Skip to content

Border Wall

Native Activist Found Not Guilty In Border Protest

January 21, 2022 Paul Ingram, Tucson Sentinel. , , ,
Amber Ortega, a Southern Arizona border activist facing two federal charges for protesting the construction of the border wall near Quitobaquito Springs, was found not guilty by a federal judge on Wednesday. Following a short motions hearing, U.S. Magistrate Judge Leslie A. Bowman ruled that the federal government had imposed a "substantial burden" on Ortega's exercise of her religious faith by closing access to the border road that runs just south of Quitobaquito Springs — an area that remains central to the spiritual practices of the Hia C-ed O’odham. The on-the-spot change in the verdict felt like "a dream," Ortega said. Ortega and her friend and mentor Nellie Jo David were arrested on Sept. 9, 2020, by National Park Service officers just beyond Quitobaquito — about 120 miles southwest of Tucson...

Defund The Global Climate Wall

November 6, 2021 Todd Miller, The Border Chronicle. , , ,
Blinken’s sentiment was echoed by a report on the impact of climate change and migration from the White House earlier this month, one of a slew of reports as the U.S. prepared for the United Nations summit on climate change that begins in Glasgow on October 31. According to the report, “The current migration situation extending from the U.S.-Mexico border into Central America presents an opportunity for the United States to model good practice and discuss openly managing migration humanely, [and] highlight the role of climate change in migration.”

Smart Borders Or A Humane World?

October 8, 2021 Mizue Aizeki, Immigrant Defense Project. , , ,
This report delves into the rhetoric of “smart borders” to explore their ties to a broad regime of border policing and exclusion that greatly harms migrants and refugees who either seek or already make their home in the United States. Investment in an approach centered on border and immigrant policing, it argues, is incompatible with the realization of a just and humane world. Case studies from Chula Vista, California, the European Union, Honduras, Mississippi, and the Tohono O’odham Nation provide substance to this analysis. So, too, do graphics that illustrate the militarized US border strategy and the associated expansion of borders; the growing border industrial complex; the spreading web of surveillance; and the relationship between wall-building, global inequality, and climate change-related displacement.

Campaigners Take Direct Action As Palestinians Remember Balfour’s Shameful Declaration

November 6, 2020 Tom Anderson, The Canary. , , ,
The Balfour Declaration is the name given to the statement in 1917 by British foreign secretary lord Balfour promising a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. Britain had taken control of Palestine after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. That “national home” was to be created at the expense of the indigenous Palestinian population. According to a press release from campaign group Palestine Action: This 67-word document presented by Arthur Balfour in 1917 paved the way for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the violent dispossession of 750,000 Palestinians —more than half the indigenous population.

Our Fight For Quitobaquito

October 24, 2020 Hon'mana Seukteoma, Medium. , , ,
Border wall construction is destroying the Sonoran Desert’s most sacred spring. Growing up as a Tohono O’odham woman on my ancestral homelands taught me one thing above all: Take care of the land and the land will take care of you. When the federal government ramped up border-wall construction in Arizona, I knew I had to fight for my homelands, which are split in half by the U.S-Mexico border. I knew that meant activating my community, facing construction workers and opposing the U.S. Border Patrol and its long history of brutalizing O’odham tribal members.

Native Americans Tear Gassed, Arrested On Indigenous Peoples’ Day

October 13, 2020 Kenny Stancil, Commondreams. , , ,
Twelve people, including at least eight Native Americans, were arrested near an immigration checkpoint in Southern Arizona on Indigenous Peoples' Day after United States Border Patrol agents and Arizona law enforcement officials violently repressed a peaceful action held Monday morning by roughly 30 land and water protectors. The O'odham Anti Border Collective—a group of Akimel O'odham, Tohono O'odham, and Hia Ced O'odham tribal members that seeks to promote the cultural practices and protect the homelands of all O'odham nations "through the dismantling of colonial borders"...

Protesters Block Highway Near Border Wall Construction

October 7, 2020 Rafael Carranza, AZ Central. , , ,
Tucson - Activists and allies of two O'odham groups protesting the construction of a border wall along ancestral tribal lands in southern Arizona temporarily blocked the highway leading to construction sites in the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Members of the two groups, the O'odham Anti Border Collective and Defend O'odham Jewed, and non-Indigenous allies set up early Monday morning what they described as a "soft blockade" of State Route 85, using caution tape and canopy tents to stop traffic, some of which also was headed to the Lukeville border crossing with Mexico. 

Tribes Sue Over Border Wall

September 26, 2020 Native News Online. , , ,
Washington - A group of federally recognized tribes sued the Trump Administration on Wednesday over construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall, saying the controversial barrier impinges on tribal members’ ability to practice their religious beliefs and cultural traditions.  A group of five Kumeyaay Nation tribes filed the lawsuit in federal D.C. court against three government agencies — the Department of Homeland Security, U.S Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — and their top executives.

Kumeyaay Nation Protest Stops Construction On Border Wall

July 19, 2020 Max Rivlin-Nadler, KPBS. , , ,
Just before dawn on Friday, members of the Kumeyaay Nation set out to protest the construction of a border wall atop their ancestral lands in the Laguna Mountains. The youth-led group said the government has refused to consult with them to identify possible heritage sites they say the massive construction project is now destroying. “We found midden soil, which is signs of cremation, which is our remains. We found tools and flakes and stuff that symbolizes there are villages in this area and that our people stayed here,” said Cynthia Parada, a councilwoman with the La Posta band of Mission Indians. “Usually when they stay here, they’re buried here as well.

Trump Used Looted Venezuelan Public Money To Build Border Wall

July 3, 2020 Ben Norton, The Grayzone. , , , ,
Since the United States initiated a coup attempt against Venezuela’s elected leftist government in January 2019, up to $24 billion worth of Venezuelan public assets have been seized by foreign countries, primarily by Washington and member states of the European Union. President Donald Trump’s administration has used at least $601 million of that looted Venezuelan money to fund construction of its border wall with Mexico, according to government documents first reviewed by Univision. During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump insisted countless times that he would “make Mexico pay” to build a gargantuan wall covering all of the roughly 2,000 miles (3,145 kilometers) of its northern border.

Restrictive Immigration Boomerangs Against The United States

June 30, 2020 Rosa Miriam Elizalde,  La Jornada. , , ,
The European Union has prepared a preliminary draft of its new border regulations, outlining who can visit after July 1, and that this list depends on how the countries of origin of the prospective travelers are dealing with the new coronavirus.  People from the U.S., at this point, will be excluded.  “This viewpoint is a severe blow for U.S. prestige in the world and a rejection of the management of the virus in the U.S. on the part of President Trump,” the Times added.  Among the acceptable travelers for the European Union are those from Cuba, the country against which the U.S. began to build economic, financial, and military walls beginning in the 1960s, continuing with a new sanction each week since Trump entered the White House.  In other words, the United States has closed itself off, and the world is closed to it, while Cuba has been open to international collaboration against the challenge of the coronavirus, and is welcomed everywhere in the world in this effort.

Border Wall Is An Ecologist’s Nightmare

February 16, 2020 Kelsey Yule, Otherwords.org. , ,
I have spent the past seven years studying the rich biological communities of Arizona’s Sonoran Desert. Few places there are more captivating than the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. The monument is home to breathtaking cacti that have stood for over a century, as well as several endangered animal species. It’s also the rightful, sacred land of the Indigenous O’odham Nation. Despite the awe I have felt there in the past, I haven’t visited Organ Pipe recently. It’s just too heartbreaking. Why? Because right now, President Trump’s border wall is turning the landscape into an ecological dystopia. The Department of Homeland Security is leveling this precious habitat with absolutely no regard for the delicacy of this place’s unique cultural and ecological resources, ravaging one of the most iconic sites in the Western hemisphere.
Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.