Sponsors (9)
The bill prioritizes expanded border security, operational access, and emergency response on federal lands — improving interdiction and rescue capabilities — while increasing environmental harm, civil‑liberties and tribal‑sovereignty risks, and fiscal and administrative burdens for agencies and local communities.
Border communities, federal law enforcement, and DHS gain faster, expanded operational access and maintained routes on federal lands, improving detection, interdiction, and deterrence of illegal crossings and contraband.
Residents in border and rural communities will get faster emergency response and expanded search-and-rescue capacity, and reduced wildfire risk from targeted hazardous-fuel reduction and associated infrastructure improvements.
Federal, State, Tribal, and local land managers and agencies receive clearer authorities, interagency coordination mechanisms, road inventories, and reporting requirements that can reduce interagency disputes and improve oversight and targeted management actions.
Residents, recreationists, Tribal communities, and wildlife face significant environmental damage (habitat loss and fragmentation, pollution, and loss of wilderness character) from new or expanded roads, barriers, surveillance installations, motorized use, and some fuel‑treatment activities on federal lands.
People using or living near federal lands — including recreationists and border communities — face reduced public access, increased surveillance, and civil‑liberties risks from expanded DHS/DoD operations, formalized enforcement authority, and greater operational control on public lands.
Taxpayers and federal agencies may incur substantial new costs for construction, technology, maintenance, inventorying roads, fuel treatments, and reporting; those costs could divert funding from other land‑management and public‑land priorities.
Based on analysis of 11 sections of legislative text.
Introduced October 2, 2025 by Mike Lee · Last progress October 2, 2025
Prohibits use of federal funds to provide housing to noncitizens without lawful immigration status on federal lands managed by federal land management agencies (with a narrow exception for detention/custody facilities). Requires the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture to install and maintain roads and allow access for DHS and other authorized personnel, to enter cooperative agreements with DHS for technology and tactical infrastructure, and to inventory and convert unauthorized trails and roads for border security when environmental degradation is found. Expands DHS authority on border-adjacent federal lands by carving out exceptions to wilderness protections and limiting Interior/USDA secretaries from impeding DHS activities within 100 miles of the borders; creates a Border Fuels Management Initiative to reduce hazardous fuels and coordinate fuels treatments; and requires multiple reports and inventories about environmental impacts, fires, visitor-safety incidents, and effects on ranching and grazing tied to unauthorized border crossings.