By Rich McKay and Andrew Hay
(Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Justice has begun the first prosecutions of migrants for illegally entering a military zone created along the U.S.-Mexico border as part of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, according to court filings.
Some 28 migrants were charged in U.S. District Court in Las Cruces, New Mexico, on Monday for crossing into the 170-mile-long (274-km-long) buffer zone patrolled by U.S. troops, according to court filings.
Creation of the 60-foot-wide (18.3-meter-wide) strip this month along the base of New Mexico gave U.S. troops the authority to detain and search migrants in the area. Troops cannot arrest migrants or other civilians outside military zones.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth visited the area last week and said it was phase one of a plan to extend the buffer zone along the border.
“Any illegal attempting to enter that zone is entering a military base,” Hegseth said in video posted on social media.
The American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico in a statement called the defense area a “dangerous erosion of the constitutional principle that the military should not be policing civilians.”
Court documents showed migrants detained in the area were charged with both crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally and entering a restricted area.
The so-called New Mexico National Defense Area was created with the transfer of 110,000 acres (445 sq km) of federal land to the U.S. Army.
Migrants detained in the area by U.S. troops are transferred to civilian law enforcement, such as U.S. Border Patrol, before prosecution, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.
The buffer zone allowed the Trump administration to use troops to arrest migrants without invoking the 1807 Insurrection Act that empowers a president to deploy the U.S. military to suppress events like civil disorder.
The last time the Insurrection Act was invoked was during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.
Around 11,900 troops are currently deployed to the U.S. Southwest border where the number of migrants caught illegally crossing in March fell to the lowest level ever recorded, according to government data.
(Reporting by Andrew Hay in New Mexico, Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Sandra Maler)
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