Looking For National Defense Areas Along The US Southern Border
Our reporting started, like much of our work, in a spreadsheet. As I parsed through federal court data, I noticed something odd: Within months of President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025, prosecutors began filing obscure charges related to trespassing on military property — so many, in fact, that more cases were filed in 2025 than in the prior decade.
Nearly all of these charges originated from cases along the U.S. southern border, where last spring, the White House designated large swaths of land as national defense areas.