Trump military border charges sow confusion in federal courts
Source: Washington Post
May 7, 2025 at 5:00 a.m. EDT
LAS CRUCES, N.M. — The swift expansion of the Trump administration’s new “national defense areas” on the southern border — enabling U.S. troops to detain migrants so that prosecutors can charge them with trespassing on military property — is sowing confusion among defendants, their lawyers and judges, one of whom called the move “unprecedented.”
The Defense Department in recent days has taken control of most of the southern boundary of New Mexico as well as part of the border in West Texas, transforming a 60-foot-wide strip of borderland into a military zone and warning that anyone who enters it risks criminal charges. More than 200 migrants have been charged with at least two crimes, for unauthorized entry into the United States and a military installation. Some also face an additional charge.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the expanded prosecutions in April during a visit to New Mexico as part of the Trump administration’s quest to obtain “100 percent” operational control of the border, where illegal crossings have plunged since Inauguration Day. But defense lawyers say the criminal charges are excessive, because most migrants were unaware that the rugged and remote terrain they stumbled into had recently been transformed into military territory.
Defense lawyers said it is unclear whether migrants could even see the warning signs Hegseth said would be posted in English and Spanish. “People have no idea they are committing this new offense,” Rosanne Camunez, a defense attorney, said in an interview Friday as dozens of migrants appeared in court in Las Cruces to face the new criminal charges. The military-related charges are so unusual that Chief Magistrate Judge Gregory B. Wormuth in New Mexico ordered government lawyers last week to submit a brief explaining, in their view, the legal standards required to convict someone of trespassing on military property.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/05/07/border-defense-area-migrants-charges/
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