The U.S. government will now have the authority to hold open area along the borders in order to secure it, according to President Donald Trump’s document authorizing a “military quest for sealing the southern boundary of the United States and repelling invasions.”
The order, which was made public late on Friday, gives the military the authority to use federal land for military purposes, including building frontier barriers and using “detection and tracking equipment” to deter would-be immigrant invasions.
Our southern boundary is being attacked by a range of challenges. According to Trump’s document, the complexity of the present scenario necessitates that our military play a more active role in securing our southern frontier than they did in the past. The president signed an executive order on day one of his second term that “assigned the Armed Forces of the United States the military missions of repelling the invasion and sealing the United States southern border from unlawful entry” ( see Friday’s memo ).
The Defense Department has been given authority to use federal lands along the southwestern boundary for military purposes by the memo’s secretary of defense, inside, crops, and homeland security. According to the letter, the Department of Defense will be able to identify” National Defense Areas” on such property.
The letter quotes Trump’s declaration of a “national crisis” at the southern border, invoking a day-one statement from the president, and particularly “portions of the Roosevelt Reservation,” a land area that extends from California to Texas and was designated for border surveillance in 1907.
Federal Indian Reservations are not included in the order.
Prior to Trump’s first word, federal land had been transferred to military control with the same objectives as securing the southern border and constructing border barriers. According to Newsweek, the establishment of the National Defense Areas makes it possible for the government to address any illegal border crossing as intruding on a defense center.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is required to determine an initial period of the letter within 45 days of its drafting, but he is permitted to “extend activities” “at any day” under the letter, which include “in coordination with” the Department of Homeland Security and other executive departments and agencies as appropriate.
The Federalist’s correspondent is Breccan F. Thies. He previously covered issues of education and culture for Breitbart News and the Washington Examiner. He is a Publius Fellow at the 2022 Claremont Institute and holds a degree from the University of Virginia. You can follow him on Twitter at X: @BreccanFThies.
