It’s a blistering evening in July, and Marlene Vazquez is looking out the car window at the sprawling Sonoran Desert landscape en route to Quitobaquito Springs.
It’s a tiny oasis that’s provided flowing water for thousands of years. Today, the spring drains into a human-made pond that sits about 200 feet from the Arizona-Mexico border inside Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.
Vazquez would make this trip as a kid to visit family grave sites with her grandmother.
She’s 76 now, and she’s Hia-Ced O’odham — a tribe related to the Tohono O’odham but isn't federally recognized. Hia-Ced O'odham families used to live at Quitobaquito.
“Back then, the water was full, running,” she said.
A lot of things have changed since. In 2020, a 30-foot steel bollard wall was installed at Quitobaquito under the first Trump administration.
And now, federal authorities are planning to build there again — part of a mega-project that aims to install physical walls, roads, lighting and surveillance technology across the length of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Places like Organ Pipe are slated to see a double border wall.
Vazquez is one of a few dozen community members coming to visit Quitobaquito before that happens. She says she can't help think about how her grandmother would react.
“She would be doing everything to fight from them entering and disturbing that area. Because, that was their home,” she said.
Since last year, the Trump administration has awarded billions of dollars in construction contracts for its "Smart Wall," and work has been ongoing for months in various parts of Arizona.
Aaron Cooper is the director of a nonprofit in the nearby town of Ajo called International Sonoran Desert Alliance. He says he first heard about the possibility of a double wall last fall.
“And I’ve got to admit, I sort of dismissed them as ‘Oh, that sounds outlandish, unlikely at best, and pretty preposterous,’” Cooper said.
Cooper says top of mind are animals like the Sonoyta mud turtle and the Quitobaquito pupfish — two tiny, endangered species that are nearly extinct except for inside Quitobaquito and its pond. He says it’s not clear how wall builders will account for those species, or even where the wall will be built.
“We know very little. Information is not free flowing,” he said. “If a wall was constructed 200 feet north of the existing one, it would be in the pond. It would be in the retention pond.”
A spokesperson says Customs and Border Protection will work with federal agencies to protect Quitobaquito. And the second wall will be built within a 60-foot stretch of federally-owned land along the border called the Roosevelt Reservation.
The agency did not answer questions about how the new structure will fit inside that space alongside the existing wall, or if new roads, lighting and surveillance tech will also be added.
Tohono O’odham Nation Chairman Verlon Jose says his tribe is trying to work with the Department of Homeland Security to minimize harm and maintain tribal access. But, he says, like in 2020, the new wall probably can’t be stopped at the spring, because it's on federal land.
“The damage is done. And the damage will be done again with this secondary wall,” he said.
Contractors also plan to build wall along the 62 miles of border inside the Tohono O’odham Nation for the first time.
A lawsuit filed by the tribe to stop that wall segment went to federal court last month. Their attorneys argue the wall disregards the nation’s sovereign boundaries.
This month, as news spread that construction may soon begin, leadership placed no trespassing signs throughout the tribal nation and has threatened to charge contractors who try to enter.
Jose says so much of his tribe’s ancestral land, burial sites and sacred areas along the border have already been cut through.
“That’s the last piece of area that we’re trying to hold on to,” he said. “We have the basic human, O’odham responsibility to protect the land, and protect the people, and protect the animals.”
That's how protesters feel in the San Rafael Valley. It's a celebrated biodiversity hotspot southeast of Tucson that was left partially unwalled during the first Trump administration, allowing for the passage of wildlife and water.
Construction firm Fisher Sand and Gravel has been awarded more than a billion dollars worth of contracts for wall projects in Arizona, including one to build two parallel walls across the valley.
In July, contractors tore down three cottonwood trees in Lochiel, an remote border town in the San Rafael Valley, about 25 miles east of Nogales.
Environmentalists estimate the trees were up to 250 years old. Protesters like Kate Scott have been staging a tree-sit inside the last remaining tree for over a week now.
On a hot Thursday morning, Scott shielded her eyes from the sun and yelled up to another protester seated on a wooden platform high above us in the tree’s thick branches.
Remnants of the other cottonwoods sat piled up on the dirt road where big construction trucks barrelled past.
“We have a tree platform on the upper canopy of the last grandmother,” said Scott, who heads a southern Arizona environmental group called the Madrean Archipelago Wildlife Center. “And you have just heard a yellow-billed cuckoo in Mexico. But the yellow-billed cuckoo, which is a federally listed threatened species under the Endangered Species Act, has been in this tree as well.”
A law from the ‘90s allows DHS to waive a host of federal laws, including the Endangered Species Act, in the name of border security. The Trump administration has used that across the entire U.S.-Mexico border to streamline wall construction.
Scott says advocates hoped the old cottonwood grove would be spared, but the administration’s plan for a double wall changed that.
“That’s what really put the grandmothers in the sacrificial zone,” she said.
Now, she says, they’re trying to stop the work in this small corner and save the tree.
“I feel that our grandmother stands for our entire borderlands right now, and the destruction that’s happening,” she said.
Back at Quitobaquito, the group is quiet as a pair of tribal members sings at the edge of the pond. The steel bollard wall is stark against the orange light of the sunset behind them. Marlene Vasquez — the Hia-Ced O’odham elder — says standing here, she feels good. But she worries what will happen next.
“We need to go ask for help from our creator. Help us with our cause. Because we can’t make it without the water,” she said.
The National Park Service has closed the road to Quitobaquito in anticipation for new wall construction.
Full conversation on The Show
MARK BRODIE: ... A group of protesters in southern Arizona is trying to stop the construction of the border wall and save a cottonwood tree, and they’re doing that by staging a sit-in in the tree. KJZZ’s Alisa Reznick visited the area. She’s on the line now to talk about what’s going on there. Good morning, Alisa.
ALISA REZNICK: Good morning. How’s it going?
MARK BRODIE: Going all right. So where exactly is this happening?
ALISA REZNICK: Right. So this is in Lochiel. It’s a tiny border town that’s about 25 miles east of Nogales. There’s actually an old Customs building right along the border there, kind of an old brick building. And it’s mostly ranch land today.
And so it’s part of this larger biodiversity hot spot called the San Rafael Valley. This has been really a point of contention, I guess ... for environmentalists, community groups, even locals, because it’s one of the last places they say is a wildlife corridor for border wildlife.
MARK BRODIE: So it sounds pretty open. You mentioned a lot of ranch lands. What is the significance of the trees that these protesters are upset about, having some of them having been cut down and are trying to save one?
ALISA REZNICK: Yeah, so these trees are old-growth cottonwood trees. There are little groves that are in Mexico and the U.S. This particular grove is right along the international boundary.
And they estimate that these trees could be anywhere from 200 to 250 years old. So in some cases, maybe even older than the border itself in that area.
And these were four trees right along the boundary that were slated for removal by Customs and Border Protection, despite calls by environmentalists and advocacy groups for them to remain. They say that these are important nesting grounds for migratory birds that are active in the U.S. and Mexico, and that in some cases are on the endangered species list in the U.S.
MARK BRODIE: OK, so can you describe the tree that these protesters are sitting in? What is their setup there? What is the situation?
ALISA REZNICK: Yeah, so if you picture that old Customs building that I mentioned, essentially it’s right along the border, and then you have the border wall road. You know, that’s a graded dirt road that was made by contractors that runs right along the boundary.
Posted up there is a sign that says people are not allowed on that road. It’s a no trespassing sign. It has an Arizona code under which people could be arrested, which actually someone was arrested when these other three trees were being taken down for refusing to leave the site where they were being torn down.
So picture this dirt road. You kind of walk, there’s an area where you could walk on that dirt road if it were open. The protesters are not using that road. They’re on private property because this ranch land runs right up to the border wall road, essentially. And that is where the last tree is.
So it’s just this really tall grass, kind of these cottonwood trees in the distance that you can see kind of popping up in their little groves. And this particular tree is huge. It’s just this towering tree that is much taller than 50 feet. I’ve always been kind of bad at measuring how tall it is ... but it’s up there, and I can say that the canopy itself ... their positioned in the upper canopy of this old tree, so it’s this kind of wooden platform with a rope coming down. And yeah, they’ve positioned someone up in that tree at least 50 feet up there, I would say.
MARK BRODIE: Wow. OK, so you got to talk to one of the people involved in the protest. What did she have to tell you about what they’re doing there and what they hope to achieve?
ALISA REZNICK: Yeah, so I talked to Kate Scott. She’s a protester, and she’s also the founder of a local nonprofit here in southern Arizona, an environmental nonprofit. She essentially said that ... these cottonwood trees have seen generations of people and they’re important in multiple cultures, and they’re just trying to save this last slice of the borderlands.
KATE SCOTT: And when we immediately found out that we were going to have a double wall through here, that’s what really put the grandmothers in the sacrificial zone, because the double wall is only 4 feet away from this private landowner’s fence.
MARK BRODIE: So, Alisa, go ahead.
ALISA REZNICK: I’m sorry. I should say that they are calling the trees the grandmother trees because of their age, of course. And the double wall she’s referencing is this project that’s been ongoing by Customs and Border Protection to build not just the one wall, but two walls along large stretches of land in Arizona.
So they are creating what they’re calling a buffer zone, where it would be two steel bollard walls essentially right next to each other, running parallel to each other, where there would be heightened surveillance inside of this zone.
And so what Kate is saying is that essentially initially they thought that these trees were safe if it was just the one wall, but with the two walls and the buffer zone, that is what’s putting them in the middle of this construction.
MARK BRODIE: Do the protesters have a sense for how long people are willing and able to sit up in the tree? How long could this go on?
ALISA REZNICK: Well, this was a reaction to that arrest that I mentioned. There was one protester who was arrested there a couple weeks back. This is day 12 or 13, I believe, of people being inside of the tree, and that happened after this arrest took place and these other trees were downed.
So essentially, they have told me that they want to stay there as long as it takes. There’s some tents around on that private land near the tree where other folks are staying. There’s somebody in the tree at all times, is what they tell me.
And they’re just hoping to wait out the construction. They’re also trying to engage with Customs and Border Protection and really drive home this idea that they want to save the tree in order to preserve it for the birds that are there and for future nests as well.
MARK BRODIE: Sure. All right, we’ll see how long they can be up there. That is KJZZ’s Alisa Reznick in Tucson. Alisa, thank you.
ALISA REZNICK: Thank you.
