EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – The U.S. Attorney’s Office has secured an additional 60 convictions from individuals who pleaded guilty to trespassing on the new National Defense Area in El Paso County.
The pleas recorded in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas between May 20 and May 22 come on top of 60 convictions secured through May 19.
Federal prosecutors are waiting on the outcome of another 133 cases they filed this week against defendants allegedly caught trespassing on the 60-foot-wide border military buffer zone.
The El Paso NDA and a second one set up along the Mexico-New Mexico border empower federal prosecutors to not only charge migrants with illegal entry or illegal re-entry into the country, but also with trespassing on what essentially have become extensions of Fort Bliss, Texas, and Fort Huachuca, Arizona.
In a statement issued Friday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office named some of the suspects charged in El Paso.
They include Gustavo Ramos Solorzano and Enrique Arenas Garcia, both from Mexico.
The U.S. Border Patrol apprehended Ramos 2 miles west of the Paso del Norte port of entry on May 14. He had been removed from the United States just four days earlier following a felony conviction for illegal re-entry. Ramos has been deported from the U.S. four times.
Arenas was arrested 2 miles west of the Ysleta Port of Entry on May 15. He had been removed from the United States on May 7 through the San Ysidro Port of Entry in California. Arenas has been deported from the U.S. three times and voluntarily deported the country on two occasions.
Human and civil rights organizations in West Texas and in New Mexico have decried the handoff of Department of the Interior land near the border wall to the Department of Defense.
They worry about the increased role of the military on the border and fear human rights abuses against migrants may occur. A handful of court records reviewed by Border Report involving NDA violations show Border Patrol agents are conducting the arrests so far.
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