Troops begin detaining immigrants in national defense zone at border in escalation of military role

By MORGAN LEE

EL PASO, Texas — U.S. troops have begun directly detaining immigrants accused of trespassing on a recently designated national defense zone along the southern U.S. border, in an escalation of the military’s enforcement role, authorities said Wednesday

U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Chad Campbell described in detail the first detentions by troops last week of three immigrants accused of trespassing in a national defense area near Santa Teresa, New Mexico.

Those migrants were quickly turned over to U.S. Customs and Border Protection and are now among more than 1,400 migrants to have been charged with illegally entering militarized areas along that border, under a new border enforcement strategy from President Donald Trump’s administration.

Troops are prohibited from conducting civilian law enforcement on U.S. soil under the Posse Comitatus Act. But an exception known as the military purpose doctrine allows it in some instances.

Authorities “noticed three individuals crossing the protective barrier into the United States,” Campbell said. “A Department of Defense response went to interdict those three individuals, told them to sit down. … In a matter of three minutes, border patrol agents came in to apprehend. So that three minutes is that temporary detention” by the military.

Trump has designated two national military defense areas along the southern U.S. border for New Mexico and a 60-mile (97-kilometer) stretch of western Texas, from El Paso to Fort Hancock, while transferring much of the land from the Interior Department to oversight by the Department of Defense for three years.

The Trump administration plans eventually to add more militarized zones along the border, a military spokesman said Wednesday at a news conference in El Paso.

“We have been very clear that there will be additional National Defense Areas across the southern border,” said Geoffrey Carmichael, a spokesperson for an enforcement task force at the southern border. “I won’t speculate to where those are going to be.”

Proponents of the militarized zones, including federal prosecutors, say the approach augments traditional efforts by Customs and Border Protection and other law enforcement agencies to secure the border.

“These partnerships and consequences exist so that we can promote the most humane border environment we’ve ever had,” El Paso sector Border Patrol Chief Agent Walter Slosar said. “We are dissuading people from entering the smuggling cycle … to make sure that smugglers cannot take advantage of individuals who are trying to come into the United States.”

Defense attorneys — and judges in some instances — are pushing back against the novel application of national security charges against immigrants who enter through those militarized zones — and carry a potential sentence of 18 months in prison on top of a possible six-month sentence for illegal entry.

A judge in New Mexico has dismissed more than 100 national security charges against immigrants, finding little evidence that immigrants knew about the national defense areas. Those migrants still confronted charges of illegal entry to the U.S.

In Texas, a Peruvian woman who crossed the U.S. border illegally was acquitted of unauthorized access to a newly designated militarized zone in the first trial under the Trump administration’s efforts.