In March, after construction crews blasted and bulldozed through the remote desert terrain of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, an ecological reserve on the Arizona-Mexico border, Christina Andrews observed the transformation in disbelief.
Dozens of miles of towering border wall ordered by the Trump administration were rising across the rugged landscape in southern Arizona, displacing century-old cacti and cutting off migratory paths for jaguars and wolves. Ancestral lands and sites considered sacred by local Native Americans were also threatened after the administration declined to consult tribal groups as normally required under federal law.
“It felt like someone took a dagger and drove it through my heart,” said Andrews, a chairwoman of the Hia-Ced O’odham, or Sand People, a community living near the national monument that is seeking tribal recognition from the federal government.
But with Democrat Joe Biden’s projected win over President Donald Trump, Andrews and environmental activists and conservationists are pinning their hopes on a new administration’s reversing certain policies, halting construction and going as far as to rip down the new sections of border wall.
