A 60-foot wide strip of land along three southwestern border states will be placed under the jurisdiction of the U.S. military to help deter illegal immigration, the White House said Friday.
President Donald Trump issued a memorandum directing the military to take temporary control over the Roosevelt Reservation, a corridor that runs along the border line in California, Arizona and New Mexico.
The order would empower troops to detain people attempting to illegally enter the U.S. within the stretch of land, which was established by President Theodore Roosevelt for border security in 1907. Trump authorized the military to operate in the same area during his first administration to aid construction of a wall to deter migrant crossings.
The memorandum marks an escalation in the president’s use of the military to facilitate his sweeping crackdown on immigration. And while unclear how far the administration will go, it could be an additional step to militarizing the nation’s southwestern border.
“Our southern border is under attack from a variety of threats,” the memorandum said. “The complexity of the current situation requires that our military take a more direct role in securing our southern border than in the recent past.”
Immigration, military and legal experts have said that Trumps’ move to militarize the border could raise legal questions about potential violations to the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law that generally prohibits active-duty troops from being used in domestic law enforcement.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said it appeared the administration was trying to find a way around restrictions on the use of the U.S. military for civilian border enforcement.
“Welp they’re doing the Roosevelt Reservation crazy strategy, giving the military ‘jurisdiction’ over a 60-foot-wide stretch of land from CA to AZ and then claim that migrants are being arrested for “trespassing on military property” thus trying to bypass the Posse Commitatus Act,” Reichlin-Melnick said in a post on X.
The Friday action comes as Trump has asked the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security to submit recommendations by April 20 on whether he should use the Insurrection Act of 1807 to boost his mass deportations campaign. The centuries-old law would allow Trump to deploy additional U.S. military to the southern border and order troops to aid law enforcement in carrying out domestic policies.
But illegal border crossings have plunged to historic lows since Trump took office. The administration reported 7,200 migrant encounters in March, down from more than 189,000 during the same month the year before.
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