President Donald Trump is authorizing the U.S. military to take jurisdiction over federal lands along the southern border to help enforce his immigration agenda.
Trump issued a memorandum to the secretaries of Defense, Interior, Agriculture and Homeland Security late Friday titled “Military Mission for Sealing the Southern Border of the United States and Repelling Invasions.”
The order directs the secretaries to facilitate the transfer of jurisdiction over federal land along the border so military activity along the border can “occur on a military installation under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense.”
The lands would be designated as “National Defense Areas.”
The order names the Roosevelt Reservation, a strip of land along the U.S. border with Mexico in California, Arizona and New Mexico, as one of the federal lands slated for military control. The Roosevelt Reservation is an easement roughly 60 feet wide, or “the distance from home plate to the pitcher’s mound,” said Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight for the Washington Office on Latin America think tank in Washington, D.C.
Great!! Now do the same up here along our Canadian northern border from West to East.