The Trump administration has begun work on a project to build a stretch of border wall in southern Arizona along part of a Native American tribe’s reservation, pushing ahead with one of its signature projects despite protests from the tribe.
U.S. But members of the Tohono O’odham Nation, whose membership spans both sides of the U.S,-Mexico border, have accused the administration of trespassing and say the construction will damage land sacred to the tribe. The wall segment is part of a $46 billion dollar effort by the Trump administration to fill the border with 30-foot (9-metre) steel bollard walls, vehicle barriers, and technology designed to stop undocumented immigration and smuggling.
Customs and Border Protection says the area is a dangerous smuggling route and that building the wall will close a longstanding security gap.
U.S. The Tohono O’odham Nation, which has 37,000 members, including thousands who live in Mexico, sued the federal government in June in an attempt to block construction of the border wall. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington, DC, an appointee of former President George W Bush, ruled in favour of the government, noting that the border wall be built on a 60-foot (18-metre) wide buffer zone of federally owned land called the Roosevelt Reservation.
A federal judge permitted the government to move forward with construction earlier this month, but the tribe says the contractors are violating tribal codes and trespassing to access the border wall site. The tribe argued that the wall would cause “significant devastation” on the reservation, including the destruction of mountain peaks sacred to the tribe, and would alter the boundaries of their nation.
But as building efforts have ramped up, the administration has run into opposition from landowners, environmental groups, and Native American tribes who say construction is violating property rights and desecrating sacred indigenous sites. The Tohono O’odham Nation said in a statement Tuesday that about 20 Customs and Border Protection officers, working with contractors, went onto the tribe’s land early that morning to begin construction.
