By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER, Associated Press Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. and global economies will grow a bit more this year than previously forecast as the Trump administration’s tariffs have so far proved less disruptive than expected, the International Monetary Fund said Tuesday, though the full impact of those policies is still emerging.

The United States’ economy will expand 2% in 2025, the IMF projected in its influential semi-annual forecast, the World Economic Outlook. That is slightly higher than the 1.9% forecast in the IMF’s last update in July and 1.8% in April. The U.S. should grow 2.1% next year, also just one-tenth of a percent faster than its previous projection, the IMF said.

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The global economy, meanwhile, will grow 3.2% this year, up from a 3% estimate in July, the IMF forecast, and 3.1% in 2026, the same as its previous estimate.

The figures represent a bit of a round-trip for the IMF: In January, before Trump began imposing tariffs, it had forecast global growth of 3.3%, only slightly higher than its newest estimate. While the U.S. and world economies have fared better than expected, it’s too soon to say they are fully in the clear, the IMF said, as Trump has continued to make tariff threats and it can take time for changes in international trade patterns to play out.

The reasons for the better performance “are clear,” IMF chief economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas said in a blog post.

“The United States negotiated trade deals with various countries and provided multiple exemptions,” Gourinchas wrote. “Most countries refrained from retaliation, keeping instead the trading system largely open. The private sector also proved agile, front-loading imports and speedily re-routing supply chains.”

By front-loading imports, many companies were able to stock up on goods before the duties took effect, enabling them to avoid or delay price increases.

Yet many of those factors only reflect “temporary relief, rather than underlying strength in economic fundamentals,” the IMF’s report said.

The IMF also said that import price data in the U.S. shows that so far importers and retailers are paying most of the tariffs, not overseas companies, as many Trump administration officials have predicted. Over time, those firms are likely to pass on more of the price hikes to consumers, the IMF said.

There are signs that some downsides of the higher tariffs are starting to emerge, the IMF outlook said. Core inflation, which excludes the volatile food and energy categories, has ticked up to 2.9%, according to the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure, up from 2.7% a year ago. Hiring has ground to nearly a halt, which could partly reflect a more cautious approach by many firms in the wake of the uncertainty created by the higher tariffs.

The IMF’s forecasts are modestly more optimistic than many private-sector economists’ expectations. The National Association for Business Economics, a group of academic and business economists, on Monday forecast that the U.S. would grow just 1.8% this year and 1.7% in 2026.

Nearly two-thirds of the economists surveyed by the NABE said they think the administration’s duties are nevertheless slowing growth, by up to a half-percentage point.

Other trends are offsetting some of the downsides of tariffs in the U.S., Gourinchas said. For example, a clampdown on immigration has reduced the supply of workers at the same time that hiring has slowed. As a result, the unemployment rate has remained low.

An artificial intelligence-driven investment boom in data centers and computing power has also provided a lift to the economy, Gourinchas noted in his blog post.

China, meanwhile, has weathered the hit from U.S. tariffs by sending more of its goods to Europe and Asia, rather than the United States, and its currency has depreciated, which has made its exports cheaper. The IMF is forecasting that China’s economy will expand 4.8% this year and 4.2% in 2026, the same as in July.

In Europe, Germany is bolstering growth by increasing government spending to build up its military, Gourinchas said. The IMF now expects the 20 countries that use the euro to grow 1.2% this year, up from a 1% forecast in July, and 1.1% next year, the same as three months ago.

The IMF is a 191-nation lending organization that works to promote economic growth and financial stability and to reduce global poverty.

By JASON DEAREN, JIM MUSTIAN and DORANY PINEDA, Associated Press

The Nigerian man described being roused with other detainees in September in the middle of the night. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers clasped shackles on their hands and feet, he said, and told them they were being sent to Ghana, even though none of them was from there.

When they asked to speak to their attorney, he said, the officers refused and straitjacketed the already-shackled men in full-body restraint suits called the WRAP, then loaded them onto a plane for the 16-hour-flight to West Africa.

Referred to as “the burrito” or “the bag,” the WRAP has become a harrowing part of deportations for some immigrants.

This photo provided by Safe Restraints Inc., in October 2025, shows a custom version of the WRAP restraining equipment made for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. (Safe Restraints via AP)

“It was just like a kidnapping,” the Nigerian man, who’s part of a federal lawsuit, told The Associated Press in an interview from the detainment camp in which he and other deportees were being held in Ghana. Like others placed in the restraints interviewed by the AP, he spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

The AP identified multiple examples of ICE using the black-and-yellow full-body restraint device, the WRAP, in deportations. Its use was described to the AP by five people who said they were restrained in the device, sometimes for hours, on ICE deportation flights dating to 2020. And witnesses and family members in four countries told the AP about its use on at least seven other people this year.

The AP found ICE has used the device despite internal concerns voiced in a 2023 report by the civil rights division of its parent agency, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in part due to reports of deaths involving use of the WRAP by local law enforcement. And the AP has identified a dozen fatal cases in the last decade where local police or jailers around the U.S. used the WRAP and autopsies determined “restraint” played a role in the death.

The WRAP is the subject of a growing number of federal lawsuits likening incorrect usage of the device to punishment and even torture, whether used in a jail or by immigration authorities during international flights. Among advocates’ concerns is that ICE is not tracking the WRAP’s use as required by federal law when officers use force.

In this image from surveillance video provided by Jefferson City Correctional Center, jailers examine Othel Moore Jr., at the Jefferson City Correctional Center in Jefferson City, Mo., on Dec. 8, 2023, who according to an autopsy asphyxiated in the WRAP restraint. (Jefferson City Correctional Center via AP)

DHS has paid Safe Restraints Inc., the WRAP’s California-based maker, $268,523 since it started purchasing the devices in late 2015 during the Obama administration. Government purchasing records show the two Trump administrations have been responsible for about 91% of that spending. ICE would not provide AP with records documenting its use of the WRAP despite multiple requests, and it’s not clear how frequently it has been used in the current and prior administrations.

The WRAP’s manufacturer says it intended the device to be a lifesaver for law enforcement confronting erratic people who were physically attacking officers or harming themselves.

But ICE officials have a much lower threshold for deploying the WRAP than the manufacturer advises, the AP found. Detainees interviewed by the AP said ICE officers used the restraints on them after they had been shackled. They said this was done to intimidate or punish them for asking to speak to their attorneys or expressing fear at being deported, often to places they fled due to violence and torture.

The West African deportee described a terrifying, hourslong experience that left his legs swollen to the point where he walked with a limp.

“They bundled me and my colleagues,” he said, “tied us up in a straitjacket.”

ICE and DHS would not answer detailed questions from the AP and refused a request for the government’s policy for when and how to use the WRAP.

“The use of restraints on detainees during deportation flights has been long standing, standard ICE protocol and an essential measure to ensure the safety and well-being of both detainees and the officers/agents accompanying them,” Tricia McLaughlin, DHS’ spokesperson, said in an email to AP. “Our practices align with those followed by other relevant authorities and is fully in line with established legal standards.”

The agency would not specify those authorities or describe its practices.

“The use of these devices is inhumane and incompatible with our nation’s fundamental values,” said Noah Baron, an attorney for the West African deportees.

Charles Hammond, CEO of Safe Restraints Inc., said his company has made a modified version of the device for ICE, with changes meant to allow people to be kept in it during flights and long bus trips.

ICE’s version includes a ring on the front of the suit that allows a subject’s cuffed hands to be attached while still allowing for limited use to eat and drink, he said. In addition, the ICE version has “soft elbow cuffs,” Hammond said, which connect in the back so a person can move for proper circulation but can’t flip an elbow out to hit someone.

An AP reporter recounted for Hammond some of the allegations made by people who had been placed in the WRAP for long flights. All of those interviewed by AP said their hands and feet were already restrained by chains. All denied fighting with officers, saying they were either crying or pleading against their deportation to countries they deemed dangerous.

Hammond said that, if true that some people were not being violent and simply protesting verbally, putting them in the WRAP could be improper use.

“That’s not the purpose of the WRAP. If (the deportee) is a current or potential risk to themselves, to officers, to staff, to the plane, restraints are justified. If it’s not, then restraints aren’t.”

‘Please help me’

Juan Antonio Pineda said he was put into “a bag” in late September and driven by immigration officers to the Mexico border. It was black with yellow stripes and had straps that immobilized his body and connected over his shoulders — the WRAP.

In this image from video provided by Xiomara Ochoa, Juan Antonio Pineda shows a cast for his arm as he speaks during an interview from the ICE detention center in Florence, Ariz., on Sept. 29, 2025 .(Xiomara Ochoa via AP)

Pineda, who is from El Salvador, was in the U.S. legally, he said in a video from an ICE detention center in Arizona. On Sept. 3, he went to an appointment in Maryland to get permission for another year, his wife, Xiomara Ochoa, said in an interview from El Salvador. Instead, he was detained by ICE and told he’d be deported to Mexico, but the documents he was shown had someone else’s name, he said. Even so, he was sent to the Florence Service Processing Center detention facility in Arizona.

Early morning on Wednesday, Sept. 24, he said officers tied his hands and legs, placed him into the “bag” and drove him four hours to the border. When he refused to sign the deportation papers, Pineda alleges officers broke his right arm and gave him a black eye before driving him back another four hours in the “bag.” The AP was unable to independently confirm how he was injured. Pineda’s video shows him with a cast on his arm and bruising on his face.

The next day, Thursday, Sept. 25, they tied him up again, put him in the bag and drove him to the border, where Mexican immigration officials turned him away, he said.

“Eight hours there and back and they don’t give me food or water or anything,” he said in the video, which his wife shared with the AP. “Please help me.”

He was ultimately deported to Mexico, Ochoa said.

ICE did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the AP regarding Pineda’s case.

In addition to the Nigerian man flown to Ghana, four others interviewed by AP said they were placed in the WRAP and carried onto deportation flights since the first Trump administration.

As U.S. immigration officials move aggressively to meet the president’s deportation goals, advocates and attorneys for immigrants are echoing the concerns of the government’s own civil rights inquiry that ICE officers aren’t trained on how to use the restraints.

“This should be a last resort type of restraint after they’ve already tried other things,” said Fatma Marouf, a Texas A&M law professor who has sued ICE over its use of the device. “Just being bound up like that can inflict a lot of psychological harm.”

Some deportees said they were left in the WRAP for an entire fight. A lawsuit filed on behalf of the Nigerian man and four others currently detained in Dema Camp, Ghana, included the allegation from one that ICE left the restraint suit on him for 16 hours, only once undoing the lower part so he could use the bathroom.

“No one should be put into a WRAP. I don’t even think they strap animals like that,” recalled a man who said he suffered a concussion and dislocated jaw being placed into the device in 2023 before a deportation flight to Cape Verde, an African island nation. AP’s review of his medical records confirmed he suffered those injuries in 2023.

“It was the most painful thing I’ve been through,” said the man, adding he was restrained most of the 10-hour flight. “Forget the assault, forget the broken jaw. Just the WRAP itself was hurtful.”

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Also, the man said, the metal ring his cuffed hands were attached to — one of the ICE modifications to the WRAP designed to increase comfort — injured him. “When they slammed me face forward on the floor, that metal ring dug into my chest causing me bruising and pain which was part of my injuries that I complained about.”

ICE’s current use of the WRAP comes amid an unprecedented wave of masked federal immigration officers grabbing suspected immigrants off the street, and mounting accusations that the Trump administration has dehumanized them, including by subjecting them to cruel and unusual detention conditions.

ICE’s use of the WRAP has continued despite a 2023 report by DHS’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, or CRCL, that raised serious concerns over the lack of policies governing its use.

ICE agreed with the internal findings on some points, a then-DHS official involved in the review said, but challenged the notion that the WRAP should be classified as a “four-point restraint,” a designation that would place more limitations on its use. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the inquiry.

DHS largely dismantled the office that produced the 2023 report earlier this year amid widespread government firings, calling it a roadblock to enforcement operations.

“Without changes to the current training, and the lack of policy, CRCL has serious concerns about ICE’s continued use of the WRAP,” wrote the report’s authors, who cited a news article mentioning lawsuits claiming the device had led to deaths.

Use by police and in jails

Last year police officers in Virginia Beach, Virginia, placed Rolin Hill in the WRAP, saying he was being combative during an arrest at a convenience store. The officers left Hill in the device when they dropped him at the jail. Video from the jail shows deputies punching the WRAP-immobilized Hill in the head and back. Hill died in a hospital, and while the WRAP’s exact role is unknown, Hill’s death was ruled a homicide by “positional and mechanical asphyxia due to restraint with neck and torso compression.” Three of the deputies are now charged with his murder, and five were removed from their jobs.

Also last year, in Missouri, prosecutors charged five jailers in the death of Othel Moore Jr., who according to an autopsy asphyxiated in the WRAP. Jailhouse footage showed Moore, who’d also been sprayed with tear gas and placed in a “spit mask” covering his face, repeatedly told officers he couldn’t breathe.

AP identified many of the other non-ICE cases involving the WRAP during an investigation into deaths after police subdued people with common tactics that, unlike guns, are meant to stop someone without killing them.

While Hammond insists the WRAP has never been determined as the cause of death when used properly, the AP identified 43 times in which the WRAP was used by police or correctional officers in a case in which someone died. In 12 of those cases the official autopsy determined that “restraint” played some role in the death.

It was often impossible to determine the exact role the WRAP may have played, as deaths often involved the use of other potentially dangerous force on people who in several cases were high on methamphetamine.

The WRAP first appeared in law enforcement in the late 1990s, presented as an alternative to tying a subject’s hands and feet together in a practice known as “hog-tying.” It first found widespread use in California jails and today is used by more than 1,800 departments and facilities around the country, according to the manufacturer, which says it has sold more than 10,000 devices.

Many of these cases have drawn little media attention, such as the 2020 case of Alberto Pena, who was jailed on a misdemeanor criminal mischief charge after getting drunk and damaging the walls and doors at his parents’ home outside Rio Grande City, Texas. The 30-year-old became erratic on the way to the Starr County Jail, beating his own head against the inside of the patrol unit and, later, the wall of his cell.

Deputies placed Pena in the WRAP for more than two hours, where he repeatedly cried out for help and complained he could not breathe. But he was left unattended in the device for significant periods of time, court records show, and no medical attention was provided for his self-inflicted head injuries.

An autopsy ruled Pena’s death “accidental,” but a forensic pathologist hired by the family attributed Pena’s death in part to the WRAP’s “prolonged restraint” and said it “could have been averted” with proper medical care.

“The WRAP should have never been used in this situation. It was a medical emergency and he should have been taken to the hospital,” said Natasha Powers-Marakis, a former police officer and use of force expert who reviewed the case on behalf of Pena’s family as part of their wrongful death lawsuit against the county and officers who placed him in the device. The arresting officers had been told Pena suffered from bipolar disorder.

The Starr County Sheriff’s Office has denied wrongdoing and maintained Pena did not require medical care. Robert Drinkard, an attorney for the county, told AP the use of the WRAP “was neither improper nor caused Mr. Pena’s tragic death.” He added that each deputy involved in placing Pena in the WRAP had been trained in its application.

A federal judge recently dismissed the Pena family’s lawsuit, ruling the deputies were shielded from liability.

‘Carrying me like a corpse’

In the context of an ICE deportation flight, the use of restraints like the WRAP can be justified, Hammond, the manufacturer’s CEO, argues.

ICE officers have to ensure that they secure anyone who could pose a fight risk on a long flight, he said. Given the high stakes of a violent confrontation on an airplane, Hammond believes cases like those described to the AP can warrant the WRAP’s use, even if the person is already in chains.

However, properly trained agents are supposed to loosen the straps and allow enough movement so the subject can eat and drink, as well as use the bathroom.

“With the WRAP, when it is used properly, it’s a shorter fight, which is good for everybody. It prioritizes breathing, which is good for everybody. And you have no more fight and can provide medical care or mental health care or de-escalation efforts,” Hammond said.

Those placed in one of Hammond’s restraint suits, however, recount the experience as traumatic.

One of these people was first put into five-point shackles when he became dizzy and tripped while ascending the stairs to board the ICE flight to Cameroon in November 2020. The officer mistook his stumbling as resistance, he said. Immediately, camouflage-clad ICE officers quickly pushed him to the tarmac and onto a WRAP device, he said.

Soon, he felt the straps cinching around his legs and upper body.

“They bundled me like a log of wood from all the sides and they were just carrying me like a corpse,” he said.

Another man interviewed by the AP said ICE officers put him in the WRAP after he initially resisted efforts to move him onto a deportation flight in Alexandria, Louisiana, in 2020. He’d fled political violence and persecution in his native Cameroon, and was afraid to go back. He said officers took him out of his cell in front of the other detainees and put him in the WRAP, leaving him for hours in view of the others as a warning to them not to speak up.

“I told him ‘I can’t breathe,’” the man said. “He responded, ’I don’t care, I’m doing my job.’”

Dearen and Pineda reported from Los Angeles and Mustian reported from New York. AP journalists Ope Adetayo in Abuja, Ghana, Obed Lamy in Indianapolis and Ryan J. Foley in Iowa City, Iowa, contributed to this report. Dan Lawton also contributed.

By BARBARA ORTUTAY, Associated Press

Teenagers on Instagram will be restricted to seeing PG-13 content by default and won’t be able to change their settings without a parent’s permission, Meta announced on Tuesday.

This means kids using teen-specific accounts will see photos and videos on Instagram that are similar to what they would see in a PG-13 movie — no sex, drugs or dangerous stunts, among others.

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“This includes hiding or not recommending posts with strong language, certain risky stunts, and additional content that could encourage potentially harmful behaviors, such as posts showing marijuana paraphernalia,” Meta said in a blog post Tuesday, calling the update the most significant since it introduced teen accounts last year.

The company is also adding an even stricter setting that parents can set up for their children.

The changes come as the social media giant faces relentless criticism over harms to children. As it seeks to add safeguards for teens, Meta has already promised it wouldn’t show inappropriate content to teens, such as posts about self-harm, eating disorders or suicide.

But this does not always work. A recent report, for instance, found that teen accounts researchers created were recommended age-inappropriate sexual content, including “graphic sexual descriptions, the use of cartoons to describe demeaning sexual acts, and brief displays of nudity.”

In addition, Instagram also recommended a “range of self-harm, self-injury, and body image content” on teen accounts that the report says “would be reasonably likely to result in adverse impacts for young people, including teenagers experiencing poor mental health, or self-harm and suicidal ideation and behaviors.”

Meta says the new restrictions go further than its previous safeguards. Teens will no longer be able to follow accounts that regularly share “age-inappropriate content” or if their name or bio contains something that isn’t appropriate for teens, such as a link to an OnlyFans account. If teens already follow these accounts, they’ll no longer be able to see or interact with their content, send them messages, or see their comments under anyone’s posts, the company said. The accounts also won’t be able to follow teens, send them private messages or comment on their posts.

Meta said it already blocks certain search terms related to sensitive topics such as suicide and eating disorders, but the latest update will expand this to a broader range of terms, such as “alcohol” or “gore” — even if they are misspelled.

The PG-13 update will also apply artificial intelligence chats and experiences targeted to teens, Meta said, “meaning AIs should not give age-inappropriate responses that would feel out of place in a PG-13 movie.”

For parents who want an even stricter setting for their kids, Meta is also launching a “limited content” restriction that will block more content and remove teens’ ability to see, leave, or receive comments under posts.

Editor’s Note: This story is a collaboration between Puente News Collaborative and the Texas Observer.

As the healthcare workers approach the small collection of makeshift shelters along the train tracks that cut through the northern Mexico industrial hub of Ciudad Juárez, the people who gather in this place to use drugs prepare for their arrival.

They’re ready to exchange used syringes for clean ones, a practice that helps prevent injury and disease. They prepare their kits in anticipation of the small packets of distilled water in which they can more safely cook heroin. The workers for Programa Compañeros, a nonprofit that provides supplies and assistance to vulnerable populations in Juárez, have invested years building relationships with people who use heroin in Juárez’s picaderos (a colloquial term equivalent to “shooting galleries”). Some of these locations are essentially tolerated by local authorities, allowing Programa Compañeros to develop established services; the group calls these “drug consumption sites.”

But even at sites where there’s little effort at coordinated narcotics enforcement, gathering in one place leaves people vulnerable to abuses from Mexico’s military and police forces, who are increasingly flooding the city of 1.5 million across the Rio Grande from El Paso.

The border has long been one of the most heavily policed parts of both the United States and Mexico. Since taking office this year, U.S. President Donald Trump has deployed additional troops to the already-militarized region and put pressure on Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum to do the same. Research about past border deployments has shown that they make it more difficult for health workers on both sides of the border to reach vulnerable populations.

An older man receives a heroin injection, with a clean syringe provided by Programa Compañeros, from another individual also experiencing addiction in September in Ciudad Juárez. (Omar Ornelas)

A 38-year-old man at the consumption site by the tracks who identified himself only as Erick said that, when he first met the Programa Compañeros outreach workers, he was suspicious of the men in jeans and slacks and fresh T-shirts offering needles. “I thought they were like, honestly, some kind of police or something like that,” Erick said.

He could hardly be blamed for thinking that. The presence of military forces in Juárez is obvious throughout the city. The skeleton of what’s called the Torre Centinela, the future command center for the state of Chihuahua’s massive surveillance program, rises above Juárez’s downtown. White Guardia Nacional pickups with machine guns mounted behind the cab and masked soldiers crammed in the bed can be seen cruising the city. All-black Mexican army trucks patrol as well. Erick said security forces do show up at the site—but rarely to make arrests.

“They come here, and they get the guy that’s selling and beat him up,” Erick said. “The cops and the military. If you have money on you, you’d better hide it, because if they stop you here and you have money in your pockets, they’ll take it away from you.”

Erick grew up in Juárez and crossed the border at age 19, he said, living first in El Paso and later in New Mexico. Two years ago, after an arrest for driving while intoxicated, he said he was deported to Juárez. Erick had been involved in a gang in New Mexico and before his deportation was jailed at an immigration detention center in the West Texas town of Pecos, where he started using heroin. Back in Juárez after a 15-year absence, the only community he could find was in the picaderos. 

Despite his suspicions, Programa Compañeros was already well known among the other heroin users he’d found. The organization’s staff say their nonjudgmental approach and willingness to provide supplies that people who use drugs want, like needles, helps them build trust and direct people to other services. Erick said he now goes to the group’s headquarters, where services like showers, clean clothes, counseling, and medical and dental care are offered.

For nearly 40 years, Programa Compañeros has practiced harm reduction, a broadly defined strategy for providing services to people who use drugs without attaching stigma or strict parameters and involving people who use drugs in planning and implementing that strategy. Fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid often produced in Mexico to meet U.S. demand, is now on the streets in that country as well, creating a public health crisis. In May, a batch of powdered cocaine tainted with fentanyl killed five people in Juárez over the course of two hours, local officials said.

Juárez’s location on the border with Texas creates unique challenges for providing harm-reduction services. Migrants from all over Mexico and the globe flock to the border, fleeing violence or instability and looking for work, either in Juárez or in the United States. There’s also the community of recent deportees, like Erick, oftentimes dropped into a country they barely know. Health workers in the region must provide services to a particularly vulnerable population whose members sometimes speak little or no Spanish. The increased militarization of the border then pushes those vulnerable populations further into the shadows and makes them harder to reach, health workers and activists say.

The atmosphere of militarization and surveillance is pervasive on both sides of the border. This only increased in February, when Mexico launched Operativo Espejo to “mirror” the militarization on the U.S. side. The effort, both governments said, was aimed at deterring both immigration and drug smuggling. In Mexico, Sheinbaum deployed 10,000 troops to the border, with nearly 2,000 to Juárez.

The border “is hypermilitarized, as we’ve never seen,” said Dr. Patricia Gonzalez Zuniga, a physician who’s done research and volunteer outreach in Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, California. “Now if you go, like, to a shopping center, just to the store or a market, you will find a lot of military trucks full of soldiers. I work with people who are homeless, and the stories that they told us are very awful.”

Whether it involves distributing clean needles and the overdose-reversal drug naloxone, or just providing food, clean clothes, and medical care, harm reduction focuses on diminishing the negative impacts of drug use rather than insisting that people quit. Research has found that needle exchanges not only reduce the spread of disease but are a gateway to other services; people who use syringe exchanges are more likely to enter recovery, research has found.

The El Paso-Ciudad Juárez region, which includes parts of Texas and New Mexico and the Mexican state of Chihuahua, offers a stark example of the opportunities and challenges harm-reduction workers face along the border.

The region suffers from a lack of investment. “We’ve been underfunded,” said Julia Lechuga, an associate professor of health psychology at the City University of New York’s Hunter College who has conducted research about harm reduction in El Paso and Juárez. “Frankly, it’s an uphill battle. There are not enough resources to provide harm reduction and provide intervention and treatment.”

A substance user prepares for an injection after receiving clean syringes. (Omar Ornelas)

The Trump administration’s spending cuts, which have targeted progressive policies including harm reduction, have shrunk resources for programs nationwide. The State of Texas has targeted services for immigrants, which creates uncertainty for organizations working in border communities, which have large undocumented populations.

“Every organization in El Paso that provides substance-use services has lost funding, and it has already had an impact in our ability to serve,” said Jamie Bailey, a peer recovery specialist and the co-chair and co-founder of the El Paso Harm Reduction Alliance. “It’s a very difficult position to be in because you want to continue to be able to serve your community … and you also don’t want to turn away people that need help based on their immigration status.”

But being on the border also provides some benefits. Just as ideas about treatment and outreach flow back and forth between Texas, New Mexico, and Chihuahua, so does lifesaving medication. Programa Compañeros, for instance, works its way around Mexico’s restrictions on naloxone by accepting donations from groups in Texas.

In April, Programa Compañeros workers Julián Rojas and David Montelongo picked their way along a rocky path running between a cinder-block wall and the train tracks that pass by the consumption site in Juárez. 

Rojas carried a black backpack with the supplies for their day’s mission. Montelongo carried a red plastic container for the used needles they’d be collecting. Over the course of the day, they stopped at a house in a residential neighborhood and an abandoned building in the city’s historic downtown. While passing through the heavily patrolled centro, close to bridges that connect Juárez to El Paso, they were cautious, subtly exchanging needles. When asked if he thought syringe exchanges encourage people to try heroin, a criticism levied by opponents, Rojas, who said he has personal experience with drug use, scoffed. It’s not a question of whether people will use, he said. It’s a question of whether they’ll use safely.

Programa Compañeros workers said the worst period for militarization in Juárez was during the 2010s, when the Mexican government deployed troops to curb open warfare between criminal organizations. They heard from people who’d been beaten with boards and stabbed with their own syringes by Mexican security forces.

“The violence still persists, mainly by the municipal police, the National Guard at times,” Rojas said. “But not with the same intensity as in those years.”

Daniel Vela Carrazco, a case worker and registered nurse with Programa Compañeros, exchanges syringes with people who use drugs. (Omar Ornelas)

But if targeting of the picaderos for shakedowns continues, and the people who use drugs there are forced further into the shadows, it will be harder for Programa Compañeros to reach people who need its services. The new troop deployments have raised concern among people who work in harm reduction that violence against people who use drugs will spike. In 2023, Lechuga, the health psychology professor, published a study that found the 2010s military deployment in Juárez “promoted engagement in behaviors that increased drug use and health harms, including HIV risk.” The Mexican military deployment’s impact also spilled over the border, she said in an interview, as increased militarization on the Mexican side led to “increasing harsh police tactics” on the U.S. side.

In El Paso, both the state and federal governments have rolled out highly publicized border enforcement operations in recent years. Earlier this year, videos circulated online purporting to show immigration officials knocking on doors in El Paso. News stations showed immigrants crowded onto deportation flights out of Fort Bliss, the 1,700-square-mile U.S. Army post headquartered on the city’s edge. In March, the Trump administration deployed armored combat vehicles to the borderlands. The under-construction Torre Centinela project will share information with Texas law enforcement and is visible from El Paso.

All that can rattle drug users who may have suffered mistreatment from officers or may be experiencing paranoia, said Joey Montes, outreach lead at the Recovery Alliance of El Paso.

“I could imagine what they’re feeling when they see actual authorities out there in vests with their badges, big guns, just roaming the streets,” Montes said. “So I’m pretty sure that’s scaring a lot of them into hiding.”

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