“None of These People Are from the Border”: A Dispatch from the National Defense Area in New Mexico
All the militarization and its propaganda hide a real border security issue: the struggle people face in making ends meet.
When I asked Norma Gomez, program organizer for the Chamber of Commerce in Columbus, New Mexico, about the National Defense Area announced on April 11 by the Trump administration, she was busy trying to secure two weeks of back pay for a community member, a seasonal farmworker. She sat at her computer in her small office adorned with New Mexico and Columbus mementos, exuding the vigor of a warrior confronting a bureaucratic force—something she had done many times before. When I asked if she had noticed any new military presence, Gomez answered no. Nor did anyone else I talked to on May 8, the day I was there. Gomez said she hadn’t even heard of the National Defense Area and had to look it up. When I told her the government was converting areas around the border into restricted military zones, she said, “None of these people are from the border.”
The New Mexico National Defense Area—which spans the entire 170 miles of the state’s divide—has been presented to the U.S. public as a collaboration between the Department of Defense and the U.S. Border Patrol “to gain 100% operational control” of this border, as stated by federal prosecutor Ryan Ellison after filing trespassing charges against 82 people on May 1 (since dismissed by a federal judge). “Trespassers into the National Defense Area will be federally prosecuted,” he continued, “no exceptions.” This assertion stemmed from the Trump administration’s claim in January that there’s a national emergency on the border and that the United States is being invaded. But the concerns of people living and working in the borderlands are quite different. In Columbus, 37.6 percent of its some 1,500 residents live below the poverty line, a figure three times higher than the U.S. national average. As Gomez explained, people are simply struggling to make ends meet.
I traveled from Tucson to Columbus via back roads to get as close to the New Mexico National Defense Area as possible. I took a route near Fort Huachuca, the Sierra Vista, Arizona military base in charge of the Defense Area, to see if there was any visible military movement—hardware or vehicles—on the roads. It wasn’t a surprise that an Arizona military base ran the operation, given that the state’s borderlands had long been a sort of defacto military region. In New Mexico, the U.S. military described the Defense Area as a buffer zone covering 65 feet from the international boundary, known as the Roosevelt Reservation. According to New Mexico senator Martin Heinrich, however, the Department of Defense mischaracterized the size of the area, which actually extends much further inland, sometimes up to five miles, in what is called an “Emergency Withdrawal Area.” It spans 400 square miles, roughly the size of Albuquerque.
This “has huge implications for anyone unwittingly driving along Highway 9 who might pull over to stretch their legs and unwittingly trespass on a military base,” a Heinrich spokesperson said in an email to Source NM. Of course, Highway 9 was the very road I drove along in New Mexico, a two-lane route that winds through the small towns of Animas and Hachita before running along the border. After that, the wall—built during the first Trump presidency—appears in the distance across a flat desert dotted with creosote, almost like a mirage. It snakes unnaturally through the foothills of mountains, as if it shouldn’t be there at all. I continually pulled over to the side of the road, snapping pictures and taking notes, and there was one moment of fear when I thought I might have overstepped a boundary, but I will return to that moment shortly.
During this stretch, I was on the lookout for Strykers, the eight-wheeled, fast-moving armored combat vehicles (see photo up top) seen at various points in the Southwest borderlands—in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona—over the last couple of months. The authorization of the Strykers preceded the Trump National Defense Area memorandum on April 11, and on April 5, 50 Strykers arrived at Fort Bliss in El Paso, home to the 2nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, which was tasked with supporting CBP from Yuma, Arizona, to Big Bend National Park in Texas. On the border, Strykers are equipped with an M153 Remotely Operated Weapon Station that soldiers use exclusively for surveillance. It can see objects up to two miles away, day and night.
The sudden appearance of Strykers in the borderlands is startling, giving the impression of an all-out war. The only time I had seen them in action with my own eyes was in 2012, when what I thought was a military tank appeared to the south of Highway 9. It pointed directly south toward Mexico, as if Pancho Villa’s unit were about to cross the border again and raid Columbus like in 1916. I saw several Strykers on that trip, usually paired with U.S. Border Patrol vehicles. It turned out to be a two-month joint task force operation with CBP. The militarization of the border has been underway for a long time, much longer than the last three months.
In Columbus, nobody I spoke to knew anything about the National Defense Area, likely because the militarization is so long term and incremental that anything new is almost imperceptible. “We’re already saturated with Border Patrol,” Gomez told me. During my drive this time, I didn’t see any Strykers, but I did see plenty of Border Patrol, which is a hybrid police-military unit in its own right. For example, about 30 miles outside Columbus, I passed a Border Patrol “forward operating base,” a term used by the U.S. military for smaller, more rustic bases once found in isolated areas of Afghanistan and Iraq. Just past it were several structures resembling autonomous Sentry towers provided by Anduril, a top contractor for CBP that has deployed hundreds of such towers across the borderlands. I drove slowly, as Border Patrol vehicles whizzed by, some carrying trailers filled with all-terrain vehicles. At one point, I looked to the north and saw a hovering aerostat—a surveillance blimp pointed at the border—backdropped by the jagged Tres Hermanas mountains. This was the Deming Aerostat Radar Site, operated by the military for decades before CBP took it over in 2013 and covers the entire linear border of New Mexico. Indeed, the National Defense Area exists in an already-militarized zone of exception, where the Border Patrol operates with extraconstitutional powers in a 100-mile jurisdiction, allowing agents to pull over and stop people at their discretion, including through racial profiling, while imposing regular checkpoints (there is a permanent checkpoint just north of Columbus).
Even with decades of enforcement buildup, the restricted military areas would still take this situation to another level. As sociologist Timothy Dunn demonstrated in The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1978–1992, the United States implemented low-intensity conflict doctrine, a limited political-military strategy previously used in U.S. military operations abroad to achieve political, social, economic, and psychological objectives. One such psychological objective is fear, and the moment I felt it strongly on this drive was when I took a road off Highway 9 to approach the border, hoping to get a closer look. I wanted to see the trespassing and warning signs posted by the military. I was traveling on a road through agricultural fields leading up to the wall when I spotted an unmarked brown scope truck, with a large mast and a camera on top. I could see the camera moving as I drove past, seemingly tracking my car. There were no other vehicles. The road was empty. The wall was close; I knew I was in the “evacuation area” at the very least. What if I had missed the No Trespassing sign? Things began to feel creepy. Trespassers would be federally prosecuted, the attorney warned, no exceptions. I saw someone exit the brown truck, and my heart raced. I continued driving, slowly, but fear can make a person fall in line, and I decided to turn around. I wondered if I felt this way, what about the people working in the fields?
Fifteen minutes later, I was in Norma Gomez’s office, watching her try to secure the two weeks’ pay for the farmworker. I asked her if people crossed the border to work on the farms. “In Mexico,” she said, “you make 30 bucks a week. Here, you can make it in half a day. That’s why people are coming across the border. They just want a job.” In the Columbus area, she told me, most residents work seasonal and temporary farm jobs.
It was obvious, as I sat in her office, that the crisis most people face in the borderlands is much different from the one depicted nationally. Like most border towns, Columbus and its Mexican counterpart, Palomas, are intertwined; relatives live on both sides, and the annual calendar features many binational celebrations. When I asked her if helping people get their back pay, as she was doing, was more beneficial for human well-being than the National Defense Area for people in Columbus, Gomez said yes. “We need an investment in employment,” she said, far more than more policing. Her goals for Columbus were straightforward, and much different than increased border enforcement: “I believe in helping people get the benefits they need.”
The humanity and pragmatism of people who live on the border is far more valuable and welcome policy-wise than militaristic assertions by those not from the border ever can be.