisive analyses of the bill’s border and migration provisions: Alianza Americas , American Civil Liberties Union , American Friends Service Committee , American Immigration Council , American Immigration Lawyers Association , Amnesty International , Asian Americans Advancing Justice , Center for Law and Social Policy , Church World Service , Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights , Detention Watch , Friends Committee on National Legislation , HIAS , Human Rights First , Immigration Hub , Institute for Policy Studies , KIND , Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights , National Immigrant Justice Center , National Immigration Law Center , Nebraska Appleseed , New York Immigration Coalition , One America , Protecting Immigrant Families Coalition , Refugee Council USA , UnidosUS , Women’s Refugee Commission , and Young Center . (There are likely many more worthy statements and analyses; these are the ones WOLA staff have seen.)

Alien Enemies Act updates

Supreme Court rules again to block invocation of the Act

Near the end of the day on May 16, the Supreme Court upheld and prolonged an earlier block on the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a rarely invoked wartime statute, to remove Venezuelan non-citizens out of the country from the northern district of Texas.

In its 7-2 ruling , the Court sharply disagreed with the administration’s notion that 24 hours’ notice is enough time for people to exercise their due process rights and challenge their rapid rendition—most likely to El Salvador’s Center for the Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT) prison. “Notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster,” the justices wrote.

Judicial analyst Steve Vladeck of the Georgetown University Law Center observed of the ruling, “There are numerous passages in which the majority openly seems to be expressing frustration—with the government; with the lower courts; and even with Justice Alito (who wrote a dissenting opinion that was joined by Justice Thomas).”

The ruling “means that more individuals will not secretly be sent to a brutal prison in El Salvador,” ACLU attorney and key litigator Lee Gelernt said in the New York Times .

“THE SUPREME COURT WON’T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!” President Donald Trump posted to his social media network. In another post he said it was “a bad and dangerous day for America.”

“The decision is a significant loss for Trump, who wants to use the law to speed deportations—and avoid the kind of review normally required before removing people from the country,” read an analysis by John Fritze and Devan Cole at CNN. “But the decision is also temporary and the underlying legal fight over the president’s invocation [of the Alien Enemies Act] will continue in multiple federal courts across the country.”

The Supreme Court has yet to consider that larger question of the “merits,” meaning whether President Trump was acting lawfully when, on March 15, he invoked a wartime law to confront what he perceived to be a “predatory incursion” from the Venezuelan government in league with a Venezuelan criminal group, the Tren de Aragua. That question remains before lower courts.

In a few paragraphs of the Justice’s opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh expressed his view that the Supreme Court should be taking on the merits question now.

Other courts’ rulings

In a 2-1 ruling on May 19th, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals determined that Trump’s Alien Enemies Act invocation does not allow migrants to be rendered out of the country if they are protected by an existing legal settlement prohibiting their deportation. The finding favored “Cristian,” a 20-year-old Venezuelan asylum seeker sent to El Salvador’s CECOT even though, as he had arrived as an unaccompanied minor, a judicial settlement was meant to protect him from deportation.

Law professor Ilya Somin of George Mason University pointed out that the Fourth Circuit decision’s wording makes it the fifth federal court to have found Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to be unlawful on the merits because of the lack of a “predatory incursion.” Only one judge, in Pennsylvania, has ruled otherwise, and her decision required the administration to give much more advance notice to guarantee due process.

Other third-country transfers

Though not an Alien Enemies Act case, the most intense legal drama of this week happened on May 19th in the Boston courtroom of Judge Brian Murphy, who is currently prohibiting the administration from transferring migrants to third countries without a meaningful chance to plead for their safety in those countries. Judge Murphy just barely stopped an ICE plane from taking migrants to South Sudan with little or no advanced warning, in almost certain defiance of his earlier order. The Judge may be considering contempt of court proceedings.

“The U.S. has reportedly explored, sought, or struck deals with at least 19 countries” for transfers of third-country migrants, according to the Intercept . They are “Angola, Benin, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Kosovo, Libya, Mexico, Moldova, Mongolia, Panama, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.”

Abrego Garcia case

In her Maryland courtroom on May 16, Judge Paula Xinis continued seeking to compel administration officials to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia , the Salvadoran man mistakenly transferred to the CECOT on March 15. (Abrego García’s is not an Alien Enemies Act case: the Trump administration also sent to the CECOT about 150 Salvadorans and Venezuelans with final removal orders from immigration courts. Abrego García did not have such an order: a court specified that he could not be removed to El Salvador due to threats.)

Judge Xinis voiced strong frustration with the government’s refusal to provide information about their apparent non-compliance with her order, as they cited “state secrets” or “deliberative process” privileges. “What we got was a bunch of ‘I don’t knows,’” she said , adding, “You haven’t complied, and you haven’t in bad faith.”

A New York Times investigation of deliberations inside the Trump administration revealed “a dayslong scramble and clashes among officials in three different agencies over how to deal with what everyone knew had been an error”: Abrego Garcia’s rendition . Above other officials’ concerns, DHS officials prevailed in giving no ground and pushing a narrative that Abrego Garcia was a “leader” of the MS-13 gang, “even though they could find no evidence to support the claim.”

Sen Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland), who had met briefly with Abrego Garcia during an April visit to El Salvador, had an angry exchange with Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a May 20th hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Uplifting an obviously staged lie from the Salvadoran government, Rubio told Van Hollen, “In the case of El Salvador, absolutely, absolutely, we deported gang members, gang members—including the one you had a margarita with. And that guy is a human trafficker, and that guy is a gangbanger, and that and the evidence is going to be clear.” (Rubio tacitly admitted here that such evidence is lacking, even as Abrego García languishes in a Salvadoran prison, facing no criminal charges.)

Due process and habeas corpus

“If there has been a common theme in the federal courts’ response to the fallout from President Trump’s aggressive deportation policies,” read a New York Times analysis , “it is that the White House cannot rush headlong into expelling people by sidestepping the fundamental principle of due process.” Immigrants’ right to challenge their deportations is an emerging “legal bottom line.”

Fundamental due process questions came up again on May 20th as DHS Secretary Noem testified in the Senate Homeland Security Committee. Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-New Hampshire) asked the Secretary pointblank, “What is habeas corpus?”

The Senator was referring to the ancient right, enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, that protects people from being arbitrarily detained by their government without charges or judicial recourse. In comments to reporters on May 9th, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller had mused openly about suspending this right, citing an “invasion” of migrants.

Noem’s response to Hassan’s question was striking: “Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country, and suspend their right to…” she said, at which point Hassan interrupted Noem to correct her. Noem went on to insist that suspending habeas corpus was a presidential power, although the vast majority of legal interpretations give that power to Congress.

Other reports and analyses

The U.S. military’s growing border and migration missions

“National Defense Areas”

As of May 19th, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in El Paso, Texas had secured 60 convictions of people arrested for trespassing in a long, narrow fringe of borderline east of El Paso that is now considered a “National Defense Area” or a military installation—in this case, a temporary extension of El Paso’s Fort Bliss army base. The 60 pleaded guilty; the misdemeanor of “violation of security regulations” carries penalties of up to a year in prison and up to $100,000 in fines.

On May 15 and 16, a magistrate judge in El Paso threw out charges against 16 people accused of stepping on the 50-mile-long, roughly 60-foot-wide strip of border land. The El Paso “National Defense Area” has been considered U.S. military property since May 1, following an April 11 presidential memo calling for federal lands along the border to be handed over to the Defense Department.

Magistrate Judge Miguel Torres ruled that the charged migrants had no way of knowing they were trespassing. At one point in the courtroom, El Paso Matters reported , a defense attorney held up one of the 12-by-18-inch signs that the government has been posting, well into U.S. territory, to warn people that they are trespassing. A Border Patrol agent was unable to read the sign from 20 feet away. “If you have to be right up on the sign to see it, you’ve already committed the offense,” said Judge Torres.

The dropped charges echo a similar outcome in New Mexico, site of the first, 170-mile-long, declared “National Defense Area.” As noted in WOLA’s May 16 Border Update, Magistrate Judge Gregory Wormuth threw out charges against 98 arrested migrants who did not know they were violating the law.

The Defense Department’s guidelines allow soldiers in the “National Defense Areas” to detain or apprehend migrants temporarily, until Border Patrol agents or other civilian law enforcement can pick them up. This is a highly unusual role for military personnel to play on U.S. soil, as the law rarely empowers them to apprehend civilians.

A spokesperson for the Defense Department’s “Joint Task Force Southern Border” told the Santa Fe New Mexican that soldiers so far have not detained a single migrant . Maj. Geoffrey Carmichael said that this would rarely happen, because soldiers are usually operating in very close proximity to Border Patrol agents who can carry out apprehensions.

The New Mexico and El Paso areas’ demarcation remains unclear. When Sarah Matusek of the Christian Science Monitor asked about their boundaries, “Pentagon spokespeople say they don’t have maps. Neither did the military confirm whether a map by the Bureau of Land Management of the land it transferred in New Mexico to the Army matches the new military zone in that state.”

The sheriff of Dona Ana County, New Mexico, had not even seen that map (below, shared in an April 20 Arizona Daily Star report ), which shows an “Emergency Withdrawal Area” extending for as much as two or three miles, not sixty feet.

What may happen to U.S. citizens caught trespassing, like hunters or people riding recreational all-terrain vehicles, is also unclear. However, Lauren Villagran of USA Today got a response : “‘ Hunting and hiking inside the National Defense Areas is no longer allowed ,’ Jordan Beagle, a spokesman for the Department of Defense’s Joint Task Force-Southern Border, said in an email. ‘Additionally, the National Defense Areas have been declared restricted areas and unauthorized entry by anyone is prohibited.’”

Other military updates

Supreme Court upholds Venezuela TPS cancellation

In an 8-1 decision on May 19 that overturned a California judge’s earlier block, the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to go ahead with its February cancellation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for up to 350,000 citizens of Venezuela in the United States. The Miami Herald reported on the “fear, confusion, and outrage” the high court’s decision has generated throughout the Venezuelan community.

The Venezuelan NGO Foro Penal released an updated estimate of 900 political prisoners currently held in Venezuela, demonstrating that the human rights and security situations have not improved since President Biden first approved TPS for Venezuelans. The editorial board of the Herald , which endorsed Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s 2010 Senate candidacy and his 2016 presidential primary candidacy, bitterly criticized the Miami-born politician for leading the TPS revocation: “The poor humanitarian conditions in Venezuela remain the same. Rubio has changed.”

By allowing the TPS revocation to go forward, “the Supreme Court achieved what law professors believe to be the biggest instantaneous ‘de-documentation’ of immigrants in U.S. history ,” wrote Dara Lind at the American Immigration Council’s Immigration Impact site. However, “the Supreme Court didn’t actually clarify whether the termination is in effect now, or whether the government has to do something to make the original April 7 termination effective.” Amid the uncertainty, Disney has placed on leave about 45 Venezuelan employees of its resorts.

The Miami Herald revealed that Trump administration officials are in quiet negotiations with Venezuelan regime counterparts for a deal that would allow U.S. energy company Chevron to continue exporting Venezuelan oil, generating billions of dollars for the nation’s economy and treasury, if the government accepts more U.S. flights carrying deported Venezuelan citizens.

Three U.S. deportation flights landed in Venezuela (two on Venezuelan aircraft via Honduras) over the past week , including two on May 21 . According to Tal Cual , “4,711 Venezuelan migrants have returned to the country, most of them deported by the Donald Trump administration since last February.” The number appears to include about 1,500 people repatriated from Mexico.

Other News

Share