Taking on Teddy’s Strip at the Border

There’s a 60-foot wide strip of land that runs through three states along the length of the United States border known as the ‘Roosevelt Reservation.’ The federal and tribal lands that form the 632-mile long strip account for about a third of the 2000-mile long US-Mexico border. All the rest is Texas.

Teddy Roosevelt, pragmatic visionary that he was, saw a need to keep an eye out towards the South and leave some maneuvering room, as there were already problems with bandito incursions and smuggling going on across the borders.

…In 1907, Theodore Roosevelt in a Presidential Proclamation (35 Stat. 2136) established the reservation in order to keep all public lands along the border in California, Arizona, and New Mexico “free from obstruction as a protection against the smuggling of goods between the United States and Mexico”.^[2][3][4] Texas was excluded because Texas retained all public lands upon the Texas annexation and admittance as a state, much of which has been sold over the years to private parties.

There would be some spectacular cross-border incursions soon enough.

…A wily, peasant-born leader, [Pancho] Villa joined with Emiliano Zapata to keep the spirit of rebellion alive in Mexico and harass the Carranza government. A year later, though, Wilson decided Carranza had made enough steps towards democratic reform to merit official American support, and the president abandoned Villa. Outraged, Villa turned against the United States. In January 1916, he kidnapped 18 Americans from a Mexican train and slaughtered them. A few weeks later, on this day [Mar 9] in 1916, Villa led an army of about 1,500 guerillas across the border to stage a brutal raid against the small American town of Columbus, New Mexico. Villa and his men killed 19 people and left the town in flames.

That started a two-year border war, which only ended with the Mexican president withdrawing permission for American troops to be in the country. By 1917, ‘Black Jack’ Pershing was leaving his command there and then heading to Europe months later for WWI.

They never did capture Villa, whose time on the run from US troops cured him of his taste for guerilla attacks against the US. Assassins finally took him out in 1923.

Trump got the border pretty well fastened down in his first term, but the anti-American, purposefully malicious Biden regime threw the gates open, literally. This allowed every sort of border jumper to make their way across with impunity, from the foot weary traveler seeking a new life, whose story might normally truly touch your heart, to the callous coyote leaving two year olds to die alone in the desert to the supreme beneficiaries of all the willful destruction of our national security by malignant Biden officials – the cartels.

This is a different border to lockdown than that of 2016.

It is far more vicious, far more dangerous, and there is far too much money now being interrupted for the cartels to go quietly into that good night.

I believe this is part of the calculus in Trump’s order.

New Trump executive order transforms federal buffer zone on border from CA to NM – known as Roosevelt Reservation – into a military base. Migrants crossing into U.S. would be trespassing on military base & held by troops. https://t.co/PuB5mpdtEo (map per @washingtonpost) pic.twitter.com/5kFrMwZLLq

— Brahm Resnik (@brahmresnik) April 12, 2025

He already has troops there, and those, plus his actions with border patrol, have squeezed the flood of humans crossing to a veritable drip. 

This isn’t just a land move—it’s strategic.

Trump is tapping into the Roosevelt Reservation, a strip of land Teddy Roosevelt set aside in 1907 specifically for border security.

And somehow, in over 100 years, no one else thought to actually use it… to secure the border?

Until… pic.twitter.com/D6AU6bCfYz

— Tony Lane 🇺🇸 (@TonyLaneNV) April 13, 2025

The American people are overwhelmingly on board with closing it down and getting them gone.

America is healing! Latest Harvard Harris poll shows OVERWHELMING support for Trump policies:

74% for deporting illegals
70% for closing the border
69% for DOGE
65% to ban trans men from girl sports
57% for ending foreign aid
57% for reciprocal tariffs
53% for Alaska drilling pic.twitter.com/jS5ORMJvbv

— Jess Fields (@jessalanfields) April 14, 2025

Which has happened at blinding speed.

But there are still big-time cartel operations running drugs and whatever other contraband across the empty spaces out there that have to be confronted.

Personally, I think it’s ‘crazy’ like a fox. Who better to handle a firefight with cartel operators than the military instead of a lone or a pair of border patrol agents who surprise something going down? 

…President Donald Trump issued a memorandum directing the military to take temporary control over the Roosevelt Reservation, a corridor that runs along the border line in California, Arizona and New Mexico.

The order would empower troops to detain people attempting to illegally enter the U.S. within the stretch of land, which was established by President Theodore Roosevelt for border security in 1907. Trump authorized the military to operate in the same area during his first administration to aid construction of a wall to deter migrant crossings.

…Immigration, military and legal experts have said that Trump’s move to militarize the border could raise legal questions about potential violations to the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law that generally prohibits active-duty troops from being used in domestic law enforcement.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said it appeared the administration was trying to find a way around restrictions on the use of the U.S. military for civilian border enforcement.

“Welp they’re doing the Roosevelt Reservation crazy strategy, giving the military ‘jurisdiction’ over a 60-foot-wide stretch of land from CA to AZ and then claim that migrants are being arrested for ‘trespassing on military property’ thus trying to bypass the Posse Commitatus Act,” Reichlin-Melnick said in a post on X.

Remember the brouhaha just a week ago about airstrikes on cartels in Mexico? Where the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, had to pull a quick, ‘Don’t you even think about it!‘?

Amid reports that the Trump administration is considering drone strikes against cartels, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum reiterated her staunch opposition to any such military action.

“We do not agree with any kind of intervention or interference,” Sheinbaum told reporters Tuesday at her daily morning news conference. “This has been very clear: We coordinate, we collaborate, [but] we are not subordinate and there is no meddling in these actions.”

The president’s comments, reaffirming her already-stated views on the sensitive topic, come as various reports have suggested the Trump administration may be considering aerial strikes on cartel targets — and that the administration is prepared to act unilaterally if Washington cannot secure Mexican support.

On Tuesday NBC News cited six current and former U.S. officials saying that the Trump administration was weighing drone strikes in Mexico “to combat criminal gangs trafficking narcotics across the southern border.”

Not a day later, Columbia went in against one of their largest cartels and made a dent.

Eight members of Colombia’s largest cartel have died in clashes with security forces, the army said Tuesday, the latest in a series of raids against one of Latin America’s most powerful criminal groups.

Days after the death of a top Gulf Clan capo, the military said it had killed several more of the cartel’s members and taken two captive during an operation in the country’s northwest. In a social media post, the army said it had also seized “abundant war material and supplies.”

The Gulf Clan was born from right-wing paramilitary groups that fought leftist guerrillas in the 1990s — before turning their attention to the cocaine trade.

They are now a criminal powerhouse making money from drug trafficking, illegal gold mining, racketeering and migrant smuggling across the northern border with Panama.

Ah. The ‘border with Panama’? Didn’t we also just sign new memorandums of understanding about mutual military operations with Panama?

I believe we did.

Yeah, this Roosevelt Reservation move by Trump is him signaling to the thugs of the hemisphere that the #rulez have changed. I don’t believe he’s remotely interested in the expedient return of the few migrants they’ll snatch up. If they catch the fellows hauling them over and track down their bosses – now you’re talking. 

Now, I’m no strategist – I only play one here at Hot Air – but I see this move as a cartel confrontation. Trump can’t declare war on the cartels, but he can sure as hell set the battlefield up for a war if the cartels want one.

The Roosevelt Reservation is Trump’s red line, complete with Army and USMC watchers on the wall.

It’s up to the cartels to ask themselves if they feel lucky enough to find out.