The U.S. Navy will control a new national defense area established across 140 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, the Pentagon announced Wednesday.
The new NDA will become an extension of Marine Corps Air Station Yuma and be sited near the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range.
The announcement comes just days after the creation of another national defense area in Texas. In these zones, military personnel install barriers and signage, conduct patrols and stop and detain trespassers, who they transfer to the custody of law enforcement.
The Barry M. Goldwater range is a remote bombing range encompassing an uninhabited stretch of the Sonora Desert. It has been used as a training site for decades, but only about 6% contained any military infrastructure previously.
The area has long been a site of illegal narcotics smuggling and human trafficking activity, according to public reports. And erosion from illegal cross-border foot traffic, litter and vehicle traffic has caused significant environmental damage.
“In an effort to determine the full scope of damage that illegal border crossings and deterrence activities are having on the landscape, the USAF began a drag roads monitoring project in 2015 that is still ongoing,” noted a report by Luke Air Force base in 2023.
Meeting minutes of the Barry M. Goldwater Range Executive Council published the same year by the Marine Corps Air Station Yuma described the area as a hotbed of illegal drug trafficking, with 40 kilos of meth seized in the area in December 2022.
One Border Patrol representative described the area during a council meeting in 2023, noting, “On the Barry M. Goldwater Range-West … [Border Patrol] are continuing to see multiple breaches of the border wall on Cabeza Prieta between Monuments 180 and 175. As the breaches are cut, they are repaired, but they cannot keep up.”
Additionally, large groups of migrants have had to be rescued from the bombing range after becoming lost in the desert. In 2019, 17 people entering the country illegally, including eight adults and nine youth, were rescued after becoming lost.
The Arizona expansion marks the fourth NDA created on the border so far, with the third recently having been established in South Texas. That national defense area spans 250 miles of the Rio Grande River through Hidalgo and Cameron counties and will be administered as an extension of Joint Base San Antonio.
There are currently an estimated 8,500 troops on the southern border as part of an effort by President Donald Trump and his administration to establish control of narcotics trafficking and illegal border crossings.
Zita Ballinger Fletcher previously served as editor of Military History Quarterly and Vietnam magazines and as the historian of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. She holds an M.A. with distinction in military history.
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