An ongoing dispute between Border Patrol and the Tohono O’odham Nation in southern Arizona continues to escalate.
For the last several weeks, the tribe’s police have been escorting federal contractors off of their land as they attempt to keep the Trump administration from building its promised border wall on their land.
They put up "No Trespassing" signs and fought the administration in court to try to stop construction. But, a federal judge said construction could continue — and, now it is.
Last week, the tribe said armed federal agents escorted contractors onto their land and guarded them while they drilled and did pre-construction work.
Now, a Border Patrol vehicle blockade is preventing tribal police from removing contractors from the land.
KJZZ’s Alisa Reznick has been covering this story.
Full conversation
LAUREN GILGER: Good morning, Alisa.
ALISA REZNICK: Good morning, Lauren.
LAUREN GILGER: OK, so the tribe says these armed agents are escorting contractors onto their land as they start building this wall. But a judge recently ruled that the strip of land where this wall will be built is not technically their land, right?
ALISA REZNICK: That's correct. So this is, again, 62 miles of the Arizona-Mexico border. It's inside the Tohono O'odham Nation. But the strip of land that the judge is referring to in the preliminary injunction is essentially — it's called the Roosevelt Reservation, and it's this 60-foot stretch of land that runs the length of Arizona, New Mexico and California right along the border. So this is a long-established section, and it's been used for border wall construction in the past.
But the section inside the Tohono O'odham Nation has never had a wall. There's vehicle barriers there. There's roads that have been cut by the U.S. government. There's surveillance towers, but not a wall.
So yes, the judge ruled that the Roosevelt Reservation is under the jurisdiction of the U.S. government. Now, that is under dispute currently. Chairman Verlon Jose of the Tohono O'odham Nation told me that that's one of the main points of the legal contention here and the subject of their litigation in court.
LAUREN GILGER: Right, so that decision is being appealed by the tribe.
So now we have a Border Patrol blockade, like Border Patrol vehicles, Alisa, basically protecting the contractors as they go out and are doing this work so that the tribe's police can't go in and remove them as they had been doing. What's this look like right now?
ALISA REZNICK: That's right. So I talked to Chairman Verlon Jose, who told me essentially that starting early Tuesday morning last week, so actually a week ago today, he started receiving calls from tribal police who said that they were seeing armed Border Patrol agents, armed federal personnel entering the nation alongside contractors. And then he started receiving calls from community members who might have gone to the border that morning or just seen this convoy driving by.
They were described as being in these tan fatigues with tactical gear, masks. And some people, Chairman Jose told me, thought that this was the military, maybe the National Guard. So they started realizing these are Border Patrol agents and some Bureau of Indian Affairs officers that were escorting the contractors so that they could do their work and, yes, preventing these escorts from the tribal police from happening by forming this blockade. Picture basically a blockade of these cars that makes it so that these trespassing citations cannot be done.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So Alisa, back up and talk about what the tribe's argument is against this wall. Why do they not want this there?
ALISA REZNICK: Sure. So like I mentioned, this 62-mile stretch of land has not had a wall, and that's pretty unique from other parts of the Arizona-Mexico border and really the U.S.-Mexico border as a whole. But it is because, in the past, this has been regarded as a tribal sovereignty issue.
Thinking back just to Trump 1.0, when the first border wall, the first 30-foot steel wall was going in, there was a stretch of land near Yuma that would have gone across the Colorado River stretch of the Cocopah Indian Tribe's land. That actually didn't go through, even though it was just 1 mile. So back then it was described as a sovereignty issue.
In fact, Congressman Raúl Grijalva, who I talked to back then about this, said, this is a showcase that the federal government does not want to test sovereignty questions with tribes.
So a little bit different now, and that is what the chairman is arguing here as well, essentially that this is their land and they've lost so much other ancestral land. So again, this tribe used to stretch deep into the state of Sonora in Mexico as well as further north, closer to Phoenix. And he says these are sacred sites that are in this border wall's path and just tribal land, cemeteries, things like that.
He talked a lot about this during a press conference at Quitobaquito. That's another sacred site that's not on the nation, but close to it, in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, just talking about the destruction that the tribe has already seen of some of its sites. Here he is.
VERLON JOSE: I would never go into your church and destroy it. I would never go into your home and destroy it. I would never go into your cemeteries and blow them up. That's exactly what has happened to the O'odham. That's exactly what's going to happen to us again.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. So Alisa, you're reporting now that the tribe is essentially assessing its options as this pre-construction work is happening, these armed guards are there, this blockade is there.
What are their options at this point? Can they do anything to stop this?
ALISA REZNICK: That's a good question, and it's kind of an open question right now. As we said, the tribe has filed their appeal to the preliminary injunction ruling. The tribe also has these other agreements in place with the federal government, things like forward operating bases that are on the nation, roads that have been cut through, they have the Shadow Wolves program, which is a group of tribal members that work with the Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection.
So the chairman, he told me that those agreements are in place right now, but there's a lot of things that are up in the air. Right now, nothing about those pre-existing agreements is changing.
Here he is again.
VERLON JOSE: Moving forward, what the nation will do is we will exercise all options available in opposition to this wall. At this moment, we do not have any issues with those existing agreements. What we do have an issue with is anything, anyone doing work to build a wall here.
LAUREN GILGER: Yeah. All right, we'll have to leave it there for now. That is KJZZ's Alisa Reznick joining us from our Fronteras Desk in Tucson covering this story. Alisa, thank you so much. Appreciate the time.
ALISA REZNICK: Thanks, Lauren.
