Heath Haussamen
Not even U.S. citizens are allowed to step foot on a new military base that spans New Mexico’s entire border with Mexico without authorization, the Department of Defense has confirmed.
That’s an acknowledgement that the Trump Administration has taken public land in New Mexico away from the public.
“Hunting and hiking inside the National Defense Areas is no longer allowed,” a spokesman for the DOD’s Joint Task Force-Southern Border, Jordan Beagle, confirmed to USA Today. “Additionally, the National Defense Areas have been declared restricted areas and unauthorized entry by anyone is prohibited.”
Until mid-April, the land was managed by the Bureau of Land Management and open to the public for hunting, hiking and other recreation.
Folks have permits to hunt deer on this land in November, but now they can’t. The southern terminus of the Continental Divide Trail in the United States is on this land, too. It has been frequented by hikers who are no longer allowed to visit that point.
More concerning in my mind is what happens next. There’s federally owned public land across New Mexico. If the Trump Administration gets away with converting this stretch of land along the border into a military base so active-duty soldiers can legally detain people there, what’s next?
BLM land surrounds the Mesilla Valley to the east and west. That includes Las Cruces, which is generally considered a sanctuary city. Will the U.S. Army occupy the land around us to intimidate city officials and immigrants?
Hatch, Truth or Consequences and Socorro are surrounded by BLM land. So are Farmington, Aztec and Bloomfield. Lordsburg, Chaparral and Carlsbad, too.
Imagine what the Army, under the direction of a president making an authoritarian power grab, could do with all that land.
Let your mind wander. Go to the worst-case scenario. That’s what Trump’s team does. Then they implement those ideas to see what sticks.
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow gets it. “Right now they are only doing it at the edges — literally, the physical edges of our country — but that is how you start,” she said during a recent segment about the new military zone in New Mexico.
A test
When Interior Secretary Doug Burgum transferred the land to the Army for three years, the BLM said the move was necessary “to safeguard sensitive natural and cultural resources in the region while enabling the Department of the Army to support U.S. Border Patrol operations in securing the border and preventing illegal immigration.”
The suggestion that the Trump Administration cares about natural and cultural resources is laughable. Really, this is a step toward martial law. Trump’s team is using a manufactured border crisis to test policies it can implement across the nation.
As I reported earlier this month, the new Army base isn’t just a 60-foot-wide buffer zone where soldiers can detain immigrants who cross illegally, in spite of what’s being promoted.
It actually cuts as much as 3.5 miles into New Mexico in some areas, snagging vast swaths of public land and threatening to snare hunters, hikers and others.
All the land they need to secure the border is the 60-foot zone known as the Roosevelt Reservation. If that’s what this is about, why take so much land beyond that in New Mexico?
The Trump Administration also made a similar, smaller land transfer to the Army along the border in Texas, which is now part of El Paso’s Fort Bliss. The land in New Mexico is part of Fort Huachuca in Arizona.
The impact on locals
U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich gets it. The Democrat from New Mexico sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier this month raising concerns about hunters, hikers, off-roaders, ranchers, private property owners, and the New Mexico State Land Office, which manages state-owned land in the impacted area.
Heinrich asked if the Army would install signs and warn the public against trespassing in other ways. He asked how many people who have been arrested in the military zone are U.S. citizens or legal residents.
The feds have charged hundreds of people with trespassing on the military bases. But in many cases the charges aren’t holding up in court. Federal judges in both states have dismissed cases because prosecutors can’t demonstrate that people knew they were stepping foot onto military land.
Soldiers have placed signs facing south along the border in the 60-foot zone. But there are big gaps where people wouldn’t spot the warning.
When I visited the area, I didn’t see any signs warning folks who might enter from the north to stay out of the military base. As I found when I drove on Highway 9 between Santa Teresa and Columbus, which is the north edge of the base in that area, there are dirt roads heading south onto land that was previously open for hunting and hiking. There weren’t signs informing people that they were entering Fort Huachuca.
As long as that remains true, it may be unlikely folks would be convicted of trespassing. But even the prospect of American citizens being detained and searched by the military on American soil for something as harmless as hiking, and then facing charges, is concerning.
Disappointing response from governor
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham never responded to my requests for comment for my last column about this land grab. She didn’t sound too concerned about the military occupation during an interview earlier this month on CBS’s Face the Nation.
While it is “disconcerting to see tanks rolling right along your border,” Lujan Grisham said her “bigger issue is indiscriminate ICE raids and sweeps sowing fear in communities and with businesses all across the country.”
The governor called on Congress to approve bipartisan border legislation that includes hiring more Border Patrol agents. Watching her interview, I felt like I was back in 2015.
The suggestion that Congress should pass a bipartisan border bill in 2025, when Republicans are in the middle of an authoritarian takeover of our democracy, is not serious. Militarization is the Trump Administration’s agenda. It’s moving forward with or without Congress.
Politicians who said they were focused on “bigger” issues have long ignored militarization of the borderlands. Now those of us who live here are literally surrounded by the Border Patrol and Army.
We need our governor to face that reality. We need her to lead. Her response to the Army’s land grab is disappointing, to say the least.
We must push our state to join the fight before the Trump Administration takes more land. And we need to protest the federal government’s militarization of the borderlands, just like we’ve been demonstrating against ICE raids and other violations of our rights.
ICE’s lawlessness is concerning. So is the Army’s land grab. We have to show up on all fronts.
Heath, you might want to inquire why Las Cruces Police Chief recommended that City Council request state funding for five SWAT vehicles, and why Council approved that request. I sought and, presumably, Cassie McClure asked on my behalf for details about the vehicles, their equipment, and their purposes. Neither of us got answers. Is the LCPD anticipating work coordinated with ICE or other federal government agencies?
Heath, the silence by the majority of elected officials on this issue is deafening. They appear to not care at all. The BOCC in my county cannot even be moved to call me and ask the impact of having no actual idea of the dimensions of this land or any agreement or procedure between DASO and the military as to potential crime reporting and other incidents on this land. The military has never reached out to me with any specific information. Isn’t prior planning involved in prevailing in “war time”-if that is indeed what this land grab is about?
Thanks for being on top of this, sheriff — at least as much as any of us is able when the feds aren’t making it easy.
I am so glad that you are raising the alarm about this Administration Heath. It is a shame that you do not have a much wider audience. I have labeled Trump’s actions this term as a self coup—an internal coup by the president himself. Although he had previously announced his takeover intentions, no Duopoly politician or media outlet is calling the Trump coup a coup, thus normalizing an anything but normal dissolution of government. As you suggest, that Trump may declare martial law is wholly in keeping with the direction his coup is taking. As is the cancellation of elections and more. Most remarkable is the refusal of the Duopoly Congress to carry out its sworn duties to protect and defend the nation and the constitution, to take any action at all against this takeover. The American people have been totally abandoned by their government leaving us twisting in the wind. Mass media criticism of individual Trump illegal or anti-democratic actions is insufficient to convey the clear and present danger the nation faces. As long as the public does not recognize the serious threat we face we will remain sitting ducks.
Thank you, Max. I’m trying.
It is effectively the beginning of the Administration’s plan to apply “martial law” extensively throughout the country, wherever and whenever it can concoct an excuse. It takes little imagination to come up with a wide range of excuses, like “out of control crime” in our cities, mass demonstrations against the administration that get defined as “a danger to public safety,” etc. There is clear evidence right before our eyes that a rather massive buildup of armed federal “law enforcement” forces across many agencies, wearing a wide range of uniforms or not, is underway and continues to unfold. The military, domestically deployed, will take it to a never-before-seen level. It’s easy to see local and county police “joining in” in many parts of the country. This is not fantasy. You are right to project the enormity of the potential here for “authoritarian takeover of our democracy.” The risk grows day after day.
Agreed. Thanks.