Trump Authorizes Military Occupation Of Land At Southern Border

President Donald Trump signed a memorandum authorizing a “military mission for sealing the southern border of the United States and repelling invasions,” giving the U.S. military the ability to occupy public land along the border in order to secure it.

The directive, released late Friday, allows the military to use federal lands for military activities, including constructing border barriers and using “detection and monitoring equipment” to deter would-be migrant invaders.

“Our southern border is under attack from a variety of threats. The complexity of the current situation requires that our military take a more direct role in securing our southern border than in the recent past,” Trump’s memorandum states. Friday’s memo cited an executive order Trump signed on day one of his second term, in which he “assigned the Armed Forces of the United States the military missions of repelling the invasion and sealing the United States southern border from unlawful entry to maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of the United States.”

The memorandum directs the Defense, Interior, Agriculture, and Homeland Security secretaries to grant the Defense Department jurisdiction over federal lands along the southern border so they can be used for military activity. The Department of Defense will have the authority to designate “National Defense Areas” on such land, the memo directs.

Invoking a day-one proclamation from Trump declaring a national emergency at the southern border, the memo says the Secretary of the Interior must “provide for” the Defense Department’s “utilization of public lands,” specifically including “portions of the Roosevelt Reservation” — a strip of land that reaches from California to Texas designated for border security in 1907.

The directive excludes Federal Indian Reservations.

Federal land has been transferred to military jurisdiction before — including to the Army Department multiple times during Trump’s first term — with similar goals to secure the southern border and construct border barriers. The creation of the National Defense Areas allow could the government to treat any illegal border crossing as similar to trespassing on a military base, according to Newsweek.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is directed to assess an initial phase of the memorandum within 45 days of its signing, but is permitted to “extend activities” “at any time” under the memo “to additional Federal lands along the southern border in coordination with” the Department of Homeland Security “and other executive departments and agencies as appropriate.”