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EL PASO – The Pentagon has created a second military zone in the El Paso area that U.S. soldiers will patrol as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on people crossing the southern border illegally, even as crossings are at a historic low.

In a statement Thursday, the military’s Northern Command said the latest military zone will be part of the Fort Bliss Army base in El Paso. The military newspaper Stars and Stripes reported that the area stretches about 53 miles east to the border community of Fort Hancock, according to Maj. Geoffrey Carmichael, spokesman for the Joint Task Force – Southern Border.

“The establishment of a second National Defense Area increases our operational reach and effectiveness in denying illegal activity along the southern border,” said Gen. Gregory Guillot, the commander of U.S. Northern Command.

Last month, the Pentagon designated a 60-foot-wide strip of land along the New Mexico-Mexico border as a military zone. On Monday, federal prosecutors charged more than two dozen migrants with violating security regulations after the U.S. Army spotted the group approaching the area and alerted Border Patrol agents. That charge is in addition to the charge of entering the U.S. illegally. Both are misdemeanors.

Geoffrey S. Corn, director of the Center for Military Law and Policy at Texas Tech University School of Law and retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, said that for more than two centuries the federal government has prohibited the U.S. military from enforcing civilian laws, in part because soldiers’ mission isn’t law enforcement.

“They’re trained as warriors,” Corn said.

Still, he said, the Trump administration has found an ingenious way of using the military for immigration enforcement without asking Congress for permission.

Under the Posse Comitatus Act, the U.S. military is prohibited from conducting civilian law enforcement. However, an exception known as the military purpose doctrine allows it in some cases.

“Using the military as part of border security reinforces the perception and the narrative that the nation is under some type of invasion,” he said. “But the facts contradict the assertion of an invasion because the number of border crossings has been steadily dropping for some time now.”

In March, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reported encountering 1,627 migrants in the El Paso sector, which includes all of New Mexico’s border as well as El Paso and Hudspeth counties in West Texas. That’s an 87% decrease from August 2024, when the downward trend began.

Aimée Santillán, a policy analyst at the Hope Border Institute, an immigrant rights advocacy group in El Paso, said the “militarization of our border has long been of great concern here in the borderlands.

“This escalation is deeply concerning since it not only represents a further step in criminalizing migrants attempting to seek asylum at the border but has the potential to also affect humanitarian aid, during a time when migrant deaths in the El Paso Border Patrol Sector have been soaring.”

According to federal government data collected by No More Deaths, a migrant aid and advocacy group in Tucson, Arizona, at least 176 migrants died in the El Paso sector in 2024, continuing a decade-long upward trend. The federal government documented one migrant death in the sector in 2014.

Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the originally published article, click here.

UPDATE: BRENHAM, Texas (AP) — Fire chief confirms that the body of a 10-year-old girl swept away in Texas floods has been recovered.

Forecasters warn that more heavy rains and flooding could be on the way to the Houston area and the state’s coast. Teams of people scoured the city of Brenham, using drones with thermal imaging and dogs to find the girl. The water rescue operation was scaled back overnight when heavy thunderstorms moved through the area, but four swift water rescue teams resumed operations early Tuesday. The National Weather Service in Houston says the next round of severe storms could bring as much as 6 inches of rain Tuesday to parts of southeastern Texas.

ORIGINAL STORY: Rescue crews in Texas were searching for a 10-year-old girl swept away by rapidly rising floodwaters and forecasters warned that Tuesday could bring more heavy rains and flooding to the Houston area and the state’s coast.

Teams of people scoured the city of Brenham on Monday night, using drones with thermal imaging and dogs to try to find the girl. But as heavy thunderstorms moved through the area, the water rescue operation was forced to be scaled back, according to the Brenham Fire Department.

The department was working with around a dozen supporting agencies to find the girl, who was last seen at about 4 p.m. Monday.

“There is bad weather on its way so we ask for prayers for the family and all the first responders involved in the search and rescue,” the department said in a social media post.

The next round of severe storms could bring as much as 6 inches (15 centimeters) of rain Tuesday to parts of southeastern Texas, according to the National Weather Service in Houston.

The weather service also warned of a series of strong rip currents and flooding along Gulf-facing beaches, especially during high tides.

A large swath of the state, along with parts of New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi were under a National Weather Service flood watch early Tuesday.

Just last week, storms drenched much of southern Oklahoma and northern Texas, flooding and washing out roads and causing hundreds of flights to be canceled or delayed at major airports.

WASHINGTON – The San Antonio Express-News reports U.S. Rep. Chip Roy is ramping up pressure on House Republicans to make the larger cuts to Medicaid that many within his party oppose. In a letter to members on Thursday, Roy and 19 other House Republicans, including U.S. Reps. Keith Self and Michael Cloud of Texas, called for pulling back on the expansion of Medicaid benefits to low-income working adults that Congress passed during the Obama administration and that have been adopted in nearly every state. “If the House budget reconciliation package does not include structural Medicaid reform… we will be setting up massive tax increases and benefit cuts in the future,” they wrote. Medicaid expansion covers adults who make up to 138% of the federal poverty rate, or about $21,600 in 2025. States that opt into the program contribute a small percentage of the costs, with the federal government picking up the rest.

Roy’s push to return Medicaid to a program solely for low-income children, pregnant women, seniors and people with disabilities comes as Republicans are searching for ways to slash $1.5 trillion from the federal budget. House GOP members are divided over Medicaid expansion and other benefits for low-income families. U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, the San Antonio Republican whose district includes much of the border, who leads the GOP’s Congressional Hispanic Conference, has warned members that they face political fallout in cutting programs that are “helping hard working Americans.” Gonzales did not respond to a request for comment Friday. The House Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicaid, has already delayed a hearing on the $780 billion in spending cuts they have been directed to come up with by House Leadership. Ending the federal match for Medicaid expansion would save the government $626 billion over the next decade, according to analysis by the health research non-profit KFF. And unless states decided to make up the loss, an estimated 20 millions Americans would lose their healthcare coverage. Texas is one of ten states that chose not to expand Medicaid to low-income Americans. But for Republicans representing states that did expand coverage, cutting federal funding has so far proven a difficult sell.