The Trump administration has commenced construction on a section of border wall in southern Arizona that borders a Native American tribe's reservation, proceeding with a key initiative despite objections from the Tohono O'odham Nation.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection stated that the chosen location is a hazardous route for smugglers and that the wall is intended to address a persistent security vulnerability. However, members of the Tohono O'odham Nation, whose members reside on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, have accused the administration of trespassing and damaging land considered sacred by the tribe.
The construction is part of a broader $46 billion federal effort to install steel bollard walls, vehicle barriers, and technology along the border to curb undocumented immigration and smuggling.
As construction efforts have intensified, the administration has encountered opposition from landowners, environmental organizations, and Native American tribes, who contend that the building process violates property rights and desecrates Indigenous sacred sites.
The Tohono O'odham Nation reported that approximately 20 Customs and Border Protection officers, accompanied by contractors, began construction activities on tribal land early Tuesday morning. Drone footage released by tribal officials appears to show about 14 vehicles and industrial drilling equipment at one of the sites.
A federal judge authorized the government to proceed with construction earlier this month. The tribe, however, maintains that contractors are violating tribal codes and trespassing to access the border wall construction area.
The Tohono O'odham Nation, with 37,000 members, including thousands living in Mexico, filed a lawsuit in June seeking to block the border wall's construction. 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.
U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, ruled in favor of the government, noting that the wall would be built within the Roosevelt Reservation, a 60-foot-wide buffer zone of federally owned land. The judge's opinion stated that the government had not yet articulated plans to construct outside this reservation.
Despite the ruling, the Tohono O'odham Nation asserts that the act of driving onto tribal land to access the construction area constitutes trespassing, even if construction is confined to the Roosevelt Reservation.
Tribal officials stated that contractors, accompanied by federal agents, were present on the Nation's land without authorization, conducting soil sampling and other activities near the border with drill trucks. According to Tohono O'odham officials, CBP agents were masked and armed, and they established a vehicle blockade to prevent tribal police from removing the contractors. The Nation had previously posted "No Trespassing" signs.
No physical confrontations between tribal police or Nation members and federal agents or contractors have been reported.
CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott defended the necessity of the wall, describing the desert spanning the Tohono O'odham Nation as a corridor for drug smuggling. He stated that the project would 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."
Tribal officials indicated they are considering further legal actions to remove the contractors from the site. SLSCO Ltd., the Texas-based company undertaking the Arizona construction, has received over $390 million in funding from the Department of Homeland Security for border wall construction since 2023.