Tyche Hendricks

Border wall contractors are planning to bulldoze thousands of saguaro cactuses along the southern end of the sovereign Tohono O'odham Nation, starting immediately. Cutting down a saguaro would land you or me in jail with a felony — but armed with sweeping legal waivers, DHS plans to obliterate thousands of them with impunity. “Trespassing on our land to remove the sacred saguaros is like having masked men break into your house and take away your children,” Tohono O’odham Nation Chairman Verlon Jose said in a statement. “The ha:sañ [saguaro] are our family, as much a part of us as any blood relative. To destroy them by the thousands carves a wound in our hearts that will not heal.” I took this video at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in 2020, where I used to work for the National Park Service before returning to document wall construction tearing through the Sonoran Desert. I filmed hundreds of these ancient desert sentinels plowed over without a thought. The Tohono O'odham Nation is now bracing for a far worse version of what we saw at Organ Pipe, where they were only building one wall. On O'odham land, they're fighting to build two.

Just brutal to see. DHS contractors just plowed through the last of the four ancient cottonwood trees in Arizona--a tree older than the border itself--to make way for a double border wall through critical jaguar habitat. A dozen protestors were arrested today trying to stop this travesty.

BREAKING: DHS contractors are toppling the last of four ancient cottonwoods to build double border walls across the San Rafael Valley. The wall cuts through the key remaining wildlife corridor for endangered jaguars between Arizona and Sonora, where human border crossings are seldom seen. A protest camp had occupied and protected this tree for more than 60 days, halting construction. The camp was raided and campers were arrested this morning. This wall will effectively lock the remaining jaguars in the U.S. into solitary confinement, while permanently marring one of the last remaining wild places along the Arizona border.