Border Wall Construction Destroys Thousand-Year-Old Indigenous Sacred Sites

U.S. federal contractors are destroying sacred Indigenous sites and cultural landmarks to construct new sections of the U.S.-Mexico border wall, following the Department of Homeland Security's decision to waive cultural and environmental protection laws. The 1,000-year-old Las Playas Intaglio geoglyph in Arizona has been damaged, and Kuuchamaa Mountain in California is being blasted with dynamite and bulldozed. Customs and Border Protection claimed some damage was inadvertent and said it is working to minimize impacts, though tribal leaders reject that characterization. The agency is also attempting to seize land on Mount Cristo Rey in New Mexico, a Catholic pilgrimage site, prompting a legal challenge from the Diocese of Las Cruces to block the transfer. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has stated his intent to build border walls as fast as possible, backed by over $46 billion in congressional funding. The Trump administration maintains the barriers are necessary to stop illegal immigration and drug trafficking. Indigenous leaders from the Kumeyaay Nation and Tohono O'odham Nation have condemned the destruction as avoidable losses of irreplaceable history. The Inter-Tribal Association of Arizona has joined lobbying efforts to protect ancestral lands. Tribal leaders argue the government is violating federal laws that make the desecration of sacred Native American sites a felony. In Texas, wall plans near Big Bend National Park, an area rich with canyonland pictographs and petroglyphs, have been replaced by surveillance technology.