🤔. Over the past 6 months, average U.S.-Mexico border fentanyl seizures have dropped to 58% below than the average of the previous 23 months.

That's more than it would cost me to stay tonight in the swanky JW Marriott downtown.

Showing my work, from

At $600 million per year for 5,000 detainees, the Everglades detention facility would cost a whopping $328.77 per bed per day. ICE's 2025 budget request read: "Average adult bed cost per day is $187.48 for FY 2023.".

Taken from this report: the amounts that Congress ultimately approved are in the “Senate Bill” column of this table, but the “House Bill” column, which closely follows it, gives a fuller sense of individual line items.

Note that this week's Border Update is coming, but will be late. I was writing two things at once, and this one came out first. The large, mostly pro-MAGA forces now being super-sized might come to confront the President’s political adversaries:

@WOLA_org We cut this part of our analysis back slightly—about the dangers to democracy of a super-charged political police force—because it was running long. Here's the original section, and all I can say is 😬😬😬

From @WOLA_org:. The bill has passed. What we’ve seen so far is just a taste of what’s to come. Border walls x 3. ICE personnel x more than 2. Migrant detention x 4. Deportation x 5. A big payday for for-profit contractors. A body blow to a free society.

By comparison: in 2024, ICE had a "transportation and removal operations" budget of just $721.4 million. That is, "$0.72 billion" for the year. See page 631 here:

ICE deportation flights are up 63% over the February-April average. And this is set to multiply: Congress just gave the agency $14.4 billion for aerial deportations over the next 4 years.

In recent months the Trump administration has deported a quarter of Mexican citizens to Chiapas and Tabasco, the country's two southernmost states (red).

The United States delivered people to a foreign torture prison. Ábrego García:.- Was beaten with batons.- Was forced to kneel overnight, beaten if he collapsed, made to soil himself.- Heard screams as gang members freely harmed each other.- Lost 31 lbs.

This "five-minute procedural vote" is now in its fourth hour.

Big ruling. The idea that a president can seize emergency powers or suspend rights over an “invasion” of migrants—leaderless people, often families, often with humanitarian needs—is as scary as it is ridiculous. There’s nothing new about large numbers of migrants at the border:

Using the number that @camiloreports obtained for June, here's how Border Patrol apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border compare over the initial months of Trump's two terms.

The last time Border Patrol migrant apprehensions averaged less than 6,000 per month at the U.S.-Mexico border was 1956-1965.

Murkowski voted yes. Paul, Tillis, and Collins voted no. 50-50 tie. Vance broke it. The horrible bill has passed.

On his TikTok, Venezuelan citizen Ángel Ignacio Cárdenas criticized Diosdado Cabello, the nation's feared interior minister. The Trump admin deported Cárdenas and 205 other Venezuelans on June 28. Who was on hand to receive the plane?. Diosdado Cabello.

"Total peace can’t be your security policy. You need to have peace and security efforts complement each other.". In the latest episode of @WOLA_org's podcast, @gimena_wola and I dive deeply into #Colombia's faltering security situation.

The bill before the Senate today will throw 12 million Americans off health insurance (CBO estimate). Cutting taxes for the wealthiest leaves no money for that. But apparently, there's money for this: