| |
Admin Starts Protested AZ Border Wall 08/28 06:13
PHOENIX (AP) -- 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. Customs and Border Protection says the area is a dangerous smuggling
route and that building the wall will close a longstanding security gap. 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 effort by the Trump administration
to fill the border with 30-foot (9-meter) steel bollard walls, vehicle
barriers, and technology designed to stop undocumented immigration and
smuggling.
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.
Drone videos published by nation officials show roughly 14 vehicles and an
industrial drill at one of the sites.
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 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. 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 boundaries of their nation.
US District Judge Richard Leon in Washington, D.C., an appointee of former
President George W. Bush, ruled in favor of the government, noting that the
border wall would be built on a 60-foot (18-meter) wide buffer zone of
federally owned land called the Roosevelt Reservation.
"Defendants have not yet articulated plans to construct outside the
Roosevelt Reservation," the judge wrote in his opinion.
The Tohono O'odham Nation said that even if construction were contained to
the Roosevelt Reservation, driving onto tribal land to access the area still
constitutes trespassing.
"The contractors, who are on the Nation illegally, were accompanied by
agents as they worked on three separate locations near the border with drill
trucks to conduct soil sampling and other activities," tribal officials said in
a statement.
The CBP agents were masked, armed, and set up a vehicle blockade to stop
tribal police from removing the contractors, according to Tohono O'odham
officials. The nation had set up "No Trespassing" signs before Tuesday.
So far, no physical confrontations between police or members of the Tohono
O'odham Nation have been reported.
CBP defended the need for the wall in a statement Tuesday, saying the desert
spanning the Tohono O'odham Nation is a corridor for drug smuggling.
"The project will close one of the most dangerous smuggling and trafficking
corridors on the Southwest border: remote desert that has facilitated decades
of drug loads, migrant deaths, and cartel activity," said CBP Commissioner
Rodney Scott.
Tribal officials said they're exploring further legal actions in an effort
to remove contractors.
SLSCO Ltd., the Texas-based construction company building the section in
Arizona, has secured over $390 million in funding from the Department of
Homeland Security to build the border wall since 2023.
|
|
