President Trump on Friday night authorized the military to take control of a strip of public land along the southern border.
The president justified the use of the military by saying the United States 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 order reads.
A memorandum released by the White House directs the Secretaries of Defense, Interior, Agriculture and Homeland Security to transfer the jurisdiction of federal land along the southern border to the Department of Defense.
The order details that the military will be tasked with building a border wall and implementing detection and monitoring equipment. But the military’s mandate is broad and defined as activities that are “reasonably necessary and appropriate to accomplish the mission.”
The order references the Roosevelt Reservation, a swath of land along the border that goes through California, New Mexico and Arizona.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is directed to start with the phased implementation of the military on limited sections of public land. But Hegseth has the authority to expand beyond that to any of the public land on the southern border.
During a cabinet meeting with Mr. Trump this week, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem touted low numbers of illegal crossings at the southern border. Noem said that for the second month in a row, the U.S. broke the record for the lowest number of encounters at the border.
Mr. Trump issued a blitz of executive actions, when he took office in January to start reshaping federal immigration and border policies. On his first day, he declared a national emergency at the southern border.
In March, preliminary government data obtained by CBS News showed that the number of migrants crossing the U.S. southern border illegally in Mr. Trump’s first full month in office plunged to a level not seen in at least 25 years.
