Civil rights advocates worry about ‘militarization’ of southern New Mexico and US citizens possibly subject to charges
EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Border agents in the past week have arrested at least seven migrants for trespassing on military property while entering the United States illegally in southern New Mexico.
The numbers are piling up since the Department of the Interior transferred a 60-foot-wide strip of land running parallel to the U.S. border wall to the Department of Defense on April 15. That came in the wake of the Trump administration’s deployment of thousands of troops to the Southwest border to stem illegal immigration.
A Border Report review of recent court filings shows the U.S. Border Patrol has been arresting migrants on charges of unauthorized entry of military property in New Mexico since at least April 24.
On that day, Alexander Aguilar Morales walked into the so-called New Mexico National Defense Area 5 miles west of the Antelope Wells, N.M., border crossing.
Court documents show he kept walking on military property until U.S. Border Patrol agents approached him and questioned him about his citizenship. Aguilar allegedly told them he was a citizen of Mexico and had no legal claim to be in the United States.
The agents apprehended him for illegal entry and gave him verbal and written notice in his native Spanish that he had entered a federally restricted area and was subject to prosecution. He was formally charged with unlawful entry of military property on April 28.
Court documents don’t mention any involvement of soldiers in the apprehensions nor whether members of the military using field surveillance equipment or monitoring closed-circuit security cameras were the ones who alerted the Border Patrol to the intrusions.
Border agents two days later apprehended Eleazar Acosta Flores for entering the New Mexico National Defense Area several miles east of the Santa Teresa, New Mexico, commercial border crossing – which is itself 160 miles east-northeast of Antelope Wells.
Acosta voluntarily confessed to being a Mexican national unlawfully present in the United States. The apprehending agents pointed to posted signs warning, in English and in Spanish, that the area is a restricted military zone and took Acosta into custody.
Both Acosta and Marcial Perez Diaz, who was apprehended a day later, admitted they read the signs warning they were in a military reservation but kept going anyway, according to court records.
Several others were apprehended by Border Patrol on April 28 inside the New Mexico National Defense area. They included Raul Felicito Leon, who walked over from Mexico near Antelope Wells.
Leon had a court hearing in Las Cruces federal court on Wednesday and was assigned a public defender.
The increased involvement of U.S. troops in border security has rattled groups like the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico. The group is worried about members of the military having the authority to detain civilians, conduct physical searches and implement “crowd control measures” inside the New Mexico National Defense Area.
“As New Mexicans, we have deep concerns about the enhanced militarization of our borderland communities,” Rebecca Sheff, senior staff attorney of ACLU of New Mexico said last week. “The expansion of military detention powers in the New Mexico National Defense Area – also known as the border ‘buffer zone’ – represents a dangerous erosion of the constitutional principle that the military should not be policing civilians.”
She also worries about straining relations with Mexico and U.S. citizens possibly being arrested in the restricted zone.
“We don’t want militarized zones where border residents, including U.S. citizens, face potential prosecution simply for being in the wrong place,” she said in a statement.
