By Kent Paterson
Under the slogan “Humanize Don’t Militarize,” New Mexico and Texas activists intend to put their constitutional rights into practice this coming Saturday, July 12, in a protest planned near New Mexico’s Santa Teresa border crossing with Mexico.
Triggering the demonstration is the Trump administration’s recent establishment of a military-controlled zone on about 109,000 acres of public land along a 180 mile stretch of New Mexico’s southern border.
Likewise raising the alarm of activists was the White House’s invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act in its rollout of new border and immigration enforcement actions earlier this year.
“The last time an American President invoked the Alien Enemies Act, the Japanese military had two months earlier attacked the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941); 2400 Americans died in the surprise attack,” July 12 protest organizers noted in a press release. “There is a stark contrast between Pearl Harbor and our southern border.”
Indeed, as anyone who has visited Santa Teresa or other sections of New Mexico’s southern border in recent times can confirm, no movements of enemy dive bombers, aircraft carriers or ground troops have been spotted anywhere close to the land in question.
July 12 protest organizers assert that the establishment of the National Defense Area on public land near the Mexican border not only prevents hunters and hikers from using public land, but “interferes with faith-based groups and humanitarian groups attempting to provide life-saving water to human beings who have traveled, sometimes, thousands of miles to seek safety from violence and poverty at home.”
What’s more, the activists “feel that these neighbors should be treated with compassion and understanding. It is a belief by these protesters that bullets and handcuffs and handcuffs won’t solve our border issues.”
Spearheaded by Indivisible members from Silver City, Las Cruces and El Paso, the July 12 protest will highlight the political, environmental and civil rights implications of National Defense Areas, as well as heavy handed immigration policies.
“The whole justification that there an insurrection or war going on the border has no facts to support that,” says Jim McIntosh, Indivisible activist and protest co-organizer. “This is a dark authoritarian time…this is all about militarizing our borders,” McIntosh adds. “To do nothing seems horribly irresponsible.”
McIntosh rattled off a laundry list of dizzying developments that followed the creation of the New Mexico Defense Area, including the White House’s expansion of National Defense Areas to three additional border zones in Texas and Arizona; the federal deployment of U.S. marines and army troops in Los Angeles in the wake of protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations; the opening of a medieval moat-like immigrant detention center in Florida, “Alligator Alcatraz,” on land reportedly surrounded by alligators and big snakes; and the U.S. Congress’ passage of the Trump budget bill that’s slated to channel billions of new dollars for more immigration police, border walls and detention centers.
According to militarytimes.com, an estimated 8,500 troops are currently deployed near the Mexican border “as part of an effort by President Donald Trump and his administration to establish control of narcotics trafficking and illegal border crossings.”
Leading up to the upcoming Santa Teresa protest, recent media reports have documented how border clampdowns by the Biden and Trump administrations in Washington and the Abbott administration in Austin transformed the El Paso Border Patrol sector into the deadliest zone along the nearly 2,000-mile long frontier between Mexico and the U.S, with the Sunland Park and Santa Teresa corridor in particular becoming a very hazardous crossing for desperate migrants who are abandoned by smugglers or lost in the desert where extreme temperatures, heat in summer and cold in winter, can easily kill.
According to an article published last month by the Texas Tribune and Source New Mexico:
“From January 2023 to August 2024, 299 human remains were reported in the El Paso sector, the most of any sector along the southern border, according to the most recent data available from federal government data. That’s more than double the number of cases reported during the 20 months prior, when 122 remains were recorded before El Paso had adopted Operation Lone Star.”
“We’re so overdue for a humanitarian border policy,” McIntosh contends. For interested persons, he said next Saturday’s demonstration will begin at 9 am on Delicias Avenue in Santa Teresa. Exact directions can be googled or found on a leaflet distributed by organizers (see below). McIntosh adds that the event is scheduled for an early beginning and end since, as is well known, the desert country of the Santa Teresa borderland can get excruciatingly hot this time of year.
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