Border Report Live

While many hailed last week’s killing of Jalisco cartel boss Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera as a great day in the fight against drugs in the U.S. and Mexico, one border expert is saying “not so fast.”
Ev Meade, historian and the director of Proceso Pacífico, which runs peacebuilding programs in Mexican and Colombian communities impacted by cartel violence, tells Border Report Live simply killing “capos” like Oseguera is not enough to end cartel dominance over Mexico.
Meade also discussed President Trump’s influence over his counterpart in Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, and the likelihood of U.S. military intervention south of the border.
Another topic broached by Meade on Border Report Live is the need for more severe punishment for murder in Mexico on par with prison sentences given for drug trafficking.

Illegal migration remains near historical lows along the U.S.-Mexico border. But a group of volunteers continues finding skeletal remains on a stretch of desert in New Mexico.
Battalion Search and Rescue leaders say they have located 100 sets of skeletal remains there in the past two years. Most of the remains appear to be women, group founder James Holeman said.
“It’s a shocking number, it’s a shocking statistic,” Holeman said Monday on Border Report Live. “Women and young girls have been found in a very small area just west of El Paso. Their average age is 29, the youngest are a pair of 16-year-old girls.”
Battalion Search and Rescue has been looking for imperiled migrants since 2020 in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. The group focused on New Mexico after nonprofits and federal authorities began reporting a record number of migrant deaths in the El Paso Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol in 2023 and 2024.

About 50 people gathered Thursday at a park on the edge of downtown Brownsville to peacefully protest the buoy barriers that the federal government is installing nearby in the Rio Grande.
They played a life-sized game of lotería, passed out aguas fresca in the 90-degree heat, and hit a piñata in the shape of a red border buoys full of candy.
“The Department of Homeland Security is actively installing dangerous border buoys in our river,” Bekah Hinojosa of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network told Border Report as she arrived Thursday afternoon to set up for the protest. “The river is supposed to be a pristine habitat, it nourishes our community and we demand equal protections for our river.”
Hinojosa says she watched buoys being installed on Thursday “causing an ecological disaster.”

President Donald Trump delivered the longest State of the Union address ever given to Congress on Tuesday night and included several references to immigration and border issues.
In the latest episode of Border Report Live, host Rudy Mireles and South Texas correspondent Sandra Sanchez break down how Trump pushed for an end to sanctuary cities, sought voter ID reforms and touted what he calls the “strongest and most secure border in American history.”
Trump also repeatedly criticized the Biden administration for what he called “unrestricted immigration and open borders,” which he says brought unwanted criminals into the United States.
Trump also called for the full and immediate restoration of all funding for border security and the Department of Homeland Security.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is purchasing dozens of warehouses for immigration detention facilities in communities across the country, sometimes in secret and unknown to local leaders.
In the latest episode of Border Report Live, David Hernandez, associate professor and co-chair of the Critical Race and Political Economy Department at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts talks with South Texas correspondent Sandra Sanchez about ICE’s plan to move thousands of migrants into these facilities in unsuspecting communities.
Hernandez conducts research on U.S. immigration enforcement policy and how past administrations have used detentions as an immigration deterrent.
ICE wants to spend $38.3 billion to increase detention beds to 92,600 nationwide. At least 20 communities have been slated to have large warehouses converted into detention facilities that hold upwards of 10,000 people each.

Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes has been in the crosshairs of Mexican law enforcement since at least 2015, when his associates allegedly shot down a military helicopter in Jalisco, Mexico, and killed nine soldiers.
But it wasn’t until Sunday that Mexican troops found the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and ended his life in a hail of bullets. The obvious question is why now?
Mexican army kills leader of powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel during operation to capture him.
International security experts say U.S. pressure has been mounting on Mexico since President Trump took office last year and designated the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. Mexico, too, had cause to eliminate a public safety threat – CJNG five years ago allegedly tried to kill Omar Garcia Harfuch, the -then Mexico City police chief and Mexico’s current public safety secretary.
Joining us on Border Report Live is Dale Buckner, CEO of Global Guardian, a Virginia-based international security firm.
“I think the United States has an unbelievable capability with a combination of signal intelligence, satellite intelligence and human intelligence,” Buckner told us.

Several Democrats are expected to skip President Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night, and some have even planned a counter event.
Trump will address Congress on Feb. 24. The Democrats’ event, which will features speeches from lawmakers, will take place at 8:30 p.m. on the National Mall, according to several reports.
During this latest episode of Border Report Live, Pablo Manriquez, of the Washington, D.C.-based Migrant Insider, tells southern California correspondent Salvador Rivera what to watch for during Tuesday’s big speech.
Manriquez also gives an update on 2-month-old Juan Nicolás, who was deported to Mexico after being held at an ICE detention facility in Dilley, Texas.

An event that brought people from all over the country in 2025 to retrace the route of the Underground Railroad from South Texas to Mexico is returning.
Roseann Bacha-Garza, manager of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley’s Community Historical Archaeology project with Schools (CHAPS) joined Border Report Live to discuss the upcoming three-day event being held Feb. 27-March 1 that starts in Alamo, Texas.
Bacha-Garza says this year they’re walking 24 miles.
In March 2025, the group walked 65 miles over seven days, retracing several sites where “freedom seekers” went through South Texas.