Fwd: First section of new border wall in Az's San Rafael Valley visible Monday
Molly Molloy
From: cal lash
Date: Mon, Sep 22, 2025 at 12:33 AM
Subject: First section of new border wall in Az's San Rafael Valley visible Monday
Near the foothills of the Huachuca Mountains on Monday afternoon, a black steel monolith about 250 feet across juts up from the grasslands—the first section of a planned 27-mile-long border wall across the San Rafael Valley, southeast of Tucson.
For months, environmentalists have worried about the planned wall, which will cleave through a valley long considered a "biological hotspot" that serves as a migration corridor for dozens of species and contains the headwaters of the Santa Cruz River.
The new construction would create the "longest unbroken stretch of border wall" in Arizona, spanning 100 miles and effectively closing the ability of the northern jaguar, along with ocelots and dozens of other species, to move through the state's Sky Islands—a region known for its immense and unique biodiversity.
For Russ McSpadden and Erik Meza those worries came to fruition as both men came across the section of wall built by contractors Fisher Sand & Gravel.
Just to the west, heavy machinery thundered and clanked as contractors smashed rocks into gravel, while others worked on the encampment which will house 100 to 150 workers in the coming months, the Patagonia Regional Times reported.
Dust filled the air, and as McSpadden and Meza took photographs, trucks rolled past the new section of wall.
"This is the nail in the coffin for the San Rafael Valley, probably the most important wildlife corridor left in Arizona connected to Mexico," McSpadden, with the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity told the Tucson Sentinel on Monday. "It's the most important corridor for jaguars."
Meza, borderlands coordinator with the Sierra Club, said the single wall section standing by itself "looked like an art piece from Burning Man," and then he paused. "This is so frustrating, I can't believe it's here. It's heartbreaking."
The 250-foot section included more than a dozen panels, each one painted blue-black. While most of the new border wall is raw steel—except for a few sections painted white near Nogales, Ariz.—the president and DHS officials have demanded the paint job as a "deterrent," hoping the steel will heat up and burn the hands of those climbing the barrier.
By late afternoon in the Arizona valley on Monday, the new panels were barely warm to the touch.
"This is cruel political theater straight out of the Trump playbook, but with very real consequences," McSpadden in a published statement on Tuesday. "It’s an ecological disaster in the making that will cut off the country’s most important jaguar corridor."
In April, the Sentinel broke the news U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials were seeking to build a new barrier near the Border Patrol's Sonoita station, closing a gap that starts near Border Monument 102 and extends west for nearly 25 miles. The wall will begin east of Nogales in the Patagonia Mountains and run straight across the valley to the Coronado National Monument, about 15 miles south of Sierra Vista, Ariz.
At the top of the Coronado National Monument, dozens of miles of border wall are already visible to the east—a long-straight scar across the desert floor to the east through the valley where the San Pedro River huddles among giant cottonwoods.
In the following weeks, Homeland Security officials laid out the legal groundwork to build the wall, waiving dozens of environmental laws for the new barrier, which will include 30-foot high steel bollards, each one six-inches square and spaced just four inches apart.
A few weeks later Fisher Sand & Gravel was awarded a $334 million contract to build the wall, funded by a 2021 congressional appropriation.
The border in the San Rafael Valley is currently marked by a mix of Normandy-style vehicle barriers, barbed wire and screen fencing, however, the Trump administration has pushed hard to close the entire Arizona-Mexico border, even as apprehensions have effectively collapsed, and there are few signs of people attempting to illegally cross through the valley.
"This really spells doom for the valley," said McSpadden.
Trump admin 'running roughshod' over environmental laws
The construction continues despite a July lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity.
In a 37-page complaint filed in federal court, attorney Anchun Jean Su argued Noem's use of the waiver "violates the foundational principle of the separation of powers rooted in the U.S. Constitution."
Conservation CATalyst, an advocacy organization focused on saving the northern jaguar and ocelots, also joined the lawsuit and asked for the federal court to intervene.
Su said the new border wall project would "cleave through the San Rafael Valley and greater Sky Islands region, which is world-renowned for its immense and unique biodiversity."
"The Trump administration is unconstitutionally running roughshod over our bedrock environmental protections to build his cruel, senseless border wall," Su said in a published statement. "A 30-foot wall will stop majestic jaguars and other endangered animals dead in their tracks, so they’ll likely disappear from the U.S."
Su said the 32-mile valley corridor is "replete with oak woodlands, grassland savannah, and mountainous slopes, and the border largely contains only vehicle barriers and cattle-fencing that can generally be traversed by wildlife. However, the construction of new barriers would "essentially be the death knell for jaguars in the United States, eliminating over 53 years-worth of jaguar conservation efforts" from federal agencies, local organizations, and the Tohono O'odham Nation.
This would leave an "irreplaceable void in the landscape that would be continuously felt by the communities who have lived beside them."
Su said the project would create Arizona’s "longest unbroken stretch of border wall amounting to 100 miles," and the new wall would not only block migratory routes, it will "destroy habitats of 17 endangered and threatened species, disturb wildlife during construction due to associated noise and light pollution, divide genetic interchange, impact groundwater availability in local aquifers, and disrupt the cultural integrity of borderland communities."
Along with the oft-celebrated northern jaguar, the border wall project would also harm the ocelot, Su said.
She also noted the border wall will cut across the Santa Cruz twice. The Santa Cruz river flows out of the San Rafael Valley and heads south before curving west and returning to Arizona in Nogales before running north past Tubac, Green Valley and Tucson.
The construction project will move forward even after apprehensions have collapsed across the U.S.-Mexico border, following a near year-long trend that began last June under the Biden administration.
Data from CBP shows Border Patrol agents took just 4,601 people into custody across the entire Southwest border in July.
In the Tucson Sector, which covers most of Arizona including the San Rafael Valley, apprehensions are down more than 91 percent from the same period a year ago. In July, agents in the Tucson Sector took just 671 people into custody.
'Sooner than I imagined'
McSpadden said the wall "came up sooner than I imagined."
"This project is going to move full steam ahead, and faster than I had expected," McSpadden said. He said the construction creates risks for a "huge array" of species "everything from from javelinas to pronghorn to porcupines and bears and lions."
He said the wall is especially concerning for jaguars and ocelots, because the valley is "one of the few places they still have a way to move back and forth across the border between breeding populations in Mexico and really incredible habitat north of the border."
In August, University of Arizona researchers spotted of one of the noble cats using trail cameras. Though one researched warned that after the border wall is finished, any jaguars in the U.S. will likely be the last ones ever in Southern Arizona.
In April, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem waived dozens of laws, including the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and other laws that protect clean air, clean water, public lands, wildlife and communities in the borderlands as part of the border wall construction.
In addition to a 30-foot-tall steel bollard wall, the waivers also allow bulldozing roads and installing surveillance equipment, lighting and other infrastructure — all without environmental review. The wall and its infrastructure would cut across the Arizona National Scenic Trail near the Coronado National Memorial and twice cross the Santa Cruz River.
Su argued this waiver uses an authority that is an unconstitutional delegation of power.
As part of the waiver process, DHS officials published a document on the federal register and sought public comments, however, Meza said the process "lacks accountability."
He said the Sierra Club asked people to comment on the waivers, but while the site generated thousands of comments "none of that has been even acknowledged" by DHS officials.
It remains unclear whether the courts could block construction because Noem's ability to issue waivers and ignore nearly three dozen federal laws is granted by the Clinton-era Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act and was reinforced by the 2005 REAL ID act.
This includes the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and the Safe Drinking Water Act.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff used the authority at least five times from 2005 to 2009 to "waive in their entirety" more than 37 federal laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act, to build more than 550 miles of border wall and roads along the southern border.
Chertoff, and his successor under the Obama administration, Jeh Johnson, waived the environmental impacts of new construction and border enforcement throughout the Southwest, including protected federal lands like Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and Big Bend National Park.
The first Trump administration's round-robin of Homeland Security secretaries used waivers at least 29 times, and as late as April 2020, DHS was issuing new waivers for construction for around 15 miles of border wall in the Rio Grande Valley.
Noem has continued this pattern, issuing waivers to clear construction projects near San Diego, through the Tinajas Atlas mountains near Yuma, as well as project in New Mexico and Texas.
Su argued that Noem's decision to exempt the San Rafael project from federal law means DHS is "cutting the public out of this important decision-making process and short-circuiting well-established federal processes designed to safeguard our environment and its natural resources."
In late August, Justice Department attorneys asked for a summary judgement arguing said the court should reject the center's lawsuit.
"Congress has repeatedly articulated that the construction of border infrastructure is a significant, national priority," wrote Alexander Yun, a Justice Department attorney. In 1996, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act "which authorized the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to construct physical barriers and roads along the border."
"Congress determined that expeditious completion of such construction can outweigh compliance with other laws, including environmental laws that can lead to protracted litigation," Yu wrote.
Along with wall panels, contractors drill for water
As part of the construction, contractors drilled at least two wells in the valley floor. On Monday afternoon, water gushed from one of the new wells, leaving a stream of foamy water as a drilling rig worked its way into the earth.
As McSpadden told the Sentinel on Monday evening, similar construction in the San Bernardino Valley, east of Douglas, used so much water it "absolutely destroyed the artesian system" that drove natural springs to the surface.
He said contractors extracted as many as 700,000 gallons of water a day to produce concrete and wet the roads to tamp down dust in the San Bernardino.
"They destroyed the water pressure, and now that place is forever harmed," said McSpadden. Officials with U.S. Fish and Wildlife, who manage the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge installed pumps to keep the spring flowing, however, McSpadden called this an "artificial life support" for the springs.
There were similar problems in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument when construction pushed Quitobaquito Springs — an area that remains central to the spiritual practices of the Hia C-ed O’odham people— to the brink.
"It'll never be the same," he said. "And, that foreshadows what's coming for the San Rafael Valley. We will see a functional loss of important ecosystem."