US establishes new military zone along border with Mexico
The US military has established a second military zone along the border with Mexico, expanding an area in Texas where soldiers can detain migrants or illegal immigrants. A similar zone was established last month in New Mexico.
President Donald Trump has launched a campaign to tighten immigration controls since taking office, increasing troop levels at the southern border and pledging to deport millions of illegal immigrants living in the US.
In April, the Trump administration said it had established a 170-square-mile area along the New Mexico border as a “National Defense Area.”
On the evening of May 1, the US military announced that it had established the “Texas National Defense Area” stretching more than 100 km along the Texas–New Mexico border in El Paso to the east.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) retains jurisdiction over illegal border crossings in this area. Troopers will turn over migrants they detain to the U.S. Border Patrol or other civilian law enforcement agencies.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, 82 migrants have been charged so far for crossing the border into the New Mexico military district. None of them have been directly apprehended by the U.S. military; all have been processed by CBP.
The establishment of these military zones is intended to allow the Trump administration to use troops to detain migrants without invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807 – a law that allows the president to deploy the military to suppress civil disturbances.
There are currently about 11,900 US troops stationed at the border. The number of migrants apprehended for illegally crossing the border fell to a record low in March, according to government data.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, posted a photo of the installation of barbed wire fencing on Thursday, along with a statement: “Texas continues to work with the Trump administration to stop illegal immigration.”
Meanwhile, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has opposed what she calls “deportation buffer zones,” calling them “a waste of military resources and manpower” in a social media post in March.
The office of New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich said on May 2 that the buffer zone is several kilometers wide in places, raising concerns that civilians could accidentally enter the area.
“This is much larger than the 60-foot-wide strip of land known as the Roosevelt Reservation,” Heinrich spokeswoman Caty Payette told Source NM, referring to a stretch of federal land that stretches along the US-Mexico border.
