DHS Border Wall Construction Leads to Surveillance of Tohono O’odham Nation — ProPublica

At 4:59 a.m. on Aug. 25, Verlon Jose, the chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation in Southern Arizona, received an email from the head of the U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector. Government contractors were en route to conduct soil tests for construction of a 62-mile wall along the Nation’s southern boundary, wrote acting chief patrol agent Henry N. Laxdal.

If the tribe wished to have cultural monitors observe the work, they were welcome to, but they could not interfere with the government’s operations.

The work would begin in exactly one minute.

Jose, 59, was already aware of the contractors’ arrival. An hour earlier, a tribal member had called to report a caravan heading south through the reservation, and Facebook was lighting up with similar accounts. The convoy included not only work trucks and drilling rigs, but Border Patrol vehicles as well.

For months, the O’odham had maneuvered to avoid such a scene, taking their case to federal court. Their homeland straddles the border, and thousands of tribal members live in Mexico. A wall would disrupt routine border crossings for ceremonies and family visits and destroy landscapes they consider their duty to protect, members and leaders say. Their lawsuit argued that the Trump administration’s efforts to build it despite their opposition constituted an historic attack on tribal sovereignty.

But administration attorneys gave assurances that the government was engaging with the O’odham in good faith, and a judge in Washington, D.C., denied the tribe’s request for a preliminary injunction. In his Aug. 25 email providing Jose a 60-second heads up, the Border Patrol chief said his agency’s willingness to accommodate cultural monitors underscored its “commitment to ongoing coordination” with the Nation.

As daylight broke, Jose learned the contractors were guarded by federal agents in masks and tactical gear, drawn from a special operations cadre that participated in citywide sweeps in Minneapolis and Chicago the previous year, which left three people dead, including two U.S. citizens. When the tribe’s chief of police tried to reach the worksite, he was stopped at a roadblock set up by the agents.

Jose issued a statement on the Nation’s website declaring the incursion illegal and revealing that the Department of Homeland Security had deployed a surveillance blimp and enlisted Mexican security forces to help protect the work crews.

For a quarter-century, Tohono O’odham leaders have staved off a border wall by allowing DHS to use the reservation as a testing ground for some of the government’s most aggressive homeland security measures — from vehicle barriers on the reservation’s southern boundary, to state-of-the-art surveillance towers, to law enforcement partnerships with the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Despite the collaborations, and assurances from the Trump administration, ProPublica found that DHS has turned its vast apparatus on tribal members, with 24-hour surveillance directed at an ongoing border prayer ceremony and tribal members being questioned outside the reservation about their ceremonial activities. ProPublica’s account is based on photos, videos, court filings, interviews with tribal leadership, firsthand observations and more than 1,000 contemporaneously written observations compiled by tribal members.

The battle over a border wall on the Nation has broken along familiar partisan lines in Arizona. While GOP legislative leaders have filed briefs in support of the project, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs has done the same in support of the tribe.

Progressive U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva, whose district includes the reservation, has said she is crafting legislation to rein in the Department of Homeland Security’s sweeping powers to waive federal laws in order to expedite wall construction. The Trump administration has used those authorities to circumvent environmental and cultural preservation statutes on 60 occasions across its two terms.

For Deshane Gregg, whose vehicle was forced off the road by a convoy of contractors and federal agents, the recent show of force on the reservation has felt like a government siege, not cooperation.

“You just feel helpless. You see these people, and they’re just so aggressive. They want you to react. They want you to show them that we could be ugly too,” she said. “We’re just here doing prayer. We’re just here, not trying to bother them, but it gets to you when it’s constantly being like that.”

“The drones flying over us all day,” she added, “it’s a lot.”

ProPublica sent DHS, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the Border Patrol nearly 30 questions about the government’s surveillance and interactions with tribal members and leaders. The agencies answered none of those questions. Instead, CBP pointed to a statement Commissioner Rodney Scott made in August, in which he described the reservation’s southern boundary as “one of the most dangerous smuggling and trafficking corridors on the Southwest border” and a “remote desert that has facilitated decades of drug loads, migrant deaths, and cartel activity.”

Regarding construction of a wall, Scott said, “Congress funded this work, a Federal court has affirmed it, and CBP is carrying it out under the legal authorities that apply. Under President Trump’s leadership, we are securing the border and giving our agents the tools and support they need to protect the American people.”

With no sign the White House or the O’odham government is backing down, DHS has cast off any pretense that the agency will work cooperatively with the Nation. Within hours of the judge’s denial of the emergency injunction, on Aug. 14, the department’s general counsel, James Percival, posted a celebratory meme depicting one of the cybernetic Star Trek supervillains known as “the Borg.”

“RESISTANCE IS FUTILE,” it read.

“We respect tribal sovereignty but not to the detriment of border security,” he wrote. “This wall is getting built. Our authority is beyond dispute.”

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The O’odham have inhabited the Sonoran Desert, from what is now Southern Arizona to Mexico’s Sea of Cortez, for thousands of years. According to the tribe, roughly 14,000 of its 37,000 enrolled members live on tribal land west of Tucson. Approximately 3,000 more reside in Mexico. At 2.8 million acres, their reservation is the largest on the southern border by a long shot.

During President Donald Trump’s first term, Arizona saw 226 miles of border wall built, but the Nation maintained its status as the longest unwalled section in the state. Confirmation that things would be different this time came in February, when CBP informed the tribe that it planned to seal off the reservation entirely, tapping nearly $52 billion from Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The tribe’s elected leaders met with DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin in hopes of changing the administration’s mind. As an enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Mullin is the first Native American to head the department. “Maybe we can work with this guy,” Jose recalled thinking.

But Mullin’s message was clear: We want to work with you, but we’re building the wall. Justice Department attorneys were prepared to defend the project to the Supreme Court. O’odham council member Vivian Juan-Saunders, who also attended the April 21 meeting, recalls the secretary saying, “Don’t mess with me.” Mullin’s office did not respond to questions from ProPublica, including about the exchange.

The message was more direct the following month, when tribal leaders met with Scott. According to Jose, the CBP commissioner told the delegation that if they filed a lawsuit opposing the wall, the Nation could lose access to three border gates members use to travel to and from Mexico. Accessible only to tribal members, the gates are maintained at the discretion of CBP.

Juan-Saunders confirmed that CBP threatened to close the gates, as did another council member, Jesse Navarro. CBP declined to comment on the alleged threat.

In June, a $1.3 billion contract to build the wall, known as the “Tucson 5” project, was awarded to Sullivan Land Services Co., also known as SLS and SLSCO. The Texas firm has a long history of Republican political donations and was a major recipient of border wall contracts during Trump’s first term.

The O’odham filed a lawsuit to stop the project on June 16 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The tribe contended it would reduce the size of its reservation, which can only be done by Congress — and that the wall would mark an enduring act of trespass on sovereign lands and destroy sacred cultural sites.

The administration’s plans cast aside decades of tribal cooperation with DHS, the Nation’s lawyers argued, and came at a time of record-low border crossings.

Trump and his administration have repeatedly claimed that the border is safer than ever, with CBP reporting border apprehensions 94% lower than they were during the Biden presidency, and Border Patrol “encounters” hitting their lowest levels in more than 50 years. The Nation underscored these figures as evidence that a wall is unnecessary.

The tribe’s interim chief of police, James Cook, claimed there had been a 90% drop in reports of illegal entry over the preceding year, saying in a sworn declaration that smuggling and other border-related crimes had “almost disappeared.”

Benjamin S. Hollinder, a senior Border Patrol official, argued in a sworn declaration opposing the tribe’s lawsuit that the absence of a wall on the Nation has produced a funneling effect, channeling smugglers onto the reservation, and saying that dynamic would intensify once the rest of Arizona was walled off.

“Not having a border barrier system in this particular area makes it a vulnerable and a desirable area for [transnational criminal organizations] to operate,” wrote Hollinder. “If encounters of aliens entering illegally between ports of entry increase, vulnerabilities in the area will become particularly problematic.”

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The Nation sought the preliminary injunction to bar border wall activity until the litigation was resolved.

On the eve of a July 22 hearing, DHS filed a notice affirming that to accelerate the project, it was waiving, in whole or in part, more than 30 laws, including several that mandate tribal consultation.

In court filings, the government acknowledged its long history of working “cooperatively” with the tribal government while also arguing that the Nation “does not hold veto power over the United States’ sovereign duty to secure its borders.”

Trump administration attorneys contended that an injunction was premature; planning was ongoing, thus problems the Nation envisioned could still be addressed.

The government insisted construction would be limited to the Roosevelt Reservation, a 60-foot-wide zone that runs across California, Arizona and New Mexico on the U.S. side of the border, where CBP was authorized to construct barriers as it saw fit.

Riyaz Kanji, the tribe’s lead attorney, argued the Roosevelt Reservation doesn’t extend onto tribal land, and even if it did the rugged landscape would force construction to diverge far from the 60-foot boundary.

Sweeping as its powers were, Kanji contended, DHS could not override a sovereign government. The administration’s plans, he argued, constituted a “blatant and unprecedented disregard for the tribe’s rights.”

Adam R.F. Gustafson, a Justice Department attorney, countered that the tribe had already approved a barrier on its land many years ago. The question now was what kind of barrier it should be. That was for DHS to decide, he argued. The department was “committed” to consultation, he continued. “We take very seriously the tribe’s views on this,” he told the court.

The judge appeared swayed by DHS’ assurances but needed time to consider. “I don’t think the government is trying to go outside of that 60-foot strip,” he said.

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The O’odham suspected the government would not be as mindful as it claimed.

Two days after the meeting with Mullin, the DHS secretary, a border wall contractor had “inadvertently disturbed a cultural site” west of the reservation. The crew had bulldozed a 70-foot swath through the Las Playas Intaglio, a 200-foot long earthen etching in the shape of a fish that was at least 6,500 years old. The site was well marked and well known to area archaeologists.

Wynona P. Larson Yazzie, an O’odham tribal elder, Marine Corps veteran and former tribal police officer, had organized prayer runs that included stops at the intaglio. She’d visited the site the day before its destruction. Since then, she’d closely followed the Nation’s lawsuit.

On Aug. 6, Larson Yazzie saw a disturbing filing from the tribe’s attorneys. They’d received word that in four days government contractors would enter the reservation to conduct tests. DHS, the tribe argued, was “exploiting” the judge’s reflection period to “move forward with highly disputed actions.”

Tribal leaders erected dozens of 8-foot-wide “no trespassing” signs along the three main access roads leading through the reservation to the border.

Larson Yazzie, meanwhile, began making plans of her own.

She was joined by Amy Juan, a longtime O’odham activist. Juan, 40, had grown up riding in her grandfather’s truck over the clanking cattle guard at Ko:li Ki:jig, a traditional crossing on the U.S.-Mexico line. After 9/11, a locking gate was placed over the cattle guard. The Border Patrol built a “forward operating base” near her grandparents’ home that would eventually feature a helipad, a detention space and an endless cycle of agents. Around the reservation’s perimeter, CBP established some of the largest Border Patrol stations in the country. Checkpoints went up on roads leading north.

Human rights groups documented U.S.-born tribal members being arrested and deported, and verbal and physical abuse by Border Patrol agents. CBP did not respond when asked about the report’s allegations.

For Juan, the Nation’s collaboration with DHS had sacrificed safety and civil liberties for elusive gains. Virtually everyone on the reservation had been touched by the dark side of border smuggling. During the mid-2000s, some tribal members, enticed by a chance at life-changing money, got involved in moving people and drugs, fueling cycles of arrest and incarceration that exacerbated challenges the community was already facing.

At the same time, virtually everyone also had a story about negative interactions with the Border Patrol — a child traumatized at a checkpoint, an unlawful traffic stop or a loved one assaulted by an agent.

“We want safety and the same respect as the next person,” Juan said. “We’ve never been against keeping people safe, but at what cost?”

Larson Yazzie was similarly concerned. She worried that in the face of DHS pressure the Nation would fold and, like the intaglio, the borderlands would be lost.

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Prayer fires are an important O’odham tradition, often convened in moments of communal struggle. To Larson Yazzie, the coming of a wall was such a time.

The chosen site was symbolic: the border gate at Ko:li Ki:jig. The camp had limited amenities — cots and chairs that encircled the fire, a cooler for ice, a weathered canopy for relief from the sun. They called it Tadai Me:i — roadrunner on fire.

Someone was always awake to watch the flame, which was lit on Aug. 9, as the Trump administration’s contractors were preparing to enter the reservation. The first drone sighting in the area was recorded the following night, at 11:43 p.m., documented in the first of two activity logs. Kept in spiral notebooks, the logs offered a minute-by-minute account of what participants in the ceremony saw and heard.

The handwritten observations, shared with ProPublica, span 13 days and chart a steady escalation by DHS, culminating in an elite tactical team that blocked tribal authorities from issuing trespassing citations to contractors or removing them.

The camp wasn’t a protest site like those seen in Minneapolis, Chicago or other cities over the past year. Participants didn’t shout at passing Border Patrol agents. They focused on the fire, making sure there was enough sugai — creosote bush, a fragrant desert plant — to keep it burning. They were in ceremony, concentrating on morning prayers and nightly cleanses. The atmosphere was that of a family gathering in a moment of crisis. There were jokes and levity amid the uncertainty.

Larson Yazzie knew at least one legislative council member who opposed the gathering. They feared it could lead to large groups converging on the reservation to physically block the border wall, in an occupation similar to the 10-month protest on Standing Rock Sioux land that halted construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016. The idea terrified tribal leaders. With its lethal heat and unforgiving terrain, the desert was dangerous enough without outsiders squaring off against Border Patrol.

Supporters of the ceremonial fire were themselves uneasy. They knew the story of Ray Mattia, the 58-year-old who was shot and killed by the Border Patrol in 2023 while unarmed on the doorstep of his home on the reservation. Agents, who were backing tribal police on the call, claimed to have mistaken a cellphone he was holding for a gun.

“My fear is that they gonna start shooting us,” said 24-year-old camp visitor Collin Quasule. Quasule had videos on his phone of recent interactions he’d had with federal agents, including agents trailing him as he drove around the reservation, following him to his home, pulling him over without explaining why, refusing to accept his legal name and birthdate, and winking at him when he protested his detention.

Across the reservation, community members were on the lookout for large trucks traveling together with out-of-state plates. On Aug. 12, Juan received a call about a caravan: six trucks with Texas plates, following an unmarked SUV with government plates. She called the tribe’s police department. The caravan was intercepted and escorted off the land by tribal authorities. The driver of the unmarked vehicle was confirmed to be a Border Patrol agent. The interception was one of nearly a dozen tribal police recorded over a three-day period.

During the camp’s first seven days, the activity log filled with nearly 665 observations, mostly federal agents buzzing around their location.

While many would drive by without stopping, other agents would park and watch. At least one was reported snapping photos of the campers. ProPublica later obtained video of an agent doing exactly that. Mexican security forces, both military and police, were also observed conversing with Border Patrol agents over the international boundary. “It appeared that the 2 BPs were showing the Mexicans pictures on their phones,” read an Aug. 11 entry.

“Surveillance has heightened,” Juan said, days after the prayer fire was lit. “Drones, helicopters, a lot of air activity.” The choppers included both marked CBP and what appeared to be military Black Hawks. The drones were of the handheld quadcopter variety, let loose directly over the camp, at times during prayer song ceremonies.

On the fourth night, a gathering was held. Upwards of 100 people turned up, including members of distant sister tribes.

The evening was peaceful until Juan received a text from an elder couple who’d left early to return to their home near Tucson. The Border Patrol had stopped them at a checkpoint a half-mile outside the reservation, they reported. The officers said they were conducting an “immigration check” and asked to see tribal ID.

“Where you guys coming from?” the agent asked.

“Ceremony,” the couple replied.

“Oh,” the agent said, “is that the one going on down south?”

The encounter was unusual, said Juan. The checkpoint is rarely staffed. When agents are on hand, she said, “they never ask us for a tribal ID.”

When Juan shared the information with the gathering, people immediately began packing up, afraid, she surmised, of a late-night encounter with Border Patrol.

On Aug. 14, Judge Richard J. Leon declined the Nation’s injunction request. “I fully expect the government in the months ahead to follow through on its guarantees of consultation and cooperation with the Nation to address the Nation’s concerns regarding border wall construction!” he wrote.

Eleven days later, on Aug. 25, the Border Patrol sent the Nation its one-minute notice that the contractors were coming. Larson Yazzie jumped in her truck and raced for the border to document what was happening. An agent on foot stopped her. He’d laid a spike strip in the road ahead, he warned. Larson Yazzie filmed the contractors in the distance.

When the tribal police department’s interim chief arrived, he too was stopped at a Border Patrol roadblock. A trio of Border Patrol supervisors approached, including two from a nearby station and a third representing BORTAC, the agency’s special operations wing. The SWAT-style agents wore desert camo, masks and patterned scarves favored by U.S. military units in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It was only after promising not to interfere that the tribal police chief was permitted to record. He observed three drilling rigs manned by a handful of operators. An equal number of agents stood guard. The contractors’ heavy vehicles were all beyond the 60-foot zone that government attorneys assured the judge they would not leave.

The chief also encountered a trio of Bureau of Indian Affairs agents, who claimed to have been sent on orders from Washington, D.C. Their mission, they said, was to “preserve the peace and monitor activities.”

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For the prayer camp’s participants, the need to relight the flame, which they had extinguished after a seven-day ceremony, was self-evident. They began that night.

Davy Cross, a stocky 57-year-old with an intricate tattoo running down the left side of his face, was tending the fire when, at 4:33 a.m., he noticed buzzing above his head.

At first, the machines were visible. There were at least five. “I seen all the red lights,” Cross recalled. But as they got lower, the drones went dark. Cross could still hear them and feel the draft of the rotors against his skin. Then, he said, “they disappeared.”

The drones were soon replaced by an airplane and a helicopter. Shortly after 9 a.m., a caravan of Border Patrol and construction vehicles trundled into view. The work trucks continued on, but much of the Border Patrol force remained, forming a semicircle around the camp with Mexican state police closing the loop on the other side of the line.

“We got surround[ed] by over 30 vehicles,” Cross wrote in the activity log. A video of the moment spread across social media in the borderlands.

The tribe’s attorneys filed an appeal of the judge’s order allowing construction to proceed and pleaded for a halt to the government’s activities. They argued that the Trump administration was making “a mockery” of the court’s expectation of “consultation and cooperation.”

That night at the camp, Larson Yazzie was singing prayer songs when Juan pulled in. It was near midnight. Border Patrol agents were coming and going constantly. Some passed without stopping. Others idled at the edge of the firelight while the red lights of a surveillance blimp blinked over the mountains to the east.

Tadai Me:i wasn’t the only pocket of resistance on the border. In Texas, the Trump administration’s plans to run a wall through Big Bend National Park had brought together an unusual coalition that saw environmental nonprofits and river guides standing with hunters, ranchers and local sheriffs in opposition to the project. One week before the armed convoy rolled onto the Tohono O’odham reservation, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott announced that after speaking with the secretary of DHS, he’d secured a pause on the controversial project.

“There are technology tools that don’t include barriers,” the governor said at a press conference. “Think of drones, think of fiber optics.”

Last week, a judge granted a preliminary injunction halting construction in the Big Bend area while a lawsuit against the project proceeds.

To Juan, it was darkly ironic. For two and a half decades, the Nation had been a laboratory for the technology Abbott described. Yet when tribal leaders made that case, they were told to stand down; the wall was coming whether they accepted it or not. “What makes Texas the exception to us is very clear,” Juan said. “It’s good old boy conversations that are happening between the politicians and the CBP commissioners and Markwayne Mullin.”

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The early fire watch that morning fell to a young Pascua Yaqui member named Nate Sosa.

At 3:28 a.m., Sosa heard a noise — a round being chambered in a weapon. A Border Patrol agent had exited his vehicle. With a long gun slung low across his back, he shined a light into Mexico. He then walked within feet of the campers asleep on their cots.

A half an hour later, a drone flew in from the north, followed by a helicopter. After that came a convoy dozens of vehicles long. At 6:02, while Larson Yazzie was leading the camp in prayer, a helicopter passed overhead. An hour later, a drone ascended above the fire.

Liz Quiroga, a 28-year-old tribal member and regular at the prayer site, sat with the camp’s logbook open in her lap. Over the next five days, the book would fill with 379 observations. Nearly two-thirds involved Border Patrol units near the fire. The arrival of Mexican authorities was documented six times. An additional 39 entries referenced unmarked vehicles and suspected “undercovers.” Whether those individuals were Border Patrol, contractors or tribal police was unclear. The logbook cataloged a dozen instances of aircraft flying over the camp, including four helicopters, three planes and five drones.

“Nobody has any idea what’s actually happening out here,” Quiroga said. “This is true dystopia.”

While its legal challenge continues, the Nation has ceased attempting to remove border wall contractors from its lands.

The camp and the surveillance that’s come with it remain.