Headline Roundup • April 13th, 2025
Trump Orders Military to Control Land on Southern Border
Defense And Security,US-Mexico Border,Donald Trump,Trump Administration,Defense Department,US Military,Immigration,Migrants,Border Security,Border Crisis
Summary from the AllSides News Team
President Donald Trump ordered the US military to take control of federal lands along the southern border on Friday.
The Details: Trump sent a memorandum to the Secretaries of Defense, Homeland Security, Agriculture, and the Interior, instructing the Department of Defense (DoD) to take control of federal lands near the border. This includes a 60-foot-wide strip of land that spans parts of California, Arizona, and New Mexico, known as the Roosevelt Reservation. The memo gives the Pentagon a green light to build “national defense areas” on the lands, which could effectively function as active-duty military spaces. The memo does not include Federal Indian Reservations.
For Context: The Roosevelt Reservation was designated as federal land by Theodore Roosevelt in 1907 to keep public land on the border “free from obstruction as a protection against the smuggling of goods between the United States and Mexico.” The Secretary of Defense has 45 days to assess this first phase and could expand it at any time.
Key Quote: Trump wrote, “I 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.”
How The Media Covered It: Fox News (Right bias) and NewsNation (Center) noted that the Roosevelt Reservation was established to keep the border secure, while CNN (Lean Left) did not. CNN wrote, “The military is prohibited from carrying out domestic law enforcement under the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, but by describing the zone as a ‘holding’ area, DoD could feasibly circumvent that law.”
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Featured Coverage of this Story
David Swanson/AFP/Getty Images
President Donald Trump sent a memorandum to four federal department heads Friday night instructing them to allow the military to use and take jurisdiction of federal land along the US-Mexico border.
The memo, sent to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Agricultural Secretary Brooke Rollins, states that the military must “take a more direct role” in efforts to secure the border and calls on the secretaries to act to provide the Defense Department “use and jurisdiction” over certain federal lands “to enable military activities”...
The newest effort from the Trump administration to secure the southern border includes authorizing the military to take control of public land along the border.
“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,” a White House memorandum said.
In a historic move, the Department of Defense now has control of the Roosevelt Reservation, a narrow, 60-foot-wide federal strip that runs along parts of California, Arizona, and New Mexico that originally was set aside by former President Theodore...
The U.S. military will take control of a strip of federal land that spans three states along the southern border in an effort to stem illegal immigration, a memorandum Friday by President Donald Trump said.
The memorandum, "Military Mission for Sealing the Southern Border of the United States and Repelling Invasions," 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."
