The Center for Biological Diversity says construction has officially broken ground on a new border wall segment in the San Rafael Valley.
The San Rafael Valley is a stretch of borderland dotted with towering mountain peaks called sky islands — where vastly different ecosystems exist in a single range.
The Trump administration announced plans to wall off roughly 27 miles of the valley earlier this year and has since awarded the company Fisher Sand and Gravel with a government contract of up to $339 million to build that wall.
Images collected by the Center for Biological Diversity staff show piles of dirt being moved by huge construction vehicles and a 30-foot steel bollard segment that’s been painted black. The group says construction will cut off critical corridors for cross-border species like the black bear, ocelot and jaguar.
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Republican lawmakers are backing plans to spend $40 million from state coffers to reimburse local governments for border security and immigration enforcement as Arizona continues to wait for hundreds of millions in federal reimbursements that both Republicans and Democrats are relying on to balance the state budget. -
Heith Janke, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Phoenix office, said Patrick Gary Shlegel fled from Border Patrol agents after they tried to stop his truck for suspected human smuggling closer to the U.S-Mexico border. -
A man who authorities say was involved in a smuggling operation was shot Tuesday in an exchange of gunfire with the U.S. Border Patrol and after firing at a federal helicopter near the U.S.-Mexico border, authorities said. -
It’s been a year this week since Trump reentered office and issued a slew of Day 1 executive orders on immigration, bringing into question everything from asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, to whether people born in the U.S. are guaranteed citizenship. -
In a post, the State Department called Mexico’s progress on border security “unacceptable.” Meanwhile, Mexico’s president is calling on the United States to do more to stop the flow of firearms into her country.
