Legal rights advocates are concerned about southeastern New Mexico’s “militarization” and potential prosecution of US citizens.
Since the Department of Defense on April 15 handed over a 60-foot-wide strip of land running parallel to the U.S. boundary wall to the Department of Defense, the numbers are increasing. That was made possible by the Trump administration’s decision to send thousands of troops to the Southwest borders to stop illegal immigration.
According to a Border Report overview of current court filings, the U.S. Border Patrol has been detained in New Mexico on suspicion of unauthorized access of military property since at least April 24.
Alexander Aguilar Morales entered the infamous New Mexico National Defense Area five kilometers north of the border crossing in Antelope Wells, New Mexico, on that day.
Court records indicate that he continued to wander on defense house until U.S. Border Patrol agents approached and interrogated him about his nationality. Aguilar reportedly told them that he was a Mexican national and that he had no lawful standing in the United States.
He was apprehended for entering a legally restricted area without permission, and the agents gave him verbal and written notice that he had entered and was facing legal action. On April 28, he was publicly accused of unlawfully entering military home.
Court documents don’t notice whether soldiers were involved in the arrests or whether they were the ones who called in the Border Patrol while using industry security equipment or tracking closed-circuit surveillance cameras.
Eleazar Acosta Flores was apprehended by border officials two days later for entering the New Mexico National Defense Area, which is located just 200 yards south of the business border crossing in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, which is 160 miles west of Antelope Wells.
Acosta freely admitted to being a Mexican federal who was not authorized to reside in the United States. Acosta was taken into custody after the apprehending agents pointed to posted signs that said the place was a military-restricted place, both in English and Spanish.
Border Patrol apprehended some others on April 28 in the New Mexico National Defense place. Raul Felicito Leon, who emigrated from Mexico and arrived near Antelope Wells, was one of them.
On Wednesday, Leon was given a public defender position in Las Cruces Federal Court after holding a reading in jury.
Gruppiert organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico have been irritated by the increased presence of British troops in border safety. The party is concerned about the presence of” crowd control methods” by members of the military inside the New Mexico National Defense Area.
We as New Mexicans are concerned that our frontier communities are being made more militarized, according to Rebecca Sheff, senior staff attorney for the ACLU of New Mexico, next week. The development of military detention options in the New Mexico National Defense Area, also known as the border “buffer zone,” “represents a dangerous degradation of the constitutional theory that the army should not be policing citizens.”
She even worries about strained relations with Mexico and possible arrests of Americans in the limited area.
We don’t want militarized areas where borders people, including Americans, could face legal action for being in the inappropriate place, she said in a statement.
