US expands militarized zones to 1/3 of southern border, stirring controversy

Or­ange no-en­try signs post­ed by the U.S. mil­i­tary in Eng­lish and Span­ish dot the New Mex­i­co desert, where a bor­der wall cuts past onion fields and parched ranch­es with tufts of tall grass grow­ing amidst wiry brush and yuc­ca trees.

The Army has post­ed thou­sands of the warn­ings in New Mex­i­co and west­ern Texas, de­clar­ing a “re­strict­ed area by au­thor­i­ty of the com­man­der.” It’s part of a ma­jor shift that has thrust the mil­i­tary in­to bor­der en­force­ment with Mex­i­co like nev­er be­fore.

The move places long stretch­es of the bor­der un­der the su­per­vi­sion of near­by mil­i­tary bases, em­pow­er­ing U.S. troops to de­tain peo­ple who en­ter the coun­try il­le­gal­ly and side­step a law pro­hibit­ing mil­i­tary in­volve­ment in civil­ian law en­force­ment. It is done un­der the au­thor­i­ty of the na­tion­al emer­gency on the bor­der de­clared by Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on his first day in of­fice.

U.S. au­thor­i­ties say the zones are need­ed to close gaps in bor­der en­force­ment and help in the wider fight against hu­man smug­gling net­works and bru­tal drug car­tels.

The mil­i­ta­riza­tion is be­ing chal­lenged in court, and has been crit­i­cized by civ­il rights ad­vo­cates, hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid groups and out­door en­thu­si­asts who ob­ject to be­ing blocked from pub­lic lands while troops have free rein.

Texas stops pro­vid­ing new fund­ing for bor­der wall con­struc­tion

Abbey Car­pen­ter, a leader of a search-and-res­cue group for miss­ing mi­grants, said pub­lic ac­cess is be­ing de­nied across swel­ter­ing stretch­es of desert where mi­grant deaths have surged.

“Maybe there are more deaths, but we don’t know,” she said.

Mil­i­tary ex­pan­sion

Two mil­i­ta­rized zones form a buffer along 230 miles (370 kilo­me­ters) of bor­der, from Fort Han­cock, Texas, through El Pa­so and west­ward across vast New Mex­i­co ranch­lands.

The De­fense De­part­ment added an ad­di­tion­al 250-mile (400-kilo­me­ter) zone last week in Texas’ Rio Grande Val­ley and plans an­oth­er near Yu­ma, Ari­zona. Com­bined, the zones will cov­er near­ly one-third of the U.S. bor­der with Mex­i­co.

They are pa­trolled by at least 7,600 mem­bers of the armed forces, vast­ly ex­pand­ing the U.S. gov­ern­ment pres­ence on the bor­der.

Re­ac­tion to the mil­i­tary buffer has been mixed among res­i­dents of New Mex­i­co’s rur­al Lu­na Coun­ty, where a strong cul­ture of in­di­vid­ual lib­er­ty is tem­pered by the de­sire to squelch net­works bring­ing mi­grants and con­tra­band across the bor­der.

“We as a fam­i­ly have al­ways been very sup­port­ive of the mis­sion, and very sup­port­ive of bor­der se­cu­ri­ty,” said James John­son, a fourth-gen­er­a­tion farmer over­see­ing sea­son­al la­bor­ers as they filled gi­ant plas­tic crates with onions, earn­ing $22 per con­tain­er.

Mil­i­tary de­ploy­ments un­der pri­or pres­i­dents put “eyes and ears” on the bor­der, John­son said. This ver­sion is “try­ing to give some teeth.”

But some hunters and hik­ers fear they’re be­ing locked out of a rugged and cher­ished land­scape.

“I don’t want to go down there with my hunt­ing ri­fle and all of a sud­den some­body rolls up on me and says that I’m in a mil­i­tary zone,” said Ray Tre­jo, a co­or­di­na­tor for the New Mex­i­co Wildlife Fed­er­a­tion and a Lu­na Coun­ty com­mis­sion­er. “I don’t know if these folks have been taught to deesca­late sit­u­a­tions.”

A for­mer pub­lic school teacher of Eng­lish as a sec­ond lan­guage, Tre­jo said mil­i­tary tres­pass­ing charges seem in­hu­mane in an econ­o­my built on im­mi­grant farm la­bor.

“If the Army, Bor­der Pa­trol, law en­force­ment in gen­er­al are de­tain­ing peo­ple for rea­sons of trans­port­ing, of hu­man smug­gling, I don’t have a prob­lem,” he said. “But peo­ple are com­ing in­to our coun­try to work, step­ping now all of a sud­den in­to a mil­i­tary zone, and they have no idea.”

Nicole Wie­man, an Army com­mand spokesper­son, said the Army is ne­go­ti­at­ing pos­si­ble pub­lic ac­cess for recre­ation and hunt­ing, and will hon­or pri­vate rights to graz­ing and min­ing.

In­creased pun­ish­ment

More than 1,400 mi­grants have been charged with tres­pass­ing on mil­i­tary ter­ri­to­ry, fac­ing a pos­si­ble 18-month prison sen­tence for a first of­fense. That’s on top of an il­le­gal en­try charge that brings up to six months in cus­tody. Af­ter that, most are turned over to U.S. Cus­toms and Bor­der Pro­tec­tion for like­ly de­por­ta­tion. There have been no ap­par­ent ar­rests of U.S. cit­i­zens.

At a fed­er­al cour­t­house in Las Cruces, New Mex­i­co, on the banks of the Up­per Rio Grande, mi­grants in drab coun­ty jail jump­suits and chains filed be­fore a mag­is­trate judge on a re­cent week­day.

A 29-year-old Guatemalan woman strug­gled to un­der­stand in­struc­tions through a Span­ish in­ter­preter as she plead­ed guilty to il­le­gal en­try. A judge set aside mil­i­tary tres­pass­ing charges for lack of ev­i­dence, but sen­tenced her to two weeks in jail be­fore be­ing trans­ferred for like­ly de­por­ta­tion.

“She sells pot­tery, she’s a very sim­ple woman with a sixth-grade ed­u­ca­tion,” a pub­lic de­fense at­tor­ney told the judge. “She told me she’s go­ing back and she’s go­ing to stay there.”

Bor­der cross­ings

Bor­der Pa­trol ar­rests along the south­ern bor­der this year have dropped to the low­est lev­el in six decades, in­clud­ing a 30% de­crease in June from the pri­or month as at­tempt­ed cross­ings dwin­dle. On June 28, the Bor­der Pa­trol made on­ly 137 ar­rests, a stark con­trast with late 2023, when ar­rests topped 10,000 on the busiest days.

The first mil­i­ta­rized zones, in­tro­duced in April and May, ex­tend west of El Pa­so past fac­to­ries and cat­tle yards to par­tial­ly en­cir­cle the New Mex­i­co bor­der vil­lage of Colum­bus, and its 1,450 res­i­dents. It was here that Mex­i­can rev­o­lu­tion­ary forces led by Pan­cho Vil­la crossed in­to the U.S. in a dead­ly 1916 raid.

These days, a port of en­try at Colum­bus is where hun­dreds of chil­dren with U.S. cit­i­zen­ship cross dai­ly from a bed­room com­mu­ni­ty in Mex­i­co to board pub­lic school bus­es and at­tend class­es near­by.

Colum­bus May­or Philip Skin­ner, a Re­pub­li­can, says he’s seen the oc­ca­sion­al mil­i­tary ve­hi­cle but no ev­i­dence of dis­rup­tion in an area where il­le­gal cross­ings have been rare.

“We’re kind of not tuned in to this na­tion­al pol­i­tics,” Skin­ner said.

Over­sight is di­vid­ed be­tween U.S. Army com­mands in Fort Bliss, Texas, and Fort Huachu­ca, Ari­zona. The mil­i­ta­rized zones side­step the Posse Comi­ta­tus Act, an 1878 law that pro­hibits the mil­i­tary from con­duct­ing civil­ian law en­force­ment on U.S. soil.

Rus­sell John­son, a ranch­er and for­mer Bor­der Pa­trol agent, said he wel­comes the new mil­i­ta­rized zone where his ranch bor­ders Mex­i­co on land leased from the Bu­reau of Land Man­age­ment.

“We have seen ab­solute­ly al­most every­thing imag­in­able that can hap­pen on the bor­der, and most of it’s bad,” he said, re­call­ing off-road ve­hi­cle chas­es on his ranch and life­less bod­ies re­cov­ered by Bor­der Pa­trol.

In late April, he said, five ar­mored mil­i­tary ve­hi­cles spent sev­er­al days at a gap in the bor­der wall, where con­struc­tion was sus­pend­ed at the out­set of the Biden pres­i­den­cy. But, he said, he hasn’t seen much of the mil­i­tary in re­cent weeks.

“The on­ly thing that’s re­al­ly changed is the lit­tle ex­tra sig­nage,” he said. “We’re not see­ing the mil­i­tary pres­ence out here like we kind of an­tic­i­pat­ed.”

Court chal­lenges

Fed­er­al pub­lic de­fend­ers have chal­lenged the mil­i­tary’s new over­sight of pub­lic land in New Mex­i­co, seiz­ing on the ar­rest of a Mex­i­can man for tres­pass­ing through re­mote ter­rain to test the le­gal wa­ters.

They de­cried the des­ig­na­tion of a new mil­i­tary zone with­out con­gres­sion­al au­tho­riza­tion “for the sole pur­pose of en­abling mil­i­tary ac­tion on Amer­i­can soil” as “a mat­ter of stag­ger­ing and un­preced­ed po­lit­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance.” A judge has not ruled on the is­sue.

In the mean­time, court chal­lenges to tres­pass­ing charges in the mil­i­ta­rized zone have met with a mix­ture of con­vic­tions and ac­quit­tals at tri­al.

Ryan El­li­son, the top fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor in New Mex­i­co, won tres­pass­ing con­vic­tions in June against two im­mi­grants who en­tered a mil­i­ta­rized zone again af­ter an ini­tial warn­ing. “There’s not go­ing to be an is­sue as to whether or not they were on no­tice,” he told a re­cent news con­fer­ence.

Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union at­tor­ney Re­bec­ca Sheff says the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is test­ing a more puni­tive ap­proach to bor­der en­force­ment with the new mil­i­tary zones and wor­ries it will be ex­pand­ed bor­der-wide.

“To the ex­tent the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has as­pi­ra­tions to es­tab­lish a much more hos­tile mil­i­tary pres­ence along the bor­der, this is a ve­hi­cle that they’re push­ing on to po­ten­tial­ly do so. … And that’s very con­cern­ing,” she said.

By MOR­GAN LEE

COLUM­BUS, N.M. (AP)