At the foot of the Organ Mountains in southern New Mexico, Ángel Peña is hiking along a rocky trail surrounded by spiny desert shrubs.
The mountains here – jagged rocky spires that jut into the air – are known as the "front teeth" of the smile. And that toothy grin makes up part of the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument, one of the many public lands the state is known for.
"This place is alive in all sorts of ways," Peña said, rattling off the range of wildlife found in the region, including oryx, mule deer, and quail.
But Peña, who works with the conservation nonprofit Nuestra Tierra, is worried that more public lands like this will be stripped away. Earlier this year, federal land next to the National Monument was transferred to the Department of Defense.
"This has always belonged to the people, and now it doesn't," said Peña.
Since April, the Trump Administration has established four national defense areas, which include sites in New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas – accounting for more than 510 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. On these stretches, Army personnel now are detaining people they suspect of entering the country illegally. They're being charged with trespassing onto military sites.
Peña says the deployment of thousands of active-duty troops, along with heavily-armored vehicles, and now the establishment of national defense areas has put border communities on edge.
"The effect that the NDA is having has no boundary," said Peña, who said he's heard from ranchers and hunters concerned over the military zones and worried they'll accidentally trespass on them.
"This is creating real anxiety for folks up and down, not only New Mexico, but Arizona, Califas, Colorado, Texas."
In the towns near the military zone in New Mexico, some residents said they're indifferent to the Army's presence because they're used to a degree of security and surveillance.
Others, though, said their presence isn't warranted.
Since late April, trespassing charges have been filed against more than 1,300 people in New Mexico, and another 1,400 in the El Paso area.
When announcing some of the first charges stemming from national defense areas, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said "the border space that DOD is allowed to take actions inside is growing and growing."
"The number of national defense areas will continue to climb, the barbed wire will climb, the troops will climb," said Hegseth. "If you trespass, you will be charged."
However, the trespassing charges have been met with mixed results: some have led to convictions, while judges have dismissed others.
And the Trump Administration established these military zones at a time when illegal border crossings were already trending down.
Ray Trejo, a commissioner in Luna County, New Mexico, said the creation of the military zones along the U.S-Mexico border "makes no sense to me at all."
Trejo, a Democrat, said he worries about the potential dangers for people who use these lands to put food on the table.
"I do a lot of hunting on the border," said Trejo. "If I’m down there and I've got a gun in my hand and I happen to be in this military zone, that could go sideways real fast."
The Army says people can apply for identification cards for access to the national defense area in New Mexico.
But Fernando Garcia, who leads the group Border Network for Human Rights, is skeptical. With no official public map of the national defense area and widely spaced warning signs, he said people are left guessing.
"These military bases, they don't have points of entry," said Garcia. "They are not fenced; they are in the middle of nowhere."
Of the more than 2,700 people charged in New Mexico and West Texas, many have pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor of trespassing onto a military zone.
While that charge carries a maximum sentence of a year in federal prison, judges in a number of cases have sentenced defendants to time served – and then turned them over to ICE to be deported.
This story was produced by the American Homefront Project, a public media collaboration that reports on American military life and veterans.
