EL PASO — Last Wednesday, Customs and Border Protection hosted a press conference on the border between El Paso and Juárez, offering reporters a closer look at what the federal government has dubbed the “National Defense Area,” an experimental new way of deterring people from crossing the border illegally. All the way from the beaches of San Diego to the fields around Fort Hancock, Texas, property transfers have allowed the Department of Defense to claim a small strip of land — in places just 60 feet wide — underneath the border between the United States and Mexico.
As a result, migrants can now be charged with criminal trespass on military property in addition to other state and federal charges they may be facing. Advocates also worry that it’s a loophole for the government to skirt the Posse Comitatus Act, using soldiers who can legally proclaim that they’re just securing military property to illegally enforce domestic law.
In a statement, Rebecca Sheff, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of New Mexico, referred to the program as “Operation Lone Star on steroids,” referring to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s controversial and expensive border security funding blitz. “We don’t want militarized zones where border residents — including U.S. citizens — face potential prosecution simply for being in the wrong place,” she wrote. “This dangerous expansion of military authorities threatens both our civil liberties and the cultural fabric that makes our borderlands unique.”
Earlier this year, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt teased “over 90 miles” of NDAs in Texas. Because of the way that Texas was annexed into the Union, thousands of individual landowners own pieces of the border, making a contiguous NDA across the whole state difficult to impossible. (A representative from the Department of Defense told The Big Bend Sentinel that gaps in the NDAs or plans to expand existing NDAs in Texas are not yet set in stone.)
As the first indictments for National Defense Area (NDA) violations make their way through federal courts along the border, lawyers and judges alike have expressed confusion about how to interpret the new regulations. (As previously reprinted in The Sentinel, Texas saw the first trial of a migrant under the new NDA rules the first week of June, which ended in an acquittal.)
In response, the agency hosted a press conference last week in collaboration with the DOD to field questions and concerns from the media about expanded military presence on the border. The press conference was held in the shadow of the border wall in downtown El Paso, just a few feet away from bustling businesses in two countries.
Throughout the program, the agency emphasized that their goal with the NDAs was not to skirt the law but to make it clear to migrants — and the cartels that have grown a multibillion-dollar–a-year industry from smuggling them — that the border is not an enticing place to cross. “Foreign terrorist organizations are lying to you,” said Interim El Paso Sector Chief Patrol Agent Walter Slosar. “They profit by spreading lies. They cannot deliver on their promises of entry or legal status.”
Over the course of numerous court hearings this month, lawyers have argued that migrants have not been adequately notified about the existence of the new NDAs. In response, the agency has made it a goal to put up signs “every 100 meters.”
In addition to explaining that the area is prohibited, the signs also warn that anyone entering the area may be detained and searched. “Photographing or making notes, drawings, maps, or graphic representations of the area or it’s [sic] activities are prohibited unless specifically authorized by the commander,” a sign on display read.
The program featured brief presentations from Justin Simmons and Ryan Ellison, U.S. attorneys from the Western District of Texas and the District of New Mexico, respectively.
Robert Holguin of FOX 14 in El Paso asked why — in the Trump administration’s mad dash to arrest and deport criminals — that U.S. attorneys’ offices were going after misdemeanor charges. “These are very busy prosecutors,” he said.
Simmons explained why he felt that prosecuting violations of the NDAs were critical. “The reason these NDAs are important is that it allows us more resources to bear on [illegal border crossings],” he said. “If you don’t have a border, you don’t have a country — bottom line.”
