Translated by Schools for Chiapas in collaboration with Avispa Mídia
The night gradually fades, and the sun begins to cast its first rays of light upon a more than 200-year-old cottonwood tree, where the Tohono O’odham people are performing a ritual. Other trees like this one were cut down weeks ago so that heavy machinery could tear into the earth and fill the area with concrete—the foundation that will support the double border wall Donald Trump is building—cutting through this Native American people’s ancestral territory, which straddles the border between Mexico and the United States.
Dozens of activists have also gathered at the foot of this tree; some of them decided to climb up and remain in its branches as an act of resistance to prevent it from being cut down.
“They’ve been razing the trees and vegetation since early August,” say members of the resistance camp called O:ṣhad (jaguar in the Tohono O’odham language).
And so, around that same time in August, environmentalists, anarchists, workers, and activists from the U.S. began arriving to join this resistance. “This cottonwood we’re defending today is about 15 or 20 meters from where the machines had been working. Since early August, they’ve been clearing the forest and then digging to build the wall. Some climbed the tree to prevent it from being cut down, and they haven’t come down since,” says a member of O:ṣhad who, due to recent policies of persecution against activists in this country, has decided to remain anonymous.
“Because of the growing number of people at this camp, they decided to stop cutting down trees—perhaps hoping we’d get tired. But more and more people keep arriving,” the O:ṣhad activist tells Avispa Mídia.
Since December 2025, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have awarded five new contracts totaling $3.3 billion for the construction of the so-called “Smart Wall” along the U.S.-Mexico border, between Texas and Arizona, which affects the Tohono O’odham Nation, whose territory straddles both countries.
You may be interested in: The Tohono O’odham People: A Nation Divided by Trump’s Wall
“Building a wall on our Nation’s land would mean illegally seizing our lands and reducing the size of our reservation—something DHS has no authority to do,” warned spokespeople for the Tohono O’odham Nation.
The Tohono O’odham Nation immediately mobilized and developed a strategy combining legal action and peaceful resistance. On June 16, they filed a federal lawsuit against DHS in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, arguing that the construction violates their tribal sovereignty, illegally seizes lands from their reservation, and destroys sacred sites.
One day later, on June 17, they also filed a legal motion seeking an emergency preliminary injunction to freeze the awarding of contracts and halt the entry of heavy machinery onto their lands while the initial lawsuit was being resolved.
The response was not long in coming. On August 18, District Judge Richard J. León, in an 18-page ruling, denied the preliminary injunction requested by this community. One of the arguments in the ruling is that the Tohono O'odham failed to demonstrate that this project encroaches on their boundaries.
Furthermore, he ruled that the government has the right to build under the 1907 presidential proclamation, known as the Roosevelt Reservation. This proclamation, according to the judge, sets aside a 60-foot-wide strip along the border for federal use; therefore, he ruled that the wall is being built in accordance with the mandate to “secure the border, enforce immigration laws, and ensure public safety,” as stated in the ruling.
A few days later, Verlon M. Jose and Carla L. Johnson, officials of the indigenous nation, reported that approximately 20 armed and masked federal agents were accompanying the contractors who had been awarded the projects and had entered their territory. “The contractors, who were illegally present on the Nation’s territory, were accompanied by agents while they worked at three different locations near the border with drilling trucks to take soil samples and carry out other activities,” Johnson stated.
See also: Indigenous People Denounce the Destruction of Sacred Sites by the Mexico-U.S. Border Wall
The Tohono O'odham strongly denounce this as a flagrant violation of Title 4, Chapter 2 of their legal code, specifically because this “civil raid” constitutes an intrusion into their territory. As a fully recognized Indigenous nation, they establish through their laws the conditions under which a non-member of the community is permitted—or not permitted—to enter. Therefore, they maintain that the federal incursion is violating their right to self-determination.
Joining the armed CBP entry were agents from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (SWAT BORTAC), an elite force specializing in military-level tactical operations, designed to intervene in operations by drug cartels, high-profile human smuggling networks, and terrorist threats. It is now being used to protect contractors working on the section of the wall known as Project Tucson 5.
Another activist told the Avispa Mídia team that “it’s not just in Arizona; there are other acts of resistance surrounding the wall, such as ‘No Big Bend Wall!’ (No to the Big Bend Wall).” Indeed, the movement the activist refers to is focused on the section of the project known as the Big Bend Wall 2, which runs through the national park bearing the project’s name and is located in West Texas along the Rio Grande. This resistance has also succeeded in temporarily halting the advance of heavy machinery into this ecological area.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Smart Wall aims to construct 2,560 kilometers (1,591 miles) of primary wall and 1,050 kilometers (653 miles) of secondary wall—that is, two walls. In the case of Tohono O’odham territory, it is classified as the area with the “greatest conflict” due to the growing resistance.
In this area, the construction work has been divided into 8 main projects and sections: the Tucson 1 Wall Project, involving the construction of 22.5 miles of secondary wall, crossing protected areas such as the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge; the Tucson 2 Wall Project, comprising a massive section of 20.7 miles of primary wall and 91.4 miles of secondary wall; the Tucson 3 Wall Project, designed exclusively to add 66.1 miles of secondary barriers; Tucson 4 Wall Project, which includes a 13.1-mile segment of primary wall along with 45.4 miles of secondary wall; and Tucson 5 Wall Project, which is the longest in the sector at 61.7 miles of primary wall, running directly along the border of the Tohono O’odham Nation Reservation.
The indigenous people, along with the activists, remain vigilant because, despite a temporary suspension of work on Tucson Segment 5, elite forces and the Border Patrol are still present. “Meanwhile, the resistance is growing stronger and has united around the cottonwood tree, where we also sing and spend time together. It is a legal battle, but also a spiritual one, because this tree represents an ancestor of the people. It is not just about the loss of land, but about the destruction of sacred sites,” says the O:ṣhad activist.
Meanwhile, “the Nation continues to monitor these activities, while working to prevent further escalation,” reported the Native American community’s authorities.
The smart wall
To build the smart wall, CBP has invoked Proclamation 10142—the Declaration of a National Emergency on the Southern Border of the United States—through which it has requested $46.5 billion from Congress, to be allocated, in addition to the two walls, for the construction of roads, artificial intelligence-based detection technology, cameras, lighting, and, in some cases, water barriers.
Some of the surveillance technology is of Israeli origin, provided by defense contractors who designed similar systems for the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, such as Elbit Systems, with which the U.S. government has signed various contracts. Last July, CBP signed several contracts through its subsidiary Elbit Systems of America; although no details are available, the company itself stated that the contracts are “worth a total of more than $370 million to strengthen U.S. national security and that the work will be completed by May 2029.”
Bezhalel (Butzi) Machlis, president and CEO of the company, said, “These new contracts demonstrate Elbit Systems of America’s ongoing contribution to enhancing U.S. security and defense capabilities. “Our advanced technologies, proven in operational settings worldwide, are designed to provide a reliable, real-time situational awareness, helping our customers address complex operational challenges.”
Among the technologies the company has already provided are long-range integrated surveillance towers. This technology is currently equipped with artificial intelligence-powered sensors to detect, identify, and track targets. There are also extensive contracts for this technology with General Dynamics Information Technology in partnership with Anduril Industries.
To date, according to digital rights organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), approximately 830 towers of this type have been installed along the border wall, of which at least 598 are autonomous models powered by artificial intelligence.
The report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) describes the tower program as the backbone of the Smart Wall; therefore, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is seeking to allocate $1 billion so that the agency can triple the number of towers along the border with Mexico, reaching at least 2,300 by 2034.
Better known as Autonomous Surveillance Towers (AST), they are equipped with radar, optical, and thermal cameras and are self-sufficient, as they run on solar power. The artificial intelligence software to be used is Lattice, developed by Anduril Industries, a company founded by Palmer Luckey—a major donor to Trump’s political ecosystem—with backing from Peter Thiel, co-founder of Palantir.
The strategy doesn’t stop there, as it extends to the financial sector through a partnership between the architects of the wall and the banking industry, with the launch of Erebor Bank—a U.S. digital bank founded by Palmer Luckey in Columbus, Ohio—created specifically to finance and provide services to the U.S. defense, artificial intelligence, and cryptocurrency industries, among others. It is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund (led by Peter Thiel), Lux Capital, and 8VC (led by Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of Palantir).
The EFF describes this expansion as a “digital dumping ground for human rights and civil liberties,” making it clear that the objective—in addition to targeting migrants—is to surveil 15 million residents in the border region.
