A memorandum released by President Donald Trump on Friday said the U.S. military will take control of a strip of federal land along the southern border as part of efforts to reduce illegal entry into the country.
The site in question spans three states along the border with Mexico: California, New Mexico, and Arizona. The latest memorandum from the White House aims to provide “additional guidance” on Executive Order 14167 from January, in which the President directed the military to help secure the southern border from unlawful entry.
“As the Chief Executive and Commander in Chief, the United States Constitution empowers me to direct the various elements of the executive branch to protect our homeland and ensure the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the United States in the manner I deem most efficient and effective, consistent with applicable law,” Trump stated in the memorandum.
“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,” the President continued.
Among other items, the latest memorandum directs the secretaries of Defense, Interior, Agriculture, and Homeland Security “to provide for the use and jurisdiction by the Department of Defense over such Federal lands, including the Roosevelt Reservation and excluding Federal Indian Reservations, that are reasonably necessary to enable military activities directed in this memorandum, including border-barrier construction and emplacement of detection and monitoring equipment.”
Federal land is a 60-foot-wide strip along the border within the Roosevelt Reservation. Theodore Roosevelt deemed the area federal land in 1907 to help secure the southern border.