An Ecuadorian man has become the first migrant to be convicted of entering the new military zone at the Southern border in Texas.
Dario Javier Trejo-Burbano faces up to a year in prison after entering the the U.S. through the newly-designated National Defense Area—a restricted, military zone established by the Department of the Army under the Trump administration earlier this year.
Why It Matters
The Interior Department announced in April that it was handing the U.S. Army control of nearly 110,000 acres of public lands along the border with Mexico, for a period of three years.
The move was part of President Donald Trump‘s crackdown on immigration and his election campaign promise to “seal the border.”
What To Know
On Wednesday, Trejo-Burbano was convicted of one count of improper entry by an alien and one count of entering military property after he entered the National Defense Area on May 8.
The charges typically carry a sentence of up six months in prison each, plus fines.
Border Patrol Chief for the El Paso Sector told Kvia.com that Trejo-Burbano was the first successful conviction of a migrant for trespassing into the Texas National Defense Area.
Court documents state that there were notices forbidding entry in both English and Spanish placed at least every hundred feet along the border.
Since the new zones, which stretch across California, Arizona and New Mexico, were designated in April, federal prosecutors have filed misdemeanor criminal charges of violating national security regulations and entering restricted military property against at least 400 immigrants, a local ABC news affiliate reports.
However, federal magistrate judges have dismissed many of those charges as they found little evidence that the immigrants knew about the zones.
The 60-foot-wide strip of land along the border is overseen by Army commands including Fort Huachuca in Arizona. This reclassification grants the Army’s U.S. Northern Command expanded authority to enforce immigration laws, including the power to search and temporarily detain individuals who trespass in the new military zone.
What People Are Saying
Ryan Ellison, U.S. Attorney for the District of New Mexico, said, “We believe very much that the implementation of this National Defense Area is going to serve as a buffer between what’s going on south of the border and what’s going on in the United States of America.”
President Trump said, in a national security presidential memorandum in April, “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.”
What Happens Next
Border crossings have significantly dropped under the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration. Immigration authorities currently appear focused on conducting raids in American cities, including recent high profile U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in Los Angeles .
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