U.S. Border Patrol is increasingly seen far from the border as Trump ramps up deportation arrests
Here are things to know about the trend:
Why is the Border Patrol working away from the border?
President Donald Trump's House-approved 'big, beautiful bill' proposes $8 billion to increase U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement staff by 10,000 people. Until then, the agency primarily responsible for interior enforcement is relying on other federal agencies as it struggles to meet a daily arrest target of at least 3,000 set by Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and chief architect of immigration policy.
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ICE, with only about 6,000 deportation officers, has found a ready partner in the Border Patrol, which is also part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It comes at a time when border arrests plunged to an average of 282 a day in May after peaking at more than 8,000 a day in December 2023.
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Agents in the Border Patrol's Yuma, Arizona, sector assisted ICE officers last week in Philadelphia, Justin De La Torre, the sector chief, said in a social media post. His sector averaged only four arrests a day on the Arizona border last month after peaking at more than 1,100 a day in May 2023.
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Greg Bovino, chief of the Border Patrol's El Centro, California, sector, appeared alongside U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at a news conference this month in Los Angeles during which U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla was forcefully removed, pushed to the ground and handcuffed.
'We're here and not going away,' Bovino said, introducing himself to reporters as his agency's top representative during ICE-led operations in Los Angeles.
Few see any reason to doubt the Border Patrol will remain.
'So long as the border remains relatively quiet, we will continue to see the Border Patrol deployed to act almost as if they are ICE agents,' said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, an advocacy group.
What is the 100-mile border zone?
Agents are granted by federal law the ability to stop and question people within 100 miles (161 kilometers) of the border, including the coasts. They have heightened authority to board and search buses, trains and vessels without a warrant within the zone.
That encompasses vast swaths of the country that include about two-thirds of the U.S. population, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Los Angeles is well within 100 miles of the Pacific Ocean.
Beyond that zone, agents are still authorized to work within the United States.
'The Border Patrol can still operate fully in the interior. It's just that they have less authority to stop and question people,' said Reichlin-Melnick.
What can the Border Patrol do beyond the 100 miles?
Past the 100-mile enforcement zone, Border Patrol agents, like officers working for ICE or the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office of Field Operations, are classified as immigration officers who are authorized to carry out arrests and detain people on suspicion of violating immigration law. There are some limits.
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'They could only search somebody's car on probable cause that the person has violated the law,' Reichlin-Melnick said. 'And so people have somewhat heightened rights against search and seizure outside of the 100-mile zone than they do inside of the 100-mile zone. But each individual case will vary depending on the specific circumstances.'
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While Israeli officials remained silent overnight, a senior White House official said Trump brokered the ceasefire in a direct conversation with Netanyahu on Monday. Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff held direct and indirect talks with the Iranians about the proposal, the official said. Israel agreed to the truce as long as Iran did not launch further attacks, and the Iranian government signaled it would abide by those terms, according to the official. 'For now, I think this is going to hold, and I think you will have an end to the war,' said Dennis Ross, who was President Bill Clinton's envoy to the region and is now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. 'Iran has no interest in resuming anything soon.' The developments came about two days after the US suddenly entered the conflict directly by bombing key Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan. 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'If Iran is desperate to build a nuclear weapon in the future, then they're going to have to deal with a very, very powerful American military,' Vance said. --With assistance from Natalia Drozdiak, Dana Khraiche, Golnar Motevalli, Eltaf Najafizada, Nicholas Reynolds, Annmarie Hordern and Eric Martin. (Updates oil price. An earlier version corrected the fourth-last paragraph to clarify Israel's war aims.) Luxury Counterfeiters Keep Outsmarting the Makers of $10,000 Handbags Is Mark Cuban the Loudmouth Billionaire that Democrats Need for 2028? Ken Griffin on Trump, Harvard and Why Novice Investors Won't Beat the Pros Can 'MAMUWT' Be to Musk What 'TACO' Is to Trump? What Mike Tyson and the Bond Market Can Teach Trump on Debt ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
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36 minutes ago
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In the past 48 hours, the Middle East has witnessed an unprecedented US airstrike on Iran with its most powerful non-nuclear weapons, an Iranian retaliatory strike on the largest US air base in the region, to an apparent truce that will see Iran and Israel end their hostilities that have set the world on edge. The region and the wider world watched warily as events unfolded overnight into Tuesday, but with a degree of hope as daylight broke in the region that what US President Donald Trump called the '12 Day War' may be over. 'THE CEASEFIRE IS NOW IN EFFECT. PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT!' Trump wrote on his Truth Social account. Around the same time, Israeli emergency workers were at the site of what appeared to be Iran's final attack of the 12-day conflict, a missile strike in Beer Shiva that left at least five people dead and 20 wounded. It could be the last hostile act of two days of whipsawing developments leading up to Trump's surprise announcement of a ceasefire. 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Experts were more skeptical, saying Iranian stores of enriched uranium may have escaped destruction in the US strikes and Tehran may be able to make a weapon in just a few months. The Middle East has been a tinderbox since October 2023, when Hamas militants from Gaza entered Israel in force, killing hundreds and taking dozens more hostage. Israel responded with an invasion of the Palestinian enclave to root out Hamas from tunnels and other fortifications that has left over 55,000 people dead, much of Gaza in ruins and its population of 2.1 million at risk of famine, according to the World Health Organization. While the world's attention has been on Israel's fighting with Iran, dozens of people have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza as they scramble to get the limited food aid allowed into the territory, including 21 in the past day, Palestinians say. A group advocating for the return of Israeli hostages held in Gaza has called for the ceasefire between Israel and Iran to be expanded to include the war-torn enclave. 'Those who can achieve a ceasefire with Iran can also end the war in Gaza,' the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement Tuesday. The forum said the ceasefire 'must expand to include Gaza' and called on the government 'to engage in urgent negotiations that will bring home all the hostages and end the war.' 'After 12 days and nights during which the people of Israel could not sleep because of Iran, we can finally go back to not sleeping because of the hostages,' the forum said. Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid echoed those sentiments, writing in a post on X: 'And now Gaza. This is the moment to close that front as well. To bring the hostages home, to end the war. Israel needs to start rebuilding.'
