Of the more than $170 billion that President Donald Trump secured for his border regime in the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” nearly $50 billion is allocated to border wall construction.
asserted
billion → secure → construction
Even with these enormous resources, however, the administration continues to face challenges constructing its monument to violent exclusion along the southern border through tribal, private, and state lands.
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administration → continue → lands
For nearly a month, the key force standing in the way of Trump’s border wall project in southeast Arizona has been a person sitting in a 200-year-old tree.
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force → stand → tree
More precisely, at every moment since late July, one person — although not always the same person — has been on a platform in the branches of a giant cottonwood tree in Lochiel, Arizona, with an expanding encampment of primarily local activists 50 feet below.
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person → expand → activists
The protesters’ aim is to stop the ongoing construction of two parallel, 30-foot-high border walls ripping through the remote San Rafael Valley.
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aim → stop → Valley
Miles of the double wall structure have already been built in the area.
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Miles → build → area
This part of the valley is sparsely populated and hardly ever used as a border-crossing site by humans, but is renowned as a unique wildlife migration corridor.
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part → use → corridor
According to the Sierra Club’s borderlands coordinator, Erick Meza, the region is “a biodiversity hotspot and the most important jaguar corridor that we have left in the U.S.”
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we → accord → U.S.
Residents from Lochiel and the surrounding area, including from Sonora, Mexico, had been coming together regularly for over a year for binational gatherings to organize against wall construction.
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Residents → surround → construction
They shared music, art, food, and ceremonies across the border, which is demarcated there by only a rancher’s wire fence.
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which → share → fence
The planned double wall structure, with a 60-foot no man’s land in between, would not only devastate the land and its ecosystems — it would also sever the binational life worlds of the area.
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it → devastate → area
The “happenings,” as organizers called the gatherings, escalated into a continuous protest and tree sit when construction workers with government contractors Fisher Sand & Gravel crushed three giant cottonwood trees, known locally as “grandmother” trees, in one day on July 27.
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workers → call → July
Local activists moved in swiftly to save the last cottonwood standing on the U.S. side of the border, and the tree sit began.
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sit → move → border
“Momentum had been growing locally in the region to try to make more of an intervention,” said an Arizona-based participant in the tree sit, who asked for anonymity out of concern for government repression.
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who → grow → repression
“People got together that night and decided to go down and set up a tree sit in that final tree on the U.S. side, which was planned to be cleared.”
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which → get → side
Ever since, a tree sitter has been in the cottonwood at all times, numerous participants told The Intercept.
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participants → tell → Intercept
“U.S. Customs and Border Protection identified four cottonwood trees on federal land in Lochiel, Arizona, that needed removal for planned border wall construction,” said a spokesperson from CBP.
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spokesperson → identify → CBP
“Preconstruction surveys found no active migratory bird nests, and environmental monitors were present at the start of clearing activities to ensure work was limited to the identified trees.
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work → find → trees
Three trees have been removed, and the remaining tree is scheduled for removal.”
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tree → remove → removal
Meza, of the Sierra Club, told The Intercept that the government’s environmental survey was out of date and that the day before the cottonwoods were felled, he had taken video of an active nest in one of the trees.
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he → tell → trees
“The next day, they had sent the contractors to take down the trees,” he said.
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he → send → trees
Meza added that “when people saw what happened, the community in general got outraged.”
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community → add → ?
For participants in the Lochiel encampment, protecting the remaining “grandmother” is an anchoring point for the protest, but stopping the border wall and all it represents is the organizing principle.
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it → protect → wall
“Some people are tree sitting and supporting the tree sit.
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people → sit → sit
Some people are more focused on getting into the roads, and intervening in construction work that’s happening,” the tree-sit participant said.
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participant → get → work
“Now there’s a whole zone of a few miles where they’re having trouble building.
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they → ’ → trouble
And as camp grows, the ability to affect construction also grows.”
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ability → grow → construction
The remaining cottonwood itself is on federal land, but the encampment, just feet away, is technically on private land.
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encampment → remain → land
It’s a unique setup, organizers told The Intercept, in which local ranchers and authorities oppose the border wall construction, and construction workers cannot risk forging forward in the path of the tree as a person remains perched in its branches.
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person → ’ → branches
The small standoff is becoming a growing site of border resistance, and the construction of Trump’s wall in the area has been disrupted for a month.
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construction → become → month
At a time when jack-booted agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are terrorizing communities nationwide and over 73,000 people are held in ICE detention, the defense of a remote stretch of borderlands may seem a minor struggle.
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defense → boot → borderlands
The binational protest around the cottonwood, however, exemplifies what it looks like to take strategic action to disrupt the infrastructure of the border regime.
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it → exemplify → regime
“Something happens along these borderlands,” said another participant in the tree sit and encampment, Uni Yuchi Trejo, a first-generation Mexican American.
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participant → happen → sit
“You still feel the way the land moves here, how the living things on the land migrate and move with it.”
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things → feel → it
Trejo highlighted other sites of resistance along the Arizona border, like fights waged by the Tohono O’odham Nation to block the wall on its sovereign and sacred lands — fights that are heating up just this week.
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that → highlight → lands
Compared to other struggles against border enforcement, the Lochiel encampment has seen remarkably little law enforcement repression, despite creating disruptions to a major border infrastructure project.
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encampment → compare → project
One protester was arrested in late July by local sheriffs for blocking construction workers on a roadway but was released the same day without charge; the sheriff himself is on the record as opposing the border wall construction.
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sheriff → arrest → construction
And with the encampment on private property, it remains relatively protected from federal law enforcement sweeps.
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it → remain → sweeps
According to activists on the ground, a second tree sit on the Mexico side of the border was initiated last week but ended after a few days, following reported interventions from Mexican law enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.
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sit → accord → enforcement
The relative peace the Arizona-based activists have enjoyed stands in stark contrast to the brutal persecution others opposing border regime enforcement have faced in places like Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas; Spokane, Washington; and Minneapolis.
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others → base → Alvarado
…and 55 more, not listed.
