Why We Went Looking for National Defense Areas Along the U.S. Southern Border - ProPublica

[justaprogressive]

Our reporting started, like much of our work, in a spreadsheet. As I parsed through federal court data, I noticed something odd: Within months of President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, prosecutors began filing obscure charges related to trespassing on military property — so many, in fact, that more cases were filed in 2025 than in the prior decade.

Nearly all of these charges originated from cases along the U.S. southern border, where last spring, the White House designated large swaths of land as national defense areas. Putting them under military authority allowed troops to play an unprecedented role in apprehending undocumented immigrants; federal soldiers are generally barred from enforcing the law on domestic soil. If you were caught in one of these zones, the government could also now prosecute you for breaking federal laws, including one enacted in 1909 to keep spies away from arsenals.

In an investigation we published recently, my co-reporters Perla Trevizo, Abe Streep, Pratheek Rebala and I dug into what experts say is a major flaw afflicting these prosecutions that threatens to ensnare people for crimes they did not commit: Migrants didn’t know the land they were crossing now belonged to the armed forces. And many judges have ruled that you can’t be guilty of trespassing on military land if you had no idea you were on it.

Since April of last year, we found, at least 4,700 immigrants already charged with entering the country illegally faced these military trespass charges; at least one had to wait in jail for more than a month to stand trial. Most of the charges didn’t stick. In fact, we found that in 60% of the resolved cases, the trespass charges were dropped or dismissed. Yet prosecutors kept filing them.

https://www.propublica.org/article/military-zones-border-migrants-charges

[leftstreet]

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