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Border Patrol, ICE and CBP Leaders Tout Border Record at Nogales, Arizona Event

September 18, 2026 · U.S. Department of Homeland Security · 0:36:09

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

National Border Patrol Council President Paul Perez opened the event in Nogales, Arizona, saying that under the previous administration the area saw, as he put it, complete chaos, and that, as President Trump has said, no new laws were needed — only a new president. Perez said the southwest and northern borders are now the most secure in the country’s history, as he characterized them, and that Border Patrol morale and applications are at historic highs, according to his remarks. He credited Secretary Noem with enforcing the law and pointed to the border wall behind the speakers as having transformed the area, as he described it.

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said he had never seen the current level of teamwork across Border Patrol, ICE and CBP, and said the agencies’ direction from the President and the Secretary is, as he put it, to go do their jobs. Lyons said about 1.5 million individuals in the country have final orders of deportation, as he stated the figure. CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott called border security a team effort across federal, state and local partners and said that in less than a year the administration had produced, as he stated it, the most secure border in the history of the United States, describing the smuggling traffic he said once moved through the area where the event was held.

Why it matters

The event is a consolidated on-the-record statement of the administration’s border claims by the three operational leaders responsible for them, delivered at the border itself, and it records the enforcement posture — interior arrests alongside border security — that DHS leadership says will continue.

Scoreboard watch

Flagged for the scoreboard editor: Commissioner Rodney Scott’s statement that the administration produced the most secure border in U.S. history in less than a year, and acting ICE Director Todd Lyons’s figure of about 1.5 million individuals with final deportation orders, each as stated at Nogales on the date of this event, for checking against published CBP and ICE data. No verdict is given here.

Sources: U.S. Department of Homeland Security, “Secretary Noem Delivers Remarks from Nogales, AZ”, Nogales, Arizona, 2026-09-18 (official upload, embedded above; published 2026-09-18). Transcript via Supadata (private research store, paraphrased and attributed, not republished). All figures and characterizations as stated by the speakers.