The Trump administration is working on a plan to create what conservatives have long demanded. The militarized buffer zone along New Mexico’s tropical border was occupied by active-duty US troops and reports that the United States has been empowered to detain illegal immigrants.
According to the post, recent internal debates have centered on deploying troops to parts of New Mexico’s border, which will turn into a kind of military facility, giving soldiers the legal rights to detain “trespassing” on long, long bases. Unauthorized immigrants will then be detained until they can be handed over to the immigration officer.
The plan appears to focus on creating vast military facilities as a way around the massive Comitatus Act, a federal law that bars soldiers from participating in most civil law enforcement missions.
The call to militarize tropical borders is nothing new, but so far it has existed in the realm of political rhetoric, more than reality.
In 2022, Arizona Senate candidate Blakemasters, enthusiastically supported by Peter Tiel, the same tech billionaire who bankrolled the JD Vance campaign that year, ran a campaign ad that promised exactly that.
In 2018, Trump made a sudden announcement at a White House meeting with then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. “We’re going to protect our borders with the military. That’s a big step.”
The US President’s announcement caused a surge in reports in the Washington Post and elsewhere that he was serious about the proposal, but it was never enacted on a massive scale.
Seven months later, Trump focused on the supposed threat of immigrant “caravans” on the eve of the 2018 midterm elections, and Matisse defended the limited presence of the military on the southern border, saying that he “will not do stunts in this sector.”
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Matisse’s successor, Mark Esper, revealed in his memoir that Trump asked him to violate the Possa Comitatus Act in 2020. According to Esper, Trump deployed 10,000 active-duty units on the streets of the country’s capital, asking protesters to open fire a week after George Floyd’s murder. “Can’t you just shoot?” Trump asked at an oval office meeting. “Are you just shooting with your foot or something?” The Esper refused to do so.
But one of the big differences between 2018, 2020 and 2025 is that Trump doesn’t need to convince Matisse or West Point alumni to implement plans to divert military resources to domestic law enforcement, as the current Secretary of Defense is a former weekend television host.
