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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