WASHINGTON – The Washington Post report on Thursday shows the Trump administration is striving to militarize the scope of its southern border, raising concerns from experts that the move could potentially bring US military members into direct contact with immigrants.

The White House is contemplating the creation of a military satellite installation on a 60-foot-deep federal land known as the Roosevelt Reservation. According to In the report.

The move would create a military buffer zone that extends across the US-Mexico border in Arizona, California and New Mexico, allowing active forces to hold them until immigrants across the US trespass at military bases and border patrol agents arrive.

Approximately 10,000 military personnel Although already deployed on the southern border, creating a military buffer zone is Trump administration ramp up Experts say it is illegal about the use of the US military in planning a massive deportation of immigrants without permanent legal status.

“The use of active duty military forces to be clearly present in law enforcement at the border is absolutely, clearly, illegal,” Vermont’s national security law professor Stephen Dykas said in an interview Thursday. “This is a violation of the Posse Comitatus Act.”

The 1878 law generally prohibits the military from being used by domestic law enforcement agencies.

Adam Isaxon, director of defense oversight at the Latin America’s Washington office, a research and advocacy group aimed at promoting human rights in North and South America, said the escalation of military presence at the border is new.

He added that the military used to run deportation flights “contains an unpleasant amount of contact between soldiers and immigrants.”

“Most of the troops sent over the years (to the border) were members of the National Guard at a time, thousands of people at once. It’s a fairly low-level mission,” Isaxon said. “So the possibility of contact between soldiers and civilians in American soil was very, very, very, very slim. That’s all changed now.”

A Pentagon spokesperson told States Newsroom in an email in the state newsroom saying that he has “no announcements have been made at this time” regarding the establishment of the base along the border stretch.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

This scenario could pose additional legal challenges for the Trump administration. Potentially rebelling A federal judge’s order to halt deportation of Venezuelans under the wartime Chinese enemy laws.

Transformation of military roles

While dispatching mandates to the tropical borders, military members have been in intelligence and logistics roles for over 20 years, while military members are not engaged in immigration enforcement.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegses during his visit to the border on February 3rd I said Reporters: “Men and gals of my generation have spent decades abroad protecting the borders of others. That’s when we secure our own borders.”

“All options are on the table,” Heggs said.

Joseph Nun, the Brennan Center for Judicial Justice, said in an interview Thursday that he would expect the Trump administration to face lawsuits by essentially using the military for civilian law enforcement.

“This is a transparent ploy to avoid the collective committatus law by utilizing what is called a military purpose doctrine,” Nun said.

Under that doctrine, the military said that even if it had contingent benefits to civilian law enforcement, the military could maintain order and further appeal for other military purposes. For example, if a drunk driver tries to drive to a base, military police could hand them over to civil law enforcement before detaining them.

However, Nunn said the military would specifically set up bases along the border as a way for the military to detain migrants as a way of troops to detain migrants as they had not previously been tried.

“It was a doctrinal abuse, and the court should refuse because in that situation a military facility was created and soldiers were stationed there to support civilian law enforcement activities,” Nunn said. “That’s immigration enforcement.”

Immigrants encounter

Federal land is transferred to the Department of Defense. This comes at a time when border encounters are relatively low, as fewer than 5,000 acres do not require Congressional approval.

Anxiety at the tropical border has plummeted to its lowest level in 25 years. US Customs and Border Security Data.

This trend began last February, due to an increase in immigration enforcement and policies that Mexico limits asylum claims among ports of entry, said Colleen Putzel Kavanaugh of the Institute for Immigration Policy, a non-partisan immigration think tank.

“Like the change in administration, this was true for the first Trump administration. We saw a kind of initial decline due to the general rhetoric of immigration, so it’s not entirely surprising to see that decline.”

“There is a general waiting period for people who try to understand what makes the most sense in terms of their needs and travel,” she added.

Sections along the southern borders that the Trump administration is paying attention to – the San Diego-based US Border Patrol Sector. Tucson, Arizona. El Paso, Texas, is “consistently the busiest,” she said.

Putzel-Kavanaugh added that changing patterns of movement between sectors is typical.

“I think it’s certainly plausible to assume that if there’s this militarization campaign like the west side of the border, the flow is likely to move east,” she said.

Reactions from New Mexico lawmakers

Democrats condemned the idea and questioned why defense funds should be used at borders as global conflicts increase.

Sen. Ben Ray Lujan, a New Mexico Democrat, expressed skepticism about relying on defense resources to resolve the migration issue.

“Securing our borders and protecting the safety of New Mexicans is our number one priority. That’s why I supported the bipartisan border security agreement, an effort that was ultimately killed by Donald Trump at the time,” Lujan said in a statement.

“Bypassing military resources for this purpose will undermine our military readiness. There is a broad, bipartisan consensus that comprehensive immigration reform and border security need to be stronger, but not at the expense of existing defence missions.”

Rep. Gabe Vazquez, a New Mexico Democrat, said the reported plan was “yet another reckless and useless proposal that does nothing to fix the broken immigration system.”

“In a time of global uncertainty, our military resources are most commonly used to combat serious international threats overseas,” Vazquez said.

The office of the Republican-led Senate and House Committee on the Armed Forces did not respond to a request for comment.

Source New Mexico editor Julia Goldberg contributed to this report.

Last updated at 5:19pm, March 20, 2025