HSDF THE PODCAST

State of the Border Update with CBP Deputy Commissioner Modlin

• Homeland Security & Defense Forum

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Welcome to “HSDF THE PODCAST,” a collection of policy discussions on government technology and homeland security brought to you by the Homeland Security and Defense Forum

CBP Deputy Commissioner Modlin unpacks a rare moment of control at the border—and the ripple effects that follow. The conversation moves from raw field stats to strategic shifts, tracing how unprecedented removals, tighter international cooperation, and targeted network takedowns have reshaped the fight against cartels and transnational crime.

Featuring:
•John Modlin, Acting Deputy Commissioner, CBP
•David Aguilar, Former CBP Acting and Deputy Commissioner and former Chief of Border Patrol (moderator)

This discussion took place December 12, 2025 at 8th Annual Homeland Security & Defense Forum Border Security Symposium

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Speaker 1:

Good morning, I'm Dark Blue Joy, I'm the Vice President and DHS Strategic Accounting Executive for Lightos. I am so pleased to welcome you all here today and introduce the first panel to discuss the state of the border, featuring John Maudlin, Acting Deputy Commissioner for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and Chief David Aguilar. As the agency's senior career official, Acting Deputy Chief Maudlin oversees the daily operations of CBP's expansive mission, including matters relating to trade, travel, and national security. He most recently served as Chief Border Agent of the Tucson sector, leading more than 3,100 Border Patrol agents and nearly 400 professional staff members working to prevent, deter, and seize persons and contraband attempting to illegally enter the United States through 262 miles of U.S. Mexico border in Arizona. He previously served as CPA of the Miami sector.

unknown:

Mr.

Speaker 1:

Marlin entered on duty with the U.S. Border Patrol in December of 1995 as a member of Border Patrol Academy Class 296. His career assignments include San Diego, Port Huron Station, Detroit, U.S. Border Patrol Headquarters in Washington, D.C., West Palm Beach Station, the Miami sector. He served as Deputy Federal Security Director, Dallas Fort Worth International Airport at the Transportation Security Administration. Please, all of you join me in welcoming Acting Deputy CBP Commissioner Modlin and Chief David Aguilar.

Speaker 2:

A little tight up here.

unknown:

John?

Speaker 2:

Oh, over here. Yep. Right there will be fine. Yeah. Yeah, I know, I know. And leave it to time to point out that I don't see very well nowadays. So it is my pleasure to be sitting up here today, and I just learned something. Well, I I knew this from before, I guess I was reminded. Uh Border Patrol Academy class 296. And this past Wednesday you said? Yes. 30-year anniversary. 30-year anniversary, congratulations. There is not one Border Patrol agent that does not know his or her class. And the reason for that is you go through a Border Patrol Academy and you become family. These are your lifelong friends, lifelong peers that you know made it through the academy, made it through the hard work, and are out there working as friends and peers. So it's really a great honor to be here today with uh with John. So you heard his background. I would just add the following things top-level executive, respected leader, a tremendous agent, and proven experience in the field, and somebody who does a great job at teaching and mentoring our young men and women today, which is probably the most valuable thing that any leader can do. So, John, welcome. I it's great to be here with you. I want to kind of get started this morning by having you kind of set the tone for the rest of the symposium on basically your take on the state of the border. Now, state of the border for everybody else who's here uh covers from his position over 327 ports of entry, over six to seven thousand miles of borders, depending on what you measure and how you measure it. Over the largest air fleet, civilian law enforcement air fleet in the United States, and I believe throughout the world. Yes, sir. So uh we can go on and on, but given the situation that we're facing today, give us a sense of where we're at and where you think we're going in the next couple of years.

David Aguilar:

Absolutely. Thanks for thanks for the introduction. Thanks everybody for having me here. Hopefully I don't set the bar too low for the everyone that follows. Uh, but you know, the state of the border, um, certainly so much different than it has been the rest of my career. Um, give you a maybe a small statistic first, and then I'll speak more um more broadly about it. But when I was in Tucson as the chief, two December's ago, uh we had made 80,000 arrests in one month. That is the highest number of arrests in any sector in the history of the Border Patrol. It just unprecedented, and it wasn't, it wasn't even close to the next the next closest um time where we had that much illegal activity on the border. From January 21st to now, we've arrested about 70,000 people crossing the border. So one sector in one month, more than all the border patrol sectors in a single year. The border has never been as secure as it is now. Um, it is just an entirely different world. I when I got up here, um, it's been about a year that I've been in this position. I remember um very early on working through the interagency and putting uh Colombian nationals that were illegally present in the United States onto Army aircraft to fly them back to Colombia. And as most of you probably remember, they were turned around and sent back to the United States. And within a few days, Colombia had sent their planes, the presidential planes, to come and pick up their their nationals. That's never happened before. Nothing like that's ever happened before. I remember, you know, the Tren de Aragua members on our C-130s landing in El Salvador and being hustled into that prison. If you saw it, it looked like it looked like an action movie. It was some of the most exciting things I had ever seen as a Border Patrol agent. I think every person that's ever worked in customs and border protection um cheered, if not out loud, certainly inside when they saw that and recognized that we were taking this threat seriously. And then, you know, shortly after that, taking MS-13 gang members and sending them to Guantanamo Bay, another um, another amazing partnership with the Department of War. Uh so just things that I never thought I would see in my career taking place, um, especially after what we had dealt with in the prior years, the years leading up to um to when I got up here in headquarters, just the incredible surge that was happening on the border. And to see the border become controlled, to see agents and officers be able to do the jobs they were hired to do and dig much deeper than we had ever before was just absolutely amazing to me. So couldn't be prouder, and certainly, Chief, the border is more secure than I think you or I ever could have imagined when we were out in the field.

John Modlin:

Absolutely. So we're gonna talk a little bit about this a little bit later on, but one of the things that I talk to the industry partners that are here that I've had the opportunity to work with is what I refer to as the coming wave. Some of some of you have heard me talk about this. And the coming wave to me is what is going to be the resultant impact of what is occurring today. Uh and we don't need to go into this in any great detail, but I think if if you can add to this to kind of give a sense of what's happening today, but what's to come very quickly, I think it's important for industry to understand. The coming wave to me is now that the border is secure, like we have never seen it before, what is that going to mean to the cartels, to the criminal operators, to the bad folks that are gonna continue to bring in narcotics, bring in uh uh human trafficking and things of that nature. It's gonna get it's already harder. So guess what comes with that? They're gonna charge more. They're gonna charge more, so that means they're gonna want to do this more often. And and they're gonna do that against us at a border that is much highly fortified than it was before. One of the things that you and I know is gonna happen is the violence against our officers is gonna go up. So, from an industry perspective, be thinking about what that means. I'm gonna repeat this one uh several times, probably today, but one of the things that is still lacking in the Border Patrol at some of our ports of entry also is something as simple as communications. Communications. I'm looking out and seeing some of you that are involved in this. There are still gaps out there in communications. There were gaps there in 1924 when the Border Patrol came about. So I don't know if you have anything to add to that, John, but uh Yeah, I think a few things.

Speaker:

Uh there was a point in time when, you know, again, sort of leaning into my my career as a Border Patrol agent, when we would discover a stash house within the United States, you know, people had crossed the border illegally, they're now being held somewhere while while they're um while they're waiting to the the smuggling organization is waiting to receive the fees. We would, we, if we found one of these stash houses, we would bust it, we would arrest 20 people, we'd all high five, and we'd leave. And the house would still be there, the structure was still there. Now that these organizations have been designated as terrorist organizations, um, it allows us much greater latitude and in the um in sort of the consequences we put on them. And so what we're doing now is, you know, not only is it taking down that stash house, but then figuring out, illuminating that network, finding out what they're connected to, where their money's coming from. You know, when there's millions of people crossing the border illegally, and and I I think it, I think I everyone knows this in the room, but it's worth saying is that nothing, not a single thing, not a single thing or person crosses that border without the cartels making money off it. So these foreign terrorist organizations make money off of every single thing that crosses. When when so much of their money has gone away in the last year because they're not getting two million people a year, a million and a half people a year across the border, they have to find other ways to make that money. So, to the chief's point, they're looking at new and innovative ways to do it. And that's where we really need industry to uh to step in and help us solve these problems.

Speaker 2:

I I would just add that what CVP, whether it's in the the green uniforms, the tan uniforms, the blue uniforms, they need industry to work at the speed of mission because the dynamics are moving at such a clip today that uh back back in the day when we started, it would the evolution was very slow. Today it is very quick, it is very dynamic. The bad guys are very agile, they're very flexible, and they're very mobile. So we've seen El Paso get hit hard and literally overnight switch over to Rio Grande Valley to the Boot Hill. So, how do we track and how do we ensure that we are equipped, equipping them as uh as best we can? So uh John, one of the things, especially in your position now at the uh at the deputy commissioner slot, is the geopolitical considerations, the stressors that come with them, some of the things that we are doing under this administration that we weren't doing in the past. Can you talk a little bit about that and what industry needs to know about those uh uh dynamics?

Speaker:

Yeah, absolutely. So I think, you know, when when you look out, excuse me, at the threats and whether it's you know, the the threats from China, whether it's um these non-state actors, just the the way that the uh the globe is changing, you know, my most of my career really felt like a singular mission. It it was, you know, preventing um illegal entries on the border. And now that I see it, I see it much differently now that I've been up here. I think one of the one of the huge um accomplishments that's happened in CVP since I've been here is curtailing the de minimis, you know, and this is those very small packages that were being shipped into the United States. Um, I remember when I first got up here and I kept hearing the word over and over. I just, that's I don't know if you're all like me, but I just tried to ignore it because I didn't understand what they were talking about. And eventually I took a trip up to uh up to Newark and you know went to the uh the some of the cargo facilities where this was coming in and uh and saw that it's just impossible or it was impossible for our people to inspect this much cargo coming in. These very small packages that contained fentanyl precursors, could contain all kinds of things, which by the way, were in the belly of the aircrafts that every one of us fly every day all over the United States. And uh, and I realized certainly that we needed to do things about that. Fortunately, we got um some legislation across the uh the finish line with fentanyl. But I think when it comes to the non-state actors and some of the some of the state actors that we have so many concerns about, it's really where our Intel machine uh spools up. And I know um Intel was was a huge priority for for you, Chief Aguilar. It certainly has not gone down any. When I look at our National Targeting Center, um it's just amazing the work being done out there. We are the organization that everyone else leans upon. Every time something happens in the United States, um, you know, unfortunately, sometimes there might be a shooting, an attempted assassination, some act of terror. It's always the NTC that is the first to provide the the identity of that subject, all the travel information, the uh the connectivity from that person to all everyone else. So um really glad. And I think we we are probably the most agile uh federal agency that I'm aware of. I've never seen another agency adapt to threats as quickly as we have. So it does make me very confident with where we're at right now.

Speaker 2:

I'm uh I'm uh looking at uh General Raglan here. One one of the things that uh the deputy mentioned was uh National Targeting Center. That is the center of gravity not only for CBP, but for the whole of government. The whole of government, and I say this now because when we first kicked it off after 9-11, it was it was in very elementary stages. But very quickly, the rest of the government agencies, these three letter agencies, joined us at the NTC, our men and women at the NTC, and now it's become literally the crown jewel. So, again, the center of gravity for all things Intel and uh actionable uh uh situations. So, John, one one of the things uh this new norm, this new norm, hopefully sticking and continuing to move. But because of what we've experienced, what we're experiencing now, and the dynamics of what we know are to come, what would you say to industry is probably their biggest area of focus that they need to stay focused on in order to get that speed to mission uh requirement that we have now?

Speaker:

Yeah, absolutely, sir. So it everything has changed, mostly for the good. You know, at least the uh the flow has slowed enough that that we're able to get at to get at other things, but it also means that the adversary has become so much more adaptive. You know, that the the the techniques that that they've been using are mostly the same techniques they've used for years. Um, you know, we've always joked in the Border Patrol that we we refuse to be hindered by progress because you know, sometimes we just like doing things the way we've always done them. If we uh if we dragged a road with three tires behind a Bronco in 1995 when I came in, there's still somebody doing it today, I promise you. Um, you know, but it's where industry can help us. I look at things in in my time in in uh in Tucson, I I spent about four years out there, and every agent had a TAC-enabled device. So they all had they all had devices where they all knew where each other were at. They knew um, which had just never we had never experienced this before. If you didn't know who was in the next canyon over, there was just no way to know it. Now they could all see each other on there. So there are probably things we don't need or don't know that we need. Um, but those sort of things are what um gets the mission done. And then certainly too, I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about the trade and the travel. And so um, you know, things that help us, the non-intrusive inspection, when we can do that better and faster, critically important to move people through, people and goods through our ports of entry, but make sure we're doing it as safely as possible. Because as the border becomes more secure, we all know the ports of entry will be the next large target for the uh for the cartels.

Speaker 2:

In fact, I'm glad you mentioned that. Uh let's let's kind of uh focus on on the ports of entry uh because that is going to be the next, it has been a big target, but will continue to get the attention of the cartels because of the um magnitude of traffic and the constraints that we have on not being able to grow those ports of entry beyond where they're all. They're all basically landlocked. So this is where industry really comes into play. Talk about the challenges specific to the ports of entry, whether it's maritime land or uh airports.

Speaker:

Yeah, absolutely, Chief. So, you know, the challenge with the ports, like you said, is they are landlocked, meaning that the land around them, for most ports, unless it's out in the middle of nowhere, um, is occupied by something. There's retail establishments there, there's houses there, there's highways there. And these ports were built in a time, many of them, before we were worried about radiological materials being brought into the United States, before we were worried about the threats we're worried about now. So, in many of them, our portal monitors are much further into the United States than we would like. We're bringing, we're bringing these vehicles in. They're much further than they should, because of the footprint of these portals. So the thing I would say, well, a few things. One is that the the big beautiful bill has been um unprecedented for CBP. You know, $64 billion to help with infrastructure, to help with the smart wall, to help with everything that it will help with. Um, but $64 billion, as huge as that is, and it's unlike anything we've ever seen before, um, when you start building facilities, that goes away pretty quick. So the thing that I would ask for industry is NII that has to be faster and it has to be smaller. We cannot have the footprints that we have now with these portals and still protect America the way we need to. So, you know, I have seen huge, huge exam examples. There's millimeter wave um technology now that allows us to see much deeper into things than we could ever see. Um, some of these conveyor systems that move um 600 feet per minute we can scan, scanning like we've never done before, but honestly, it's just not enough because the cartels have doubled down on attacking the ports of entry.

Speaker 2:

Excellent. So so I'm gonna take the opportunity. Our Canadian friends are here, or friends from Japan are here. Talk a little bit about the the uh the work we do with our partners, with our peers. Uh I know personal experience. After 9-11, CBSA, RCMP, they were some of the best partners we ever had. Japan now aligning more and more with us. So talk a little bit about what industry might be able to do to increase that partnership.

Speaker:

Absolutely. So to me, um, you know, I I think when I when I worked on the on the southwest border, um, tremendous relationships with with Mexico. But even that's worlds different than where it is today. Today, when something happens across the border, um our agents and officers are being shot at, there's drone activity in the area, whatever's going on down there, it's a quick call from our um foreign operations branch to the partners on the south side, and the Mexican military is there as rapidly as they can be to deal with that. When I went up to the northern border after September 11th, is the first time I had any experience with the RCMP and had never, as good as I thought the relationship was on the southern border, it was a whole different world on the northern border. The um the intelligence and information sharing was incredible, the the partnerships were fantastic. Um, you know, right now there are so many programs that we're piloting with the RCMP that are incredibly helpful. Um, you know, the the ports working in in concert with each other, um, all that stuff just makes it much more difficult for this this threat material to get into the United States. I think, you know, with countries like Japan as well, um, these great partners, when when we can have our container security initiatives in these countries, when we can do the the the pre-inspection in these countries, um, again, it just helps the it helps the flow of commerce, it helps um it helps the the lifeblood of the United States. So I'd say it's it's it's twofold. Obviously, it's the the security aspect of it has to be first. Any way that industry can help us better connect with our foreign partners is fantastic. And then of course, to uh the more we can enable the the trade and travel and increase the revenue, which of course helps every country involved.

Speaker 2:

Excellent. So I think I've got time on one more thing I'd like to touch on. Uh as we speak today, C5 ISR, AI, autonomous, uh, NII equipment, all of these things coming together. Um edge computing. How how do you see those technologies playing a more vital role in everything that uh CBP gets engaged in?

Speaker:

So it is huge. I will tell you, I mean, obviously we're using a lot of AI now, but just to go back to my time in Tucson for a minute, we had nine tactical operations centers in Tucson, one for each station. Basically, a room full of monitors with agents and National Guard personnel looking at these monitors to see what activity is taking place. Every person in that is looking at five or six monitors for eight or ten hours a day. Um, and there's probably 10 people in each talk. So now we've got 90 times three shifts. We've got close to 300 people that are not out doing what they should be doing. They're not out putting handcuffs on people, they're not patrolling the border. So AI with things like the autonomous towers, absolute game changer. When when I also don't have to worry about five hours into a shift of staring at six screens, how effective is that person? I can tell you, I wouldn't be very effective. So I'm sure that they're struggling as well. Um, when we can put AI on something like that, and AI does the work for us, the agents can go back out, make the arrests, put the hands on people. That to me is awesome. The thing I would say as well, one of the biggest stumbling blocks we face as an organization, because we are no longer just the US Border Patrol and customs and you know, is that we have to be able to integrate. And it's one of the biggest problems I see is that we need industry to make sure that what they're building has open architecture so that our systems can talk to each other. If we have a camera tower that does not talk to a sensor system and can't talk to this other thing, and we can't get it to our TAC devices, um, you know, then then we're failing. And and we've made these mistakes before. We've gotten involved with vendors and we've bought things that was um proprietary systems that our data is now behind someone else's system that we can't get to. Um, we just cannot continue, and we will not continue to do business that way. So my strong urge is open architecture. As much as we can get AI to do the work that agents and um and our professional staff and our officers are doing, then um that's a huge win for us.

Speaker 2:

You talked about UAS's C UAS. You didn't mention it clearly, neither did I, but it's something that we're facing every day. It's the interoperability, it's the integration, it's the interagency, it's all of those things that bring the law enforcement community, uh, and actually I would say the military together closer because of the associations that we have now. And I think that's going to be part of the new norm. So, industry, you heard it directly from somebody who's an expert on the requirements, on uh the uh operation uh operational environment that we face, and you heard some of what is coming down the pike that we need to anticipate also from the industry. So, Chief, thank you very much. Thanks, Chief. Appreciate it. My pleasure. Great pair of partner. Thanks for being