Migrants face a novel criminal charge in new border zone in New Mexico
by: MORGAN LEE and VALERIE GONZALEZ, Associated Press
Posted: Apr 30, 2025 / 01:09 AM CDT
Updated: Apr 30, 2025 / 01:09 AM CDT
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Immigrants recently detained in southernmost New Mexico now face a novel criminal charge of breaching a national defense area, after the U.S. Army assumed oversight of a 170-mile (274-kilometer) strip along the southern U.S. border in cooperation with immigration authorities.
Federal prosecutors on Monday applied the additional charge for incursions into the recently designated New Mexico National Defense Area against migrants detained by Customs and Border Protection, as the military scales up troop deployments to a sliver of U.S. borderlands that is now being treated as an extension of U.S. Army Garrison Fort Huachuca in Arizona.
The Trump administration says those soldiers have the authority to temporarily apprehend trespassers, amid efforts to get around a federal law that prohibits U.S. troops from being used in domestic law enforcement on American soil.
https://www.borderreport.com/news/migrants-face-a-novel-criminal-charge-in-new-border-zone-in-new-mexico/
