The nation's top homeland security official says she has the right to build new sections of border wall — even though it could wipe out the jaguar in Arizona.
A lawyer for DHS head Kristi Noem says the 1996 Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act authorizes her agency to construct physical barriers and roads along the border.
Her plans include 27 miles of 30-foot-high barriers to replace existing vehicle barriers, which don’t block wildlife movement. Two environmental groups that are suing over Noem’s plans call that stretch of border “a critical lifeline” connecting jaguars to breeding populations in Sonora.
They argue the wall would be the death knell for jaguars in the U.S. and want the judge to declare that Congress acted illegally in giving Noem total discretion to build without guidance or limits.
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Federal agents are investigating the deaths of six people thought to be immigrants found inside a shipping container at a Union Pacific rail yard near the border with Mexico in Laredo, Texas, on Sunday as a "potential human smuggling event." -
Ancient Tohono O’odham artifacts were found not far from the Arizona-Mexico border – and now the tribe is calling for their return. -
For the second time, the Border Security Expo returned to the Phoenix Convention Center this week with vendors offering surveillance systems, drones and a look at what border enforcement could become. -
In January of 2018, University of Arizona professor Scott Warren was volunteering in the Southern Arizona desert with humanitarian aid group No More Deaths. -
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the approximately 1,000-year-old geoglyph in Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge was disturbed by border wall contractors nearly two weeks ago.
