US military to create two new border zones, officials say
WASHINGTON: The Pentagon will create two new military zones along the border with Mexico, U.S. officials said on Wednesday, a move that allows troops to temporarily detain migrants or trespassers. President Donald Trump's administration has hailed its actions along the border, including the deployment of active duty troops, as the reason for a sharp decline in crossings by undocumented migrants. Trump made voters' concerns about immigration a cornerstone of his 2024 re-election bid.
The Pentagon has already created two military zones, but only four people have been temporarily detained on them, a U.S. official said.
A new "National Defense Area" will be created covering about 250 miles (402 km) of the Rio Grande river in Texas and administered as a part of Joint Base San Antonio, according to the Air Force.
The U.S. officials said the other military zone would be administered as a part of Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, Arizona.
The zones are intended to allow the Trump administration to use troops to detain migrants without invoking the 1807 Insurrection Act that empowers a president to deploy the U.S. military to suppress events such as civil disorder.
As legal deterrents to border crossers, the zones have had mixed results. Federal magistrate judges in New Mexico and Texas dismissed trespassing charges against dozens of migrants caught in the areas on grounds they did not know they were in a restricted military zone.
However, some 120 migrants pleaded guilty to trespassing in the first Texas zone in May and federal prosecutors obtained their first two trespassing convictions for the New Mexico zone on June 18, according to U.S. Attorneys' Offices in the two states.
Around 11,900 troops are currently on the border.
Illegal border crossings fell to a record low in March after the Biden administration shut down asylum claims in 2024 and Mexico tightened immigration controls.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Star
3 hours ago
- The Star
Immigrants scramble for clarity after Supreme Court birthright ruling
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling tied to birthright citizenship prompted confusion and phone calls to lawyers as people who could be affected tried to process a convoluted legal decision with major humanitarian implications. The court's conservative majority on Friday granted President Donald Trump his request to curb federal judges' power but did not decide the legality of his bid to restrict birthright citizenship. That outcome has raised more questions than answers about a right long understood to be guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution: that anyone born in the United States is considered a citizen at birth, regardless of their parents' citizenship or legal status. Lorena, a 24-year-old Colombian asylum seeker who lives in Houston and is due to give birth in September, pored over media reports on Friday morning. She was looking for details about how her baby might be affected, but said she was left confused and worried. "There are not many specifics," said Lorena, who like others interviewed by Reuters asked to be identified by her first name out of fear for her safety. "I don't understand it well." She is concerned that her baby could end up with no nationality. "I don't know if I can give her mine," she said. "I also don't know how it would work, if I can add her to my asylum case. I don't want her to be adrift with no nationality." Trump, a Republican, issued an order after taking office in January that directed U.S. agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the U.S. who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident. The order was blocked by three separate U.S. district court judges, sending the case on a path to the Supreme Court. The resulting decision said Trump's policy could go into effect in 30 days but appeared to leave open the possibility of further proceedings in the lower courts that could keep the policy blocked. On Friday afternoon, plaintiffs filed an amended lawsuit in federal court in Maryland seeking to establish a nationwide class of people whose children could be denied citizenship. If they are not blocked nationwide, the restrictions could be applied in the 28 states that did not contest them in court, creating "an extremely confusing patchwork" across the country, according to Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst for the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute. "Would individual doctors, individual hospitals be having to try to figure out how to determine the citizenship of babies and their parents?" she said. The drive to restrict birthright citizenship is part of Trump's broader immigration crackdown, and he has framed automatic citizenship as a magnet for people to come to give birth. "Hundreds of thousands of people are pouring into our country under birthright citizenship, and it wasn't meant for that reason," he said during a White House press briefing on Friday. WORRIED CALLS Immigration advocates and lawyers in some Republican-led states said they received calls from a wide range of pregnant immigrants and their partners following the ruling. They were grappling with how to explain it to clients who could be dramatically affected, given all the unknowns of how future litigation would play out or how the executive order would be implemented state by state. Lynn Tramonte, director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance said she got a call on Friday from an East Asian temporary visa holder with a pregnant wife. He was anxious because Ohio is not one of the plaintiff states and wanted to know how he could protect his child's rights. "He kept stressing that he was very interested in the rights included in the Constitution," she said. Advocates underscored the gravity of Trump's restrictions, which would block an estimated 150,000 children born in the U.S. annually from receiving automatic citizenship. "It really creates different classes of people in the country with different types of rights," said Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, a spokesperson for the immigrant rights organization United We Dream. "That is really chaotic." Adding uncertainty, the Supreme Court ruled that members of two plaintiff groups in the litigation - CASA, an immigrant advocacy service in Maryland, and the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project - would still be covered by lower court blocks on the policy. Whether someone in a state where Trump's policy could go into effect could join one of the organizations to avoid the restrictions or how state or federal officials would check for membership remained unclear. Betsy, a U.S. citizen who recently graduated from high school in Virginia and a CASA member, said both of her parents came to the U.S. from El Salvador two decades ago and lacked legal status when she was born. "I feel like it targets these innocent kids who haven't even been born," she said, declining to give her last name for concerns over her family's safety. Nivida, a Honduran asylum seeker in Louisiana, is a member of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project and recently gave birth. She heard on Friday from a friend without legal status who is pregnant and wondersabout the situation under Louisiana's Republican governor, since the state is not one of those fighting Trump's order. "She called me very worried and asked what's going to happen," she said. "If her child is born in Louisiana … is the baby going to be a citizen?" (Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington and Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Editing by Amy Stevens and Sam Holmes)
The Star
3 hours ago
- The Star
Trump wins as Supreme Court curbs judges, but may yet lose on birthright citizenship
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling blunting a potent weapon that federal judges have used to block government policies nationwide during legal challenges was in many ways a victory for President Donald Trump, except perhaps on the very policy he is seeking to enforce. An executive order that the Republican president signed on his first day back in office in January would restrict birthright citizenship - a far-reaching plan that three federal judges, questioning its constitutionality, quickly halted nationwide through so-called "universal" injunctions. But the Supreme Court's ruling on Friday, while announcing a dramatic shift in how judges have operated for years deploying such relief, left enough room for the challengers to Trump's directive to try to prevent it from taking effect while litigation over its legality plays out. "I do not expect the president's executive order on birthright citizenship will ever go into effect," said Samuel Bray, a Notre Dame Law School professor and a prominent critic of universal injunctions whose work the court's majority cited extensively in Friday's ruling. Trump's executive order directs federal agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident, also called a "green card" holder. The three judges found that the order likely violates citizenship language in the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment. The directive remains blocked while lower courts reconsider the scope of their injunctions, and the Supreme Court said it cannot take effect for 30 days, a window that gives the challengers time to seek further protection from those courts. The court's six conservative justices delivered the majority ruling, granting Trump's request to narrow the injunctions issued by the judges in Maryland, Washington and Massachusetts. Its three liberal members dissented. The ruling by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who Trump appointed to the court in 2020, emphasized the need to hem in the power of judges, warning against an "imperial" judiciary. Judges can provide "complete relief" only to the plaintiffs before them, Barrett wrote. A HOST OF POLICIES That outcome was a major victory for Trump and his allies, who have repeatedly denounced judges who have impeded his agenda. It could make it easier for the administration to implement his policies, including to accelerate deportations of migrants, restrict transgender rights, curtail diversity and inclusion efforts, and downsize the federal government - many of which have tested the limits of executive power. In the birthright citizenship dispute, the ruling left open the potential for individual plaintiffs to seek relief beyond themselves through class action lawsuits targeting a policy that would upend the long-held understanding that the Constitution confers citizenship on virtually anyone born on U.S. soil. Bray said he expects a surge of new class action cases, resulting in "class-protective" injunctions. "Given that the birthright-citizenship executive order is unconstitutional, I expect courts will grant those preliminary injunctions, and they will be affirmed on appeal," Bray said. Some of the challengers have already taken that path. Plaintiffs in the Maryland case, including expectant mothers and immigrant advocacy groups, asked the presiding judge who had issued a universal injunction to treat the case as a class action to protect all children who would be ineligible for birthright citizenship if the executive order takes effect. "I think in terms of the scope of the relief that we'll ultimately get, there is no difference," said William Powell, one of the lawyers for the Maryland plaintiffs. "We're going to be able to get protection through the class action for everyone in the country whose baby could potentially be covered by the executive order, assuming we succeed." The ruling also sidestepped a key question over whether states that bring lawsuits might need an injunction that applies beyond their borders to address their alleged harms, directing lower courts to answer it first. STATES CHALLENGE DIRECTIVE The challenge to Trump's directive also included 22 states, most of them Democratic-governed, who argued that the financial and administrative burdens they would face required a nationwide block on Trump's order. George Mason University constitutional law expert Ilya Somin said the practical consequences of the ruling will depend on various issues not decided so far by the Supreme Court. "As the majority recognizes, states may be entitled to much broader relief than individuals or private groups," Somin said. New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, a Democrat who helped lead the case brought in Massachusetts, disagreed with the ruling but sketched out a path forward on Friday. The ruling, Platkin said in a statement, "recognized that nationwide orders can be appropriate to protect the plaintiffs themselves from harm - which is true, and has always been true, in our case." Platkin committed to "keep challenging President Trump's flagrantly unlawful order, which strips American babies of citizenship for the first time since the Civil War" of 1861-1865. Legal experts said they expect a lot of legal maneuvering in lower courts in the weeks ahead, and the challengers still face an uphill battle. Compared to injunctions in individual cases, class actions are often harder to successfully mount. States, too, still do not know whether they have the requisite legal entitlement to sue. Trump's administration said they do not, but the court left that debate unresolved. Meanwhile, the 30-day clock is ticking. If the challengers are unsuccessful going forward, Trump's order could apply in some parts of the country, but not others. "The ruling is set to go into effect 30 days from now and leaves families in states across the country in deep uncertainty about whether their children will be born as U.S. citizens," said Elora Mukherjee, director of Columbia Law School's immigrants' rights clinic. (Reporting by Andrew Chung; Additional reporting by John Kruzel, Nate Raymond, Jan Wolfe and Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Will Dunham)
Malay Mail
7 hours ago
- Malay Mail
Can Xi, Trump, Khamenei, and Anwar get along? Yes — If the world rediscovers strategic civility — Phar Kim Beng
JUNE 28 — In a world marked by sanctions, suspicion, and soundbites, the idea that Xi Jinping, Donald Trump, Ayatollah Khamenei, and Anwar Ibrahim could ever get along may seem far-fetched. But it is not impossible. The world has long misunderstood the difference between ideological differences and strategic necessity. In an era of multipolar competition and post-normal crises, the ability to disagree without destabilizing the global order is no longer a luxury—it is a prerequisite. The answer to whether these four leaders can find common ground is 'yes'—but only if the world learns to value strategic civility over ideological conformity. And only if we recognize the role of strategic convenor powers—like Malaysia under Anwar Ibrahim—in brokering spaces where dialogue, not dogma, prevails. Four leaders, four civilizational trajectories Xi Jinping leads a China determined to reclaim its historical stature through the revival of Confucian governance principles, Party supremacy, and economic statecraft. China's global posture is one of confidence—sometimes defiant, but often methodical. Donald Trump, back in office, rules through disruption. His foreign policy may seem erratic, but there is a pattern: transactionalism, spectacle, and a preference for leverage over long-term entanglements. While he loathes multilateralism, he is not instinctively drawn to war either. He wants deals—big, visible, and beneficial to domestic constituencies. Ayatollah Khamenei, presiding over a beleaguered but resilient Islamic Republic, blends revolutionary theology with geopolitical pragmatism. Despite decades of sanctions and confrontation, Tehran has always kept a channel open for diplomacy—when treated with dignity. And Anwar Ibrahim—a Muslim democrat, intellectual, and reformer—brings moral clarity without moral posturing. He is not just the Prime Minister of Malaysia; he is Asean's most articulate proponent of civilizational dialogue, advocating for coexistence between Islam, the West, and the Confucian East. His track record shows a consistent commitment to rule-based order, justice, and multilateralism anchored in ethics. When strategic interests overlap, so can leaders What connects these four leaders is not their personal affinity but their converging interests. All four, for different reasons, now operate in a world where overreach brings blowback, and where the line between strategic deterrence and economic disaster grows thinner by the day. Trump wants trade wins and less global policing. He remains open to deals that avoid new wars, especially if they burnish his legacy and strengthen U.S. industry. Xi seeks global stability to ensure China's continued rise. Tensions with the U.S. must be managed, not escalated. A rare earth agreement with Washington was recently signed—proof that economic logic can prevail over decoupling rhetoric. Khamenei, behind the veil of defiance, sees value in a stable regional order. Iran's pivot eastward, especially toward China and Asean, reflects a desire to diversify diplomacy and find breathing room from Western isolation. Anwar, more than any other, recognizes that leadership today means navigating contradictions, not escaping them. Under his stewardship, Malaysia is stepping up as a strategic convenor power—offering a rare neutral space for diplomacy between conflicting blocs. The post-normal world needs convenors, not commanders In this post-normal world—characterized by chaos, contradiction, and complexity—what is urgently missing is not hard power, but bridging power. Countries that can bring opposing sides together without being seen as biased are crucial. This is where Malaysia's role as a strategic convenor power becomes indispensable. Malaysia does not lecture. It listens. It does not impose. It hosts. Its voice resonates across the Islamic world, the Global South, and East Asia—not because it is large, but because it is trusted. The Asean Regional Forum, the East Asia Summit, and now growing Asean-GCC-China trilateral dialogues all reflect Malaysia's convening capacity. Anwar's proposal to address global problems through neutral ASEAN mediation, or to build a global moral coalition against Islamophobia and Sinophobia, are not fringe ideas—they are blueprints for how strategic convenors should behave in the 21st century. Lessons from Asean's quiet success The Asean model, for all its imperfections, thrives on strategic civility—a concept the West often mistakes for weakness. ASEAN has shown how ten countries with vastly different systems can pursue consensus, non-interference, and cooperative security without military blocs or coercion. This 'Asean way,' when applied globally, indeed, turned into Asean Will, could moderate the extremes of U.S. unilateralism, Chinese assertiveness, and Iranian resistance. But for that to happen, countries like Malaysia must be given the diplomatic space to facilitate, not just participate. Ayatollah Khamenei, presiding over a beleaguered but resilient Islamic Republic, blends revolutionary theology with geopolitical pragmatism. — AFP pic Toward a new diplomatic quadrilateral Can Xi, Trump, Khamenei, and Anwar sit at the same table—perhaps not literally, but diplomatically? If the terms are mutual respect, economic stability, and non-imposition of political systems, the answer is yes. China wants a stable periphery and global markets. The U.S. wants reduced costs and visible wins. Iran wants security guarantees and economic inclusion. Asean—led by Malaysia—wants a world where small states are not trampled by the rivalry of giants. It is not only possible, but necessary, for this emerging diplomatic quadrilateral to form. Conclusion: Replacing clash with convening The time of zero-sum diplomacy is over. No single power—American, Chinese, or Islamic—can impose its version of order without backlash. What the world needs are strategic convenor powers that can host the moral imagination of all civilizations, offering an architecture of dialogue when architecture of dominance is crumbling. Anwar, by not siding with any ideological camp, but standing for values rooted in justice and dignity, is uniquely placed to midwife this new order. Yes, Xi, Trump, Khamenei, and Anwar can get along—if the rest of us choose convening over coercion, civility over confrontation, and realism rooted in respect. * Phar Kim Beng is Professor of Asean Studies at the International Islamic University Malaysia and a former Head Teaching Fellow at Harvard University. ** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
