Federal Incursion into Border Region Strains Relations With Tohono O’odham

On August 25, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) contractors, along with about 20 armed Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) officers, came onto tribal lands with drill trucks and set to work at three separate points on Arizona’s border with Mexico. They sought to lay the groundwork for a section of border wall, pursuant to President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14165. According to a statement from Arizona’s Tohono O’odham Nation, the incursion took place without a required consultation and “in complete disregard for the Nation’s laws and sovereignty.”

Tohono O’odham leaders have long objected to the intrusions of contractors and federal agents. The latest incursion has inflamed tensions between advocates of tribal sovereignty and feds who believe their mandate supersedes local laws, customs, traditions, and interests.

“There are armed men in attendance as contractors tear up the landscape along the building path,” said Dr. Reva Mariah ShieldChief, a professor at Tohono O’odham Community College (speaking to Arizona Globe as a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation and not as a representative of her institution). Their presence has placed residents of the area under the purview of federal agents as well as Bureau of Indian Affairs police officers who are not typically from Arizona, she added.

Although some observers might view the August 25 incident as one more excess of federal agencies under the Trump administration, the issues involved date back much further than either of Trump’s two terms, noted David Martinez, director of the Institute for Transborder Indigenous Nations at Arizona State University. Indeed, incursions on Tohono O’odham land along the border have been an issue ever since the U.S. Border Patrol’s formation under the Labor Appropriations Act of 1924, Martinez told Arizona Globe.

The misalignment of tribal and federal views on sovereignty, and the protocols for entering tribal land, has grown particularly severe ever since national security came into the spotlight in the current millennium, Martinez observed. “The tension between the feds and tribes has only built up and intensified over the generations. In particular, things started increasing in intensity in the post-9/11 era, which still informs border politics today. A lot of what is happening along the border right now, including that part that coincides with Tohono O’odham Nation land, is due to the ongoing war on terror,” he said.

Of course, the threat of terrorism necessitates firm and comprehensive countermeasures, and border security is a valid concern. But the situation on the ground in Arizona is complex, and the imperative of preventing bad actors from slipping through the border has given federal agencies carte blanche to flout laws and customs at odds with their freedom to do as they please. Rationales for incursions also tend to make reference to the danger from Mexico’s powerful and feared cartels, Martinez acknowledged.

“The federal side has labeled what’s been going on as a national emergency. Hence all the waivers of environmental laws, antiquities laws, and cultural preservation laws. And, so, the Tohono O’odham and other tribes are expected to accommodate the emergency measures,” he added.

Some at the federal level, Martinez acknowledged, have made good-faith efforts to address the challenges that President Trump’s executive orders on border security, namely the one issued on January 25, 2017 (which President Biden subsequently revoked), and its successor on January 20, 2025, have posed for sovereignty. Such efforts, however, have led to a mixed outcome at best.

“The General Accounting Office did issue a report in 2023 that documented what was done, what went right and what went wrong, and made recommendations for enhancing the implementation of federal immigration law when it has an impact on public land as well as tribal land,” Martinez noted. “So, presumably, the tribal consultation process was supposed to have been strengthened. But I think Tohono O’odham leadership would tell you that that has not taken place.”

Running Roughshod

The feds have paid little attention to the impact on the lives of people in the border communities, ShieldChief observed. “I would propose that we intimately understand the dangers that occur when the natural pathways water travels through across the desert, or out of a spring, are damaged. It destroys life,” she said.

“Personally, it makes me sad and angry. The U.S. has no understanding that there are still homes whose access to water is limited. It is immeasurably expensive to have water lines connect to some of our villages and homesteads,” ShieldChief continued. Ordinary rainfall, and the water from monsoons, are indispensable for local farming, and, of course, horses, cattle, deer, mountain lions, javelina, and other animals cannot live without water, she added.

Besides damage to the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, the incursions have already resulted in the partial razing of the Las Playas Intaglio, a 272-foot etching in the shape of a fish, noted ShieldChief. They pose a threat to artifacts that outsiders might not view as significant, but that have deep importance for members of the tribe.

One of the factors here, Martinez explained, is that tribal officials have reasons for not publicizing the fact that a given site contains artifacts, relics, and/or remains of historical and anthropological interest. The dangers of theft, looting, and desecration are not slight.

“Part of the ethical dilemma in protecting sacred sites is keeping them private, because you don’t want too many outsiders rushing in to take a look,” Martinez reflected. “But the word in the community is that this 62-mile construction that they’re planning will inevitably destroy sacred sites, and archaeologically significant sites as well.”

For outsiders, it may be hard to comprehend why that possibility is so concerning for many tribes. “Traditionally, and I think this is true of most indigenous peoples, when it comes to artifacts, and certainly when it comes to human remains, that are all part of a given historical or sacred location, part of the tradition is leaving the sites and items in place,” Martinez explained. “These items and places belong to the ancestors who lived there, and there is a very real belief that their spirits still live there and should not be disturbed. And so they are treated with a great deal of circumspection. You don’t go there as if you were visiting a tourist site, you know that you should keep your distance from these places.”

“For the better part of the last 150 years, indigenous people in the Southwest have had to accommodate, if that is the right word, archaeological excavations in places that are now designated as part of the park system, and over which tribes have struggled to maintain some kind of control or influence,” Martinez continued.

Common Interests

For all the tensions between federal and tribal officials, parties on either side have an interest in ensuring the integrity of borders and the sanctity of property. In recent years, policy changes have driven some migrants away from more populated towns and localities, such as Nogales, and toward areas seen as having less protection, Martinez noted.

“The Tohono O’odham Nation has seen, over the years, increases in the amount of traffic that crosses into reservation land. And that has had an impact on villages along the southern border,” he said. “In all honesty, we should acknowledge that the Tohono O’odham themselves are not unanimous in their opinions about the nature of the problem and how to handle it, and you will find differences of opinion about the wall itself, the presence of border patrol agents, and whether or not the immigrants are a major problem or a non-crisis type of problem.”

“We have much less of an issue with illegal immigration than folks who live and work much further away,” ShieldChief commented. “We understand strife and the need to move to find a better way to support our families.”

In the border region, agents guided from the outside are sometimes the most destabilizing elements, she noted. “I can say from personal experience that the Border Patrol has cut fences, scattering cattle and horses. They often harass drivers coming from their villages because we’re driving vehicles they haven’t seen before.”

A rational solution is not to end the federal presence altogether, but to ensure that any incursions happen in a manner that is lawful, mindful of local concerns, and enjoys the consent of tribal officials. To that end, Tohono O’odham leaders are preparing to lobby members of Congress, and Seventh District Representative Adelita Grijalva, in particular, in an effort to bring new legislation to the floor, Martinez said. Other options are also under discussion, including going to a local judge to get an injunction against the DHS contractors’ and border agents’ incursions, he added.

The legal realm “is our most viable battlefield,” Martinez added. “And that is the way it has been in federal Indian affairs for the last 200 years – going to the courts, and especially the Supreme Court. Because we don’t have any economic power. We’re not military forces, as we once were, during the so-called frontier days. And so we have to find our power and our strength elsewhere,” he said.