Trump’s border wall expansion just bulldozed an ancient tribal site

President Donald Trump’s expansion of the wall along the southern border with Mexico has damaged a rare Native American archaeological site in the Arizona desert, area residents said Thursday, as the administration moves to rapidly build hundreds of miles of additional barriers in a $46.5 billion project.

The aggressive expansion project — funded by the One Big Beautiful Bill — is erecting three miles of wall a week, introducing barriers in parts of Texas that did not previously have them, as well as a second wall in much of California, Arizona and New Mexico.

The construction is not abiding by environmental laws and other protections, alarming advocates, national park staff and Native Americans.

In Arizona, construction crews ran heavy machinery through and destroyed a roughly 60-to-70-foot swath of an intaglio, a more than 200-foot-long ground etching that looks like a fish and is thought to be at least 1,000 years old, said Richard Martynec, a retired archaeologist who now volunteers his time surveying the area.

Satellite imagery from Friday shows a disturbance crossing the intaglio area.

After the publication of this article, Customs and Border Protection, which is overseeing the wall’s construction, confirmed the intaglio was damaged.

“On April 23, 2026, a border wall contractor inadvertently disturbed a cultural site known as Las Playas Intaglio, located west of Ajo, Arizona along the border,” John Mennell, a CBP spokesperson, said in a statement.

CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott is discussing next steps with tribal leadership, Mennell added. “The remaining portion of the site has been secured and will be protected in place,” he said.

Lorraine Marquez Eiler, an elder of the Hia-ced O’odham Indigenous people, said the site held special significance for Native Americans.

“If someone came to Washington and started destroying all the different sites that people in the United States revere, it’s the same thing for us,” Marquez Eiler said.

“Those things were made by our ancestors, and it’s hitting home. … For me, it’s an emotional subject,” she added.

The intaglio is inside Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, where a government contractor overseen by CBP has been working on the barrier project for weeks. The Interior Department administers the refuge.

An Interior Department staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media, confirmed the intaglio had been damaged last week.

The primary goal of the wall “is to gain operational control of the border,” the CBP website states. “These border barriers are intended to provide persistent impedance and denial to illegal cross-border activity.”

The Department of Homeland Security has issued waivers so that border wall construction does not have to follow laws that protect the environment or Indigenous sites, which normally require extensive study and planning to limit damages.

Most of the refuge is already separated from Mexico by a single wall, with the administration building a second parallel wall in a bid to increase security. Illegal crossings have fallen to historic lows under Trump, leading some conservation groups to question whether additional barriers are necessary.

Martynec found the intaglio in archaeological surveys of the area with his wife, also an archaeologist, in 2002.

While there are other intaglios near the Colorado River, this etching is unique for southwestern Arizona. “There are very few intaglios in this area, so by losing part of it, it’s a big deal,” Sandra Martynec said.

Native Americans made the intaglio by scraping the blackened stones on the ground to lay bare the white soil beneath, Richard Martynec said. It was probably used for ceremonies, although that and the intaglio’s exact age are hard to know.

Martynec said he had visited the site about two weeks ago and saw stakes running through the intaglio and extending in both directions, appearing to mark the future path of the border wall.

There were no tire tracks leading up to the stakes, indicating that whoever placed them chose not to drive through the area.

“They knew something special was there,” he said.

At the time, construction seemed distant, he said, so he did not alert anyone to try to stop it. He had heard that government officials were actively discussing with locals how to mitigate any damage.

Native American residents, including the nearby Tohono O’odham Nation, have expressed concerns about other significant sites that lie in the path of proposed border wall construction. Those include Quitobaquito Springs, which is also home to endangered turtle and fish species, in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, as well as a Native American grave site.

Leaders of the Tohono O’odham Nation did not respond to a request for comment about the damaged intaglio.

“Somebody is responsible for this, and we all know who that is, and he should be held accountable for it,” Marquez Eiler said, referring to Trump. “He’s getting away with whatever he wants to do. He’s doing it. No one is stopping him.”