Lochiel Raid Inflames Border Tensions and Draws Rebuke from Seventh District Rep. Grijalva

On October 5, Customs and Border Protection (CPB) agents raided an area near Lochiel, Arizona, and reportedly arrested at least 12 activists who had gathered in an attempt to stop the removal of an ancient cottonwood tree. A crane then razed the tree, the last of four that stood in the way of the planned construction of a section of border wall.

Coming just weeks after a controversial August 25 federal incursion into Tohono O’odham Nation lands along the border, the raid, arrests, and felling of the tree exacerbated tensions between conservationists and members of the Nation, on the one hand, and federal agencies seeking to carry out President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14165, on the other.

Democrat Rep. Adelita Grijalva, whose seventh district includes Lochiel, blasted the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the CPB for the Monday raid and for razing the cottonwood. She issued a statement charging that federal agents had injured protestors in addition to uprooting the last of four century-old cottonwoods in the area. “This is what the militarization of our borderlands looks like—and it’s all because DHS has more taxpayer dollars than it knows what to do with, and is wasting them on a reckless and useless second border wall,” the statement alleged. “Our borderlands are home to unique ecosystems and world-class biodiversity, including some of the last remaining habitat for the Sonoran jaguar in the United States.”

The congresswoman also criticized the U.S. Forest Service for having abruptly posted an alert on its website about a “Barrier Construction Closure,” effective from September 28, 2026, to January 20, 2029. The alert closed roads and restricted public access across a huge swath of land in order to give federal agents a free hand for wall construction, charged Grijalva, a frequent critic of the agency.

Grijalva also asserted that “DHS and its private contractors have repeatedly shown they cannot be trusted to protect sensitive cultural and environmental sites,” and called for greater public access to and oversight of the lands in question. Her comments hearkened back to a statement her office put out on September 29, just after the alert went live, in which she argued, “Using border wall construction to justify closing dozens of acres of public lands at a moment’s notice through January 2029 is unnecessary and deeply troubling—especially when these lands include sensitive ecosystems” that “cannot simply be replaced.”

In the Lochiel incident, “the protestors were doing all they could with regard to the construction of the border wall,” Dr. Reva Mariah ShieldChief, a professor at Tohono O’odham Community College, wrote in an email to Arizona Globe (expressing her own views, not those of her institution).

Although it does appear that the protestors were on private property, ShieldChief commented, there is some uncertainty as to whether the cottonwood was on that property or not. Nonetheless, the activists, one of whom the federal agents reportedly had to remove from the tree by force, “were occupying the space in order to protect it,” she said.

“It is interesting that local law authorities were not notified of the proceedings. I find the whole thing a gigantic red flag,” ShieldChief added. “Besides the repercussions to my own Indian Nation, it seems that the disruption to the environment is woefully and willfully underestimated.”

The reaction to the raid illustrates the growing convergence of political, cultural, ecological, and geological concerns in the long-running disputes over what to do about the porousness of the Mexican border and how to balance local autonomy with national security.

Some observers argue that increased intervention is necessary to keep the boundary secure, pointing to the example of Lukeville, Arizona, which gained notoriety during the Biden administration for the constant stream of illegal crossings that took place there and the hundreds of occasions on which CPB agents had to repair new gaps punched in the border. Although more than two hundred miles from Lochiel, Lukeville lies in the same seventh district for which Grijalva is responsible, and the problems of the two communities have much in common. Nowhere did Grijalva’s October 5 statement make any reference to past and continuing problems with border security in her district.

But the federal agents in the Monday raid carried out what they saw as their mandate with total indifference to local customs, traditions, and beliefs, in the view of David Martinez, director of the Institute for Transborder Indigenous Nations at Arizona State University. “Lochiel is located in the heart of Sobaipuri O’odham ancestral land,” Martinez told Arizona Globe. “Historically, the region was shared with Chiricahua Apache,” who were once enemies of the O’odham, he noted.

What makes the actions of the federal agents especially callous is the role and status of the cottonwood, or auppa, tree, which Martinez described as part of an ancient tree community. “An essential source for O’odham tools, homes, and food, auppa appear frequently in O’odham oral tradition. As a vital part of O’odham subsistence, auppa are considered to be living members of the O’odham community, hence the reference to fallen cottonwood as ‘grandmother,’” he said.

In tribal oral traditions, the auppa figures directly in a tale of survival told through the ages, Martinez noted. “There’s a story they tell at Gila Crossing village, where my family is from, that refers to a cottonwood tree. It involves a mahkai, or medicine maker, who felt disrespected by the people, so he caused a flood. To protect himself from what he did, he climbed one of the auppa along the banks of the Gila River.”

Rep. Grijalva’s office did not respond by press time to a request for comment.