TECATE – As the fragrant smoke of burning white sage fills the air, Norma Meza Calles, a tribal leader of the Kumeyaay Nation, gathers visitors at a wellness resort in Mexico. Together, they form a semicircle facing the revered Kuuchamaa Mountain. “Close your eyes and feel its presence,” she gently instructs, highlighting the mountain’s sacred significance. To the Kumeyaay, Kuuchamaa is more than just a mountain; it’s a spiritual sanctuary akin to a church, a source of healing and guidance, believed to be the transformed form of a shaman from their creation story. “Here is where we draw strength to navigate this challenging world,” she explains.
Meza Calles invites the group to a moment of quiet reflection, but the peace is abruptly shattered by the sound of rocks being crushed. This noise marks the work of U.S. federal contractors who are dynamiting and bulldozing Kuuchamaa as part of the construction of new border wall sections between the U.S. and Mexico.
Indigenous leaders are raising alarms as the Trump administration accelerates border wall construction, claiming it is causing unprecedented desecration of Native American sacred sites and cultural landmarks. This construction surge comes over 170 years after the international border divided the lands of numerous tribes.
Recently, federal crews have intensified their efforts, even setting off explosions on this sacred mountain. The push to erect barriers along the 1,954-mile (3,145-kilometer) border persists, despite a significant drop in illegal crossings. This construction drive followed the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s decision to bypass cultural and environmental protection laws, sparking controversy and concern among indigenous communities.
Federal crews set off blasts on sacred mountain
Barrier construction has ramped up along the 1,954-mile (3,145-kilometer) border even as illegal crossings have plummeted to historic lows. Much of it began this year after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security waived cultural and environmental laws.
In California, explosions on Kuuchamaa send rocks hurtling down its Mexico side.
“We feel that in our DNA,” said Emily Burgueno, a California member of the Kumeyaay Nation, adding that “body” and “land” are the same word in the Kumeyaay language. Some tribal leaders met with DHS officials to urge them to protect Kuuchamaa and are looking into legal action.
“No one ever consented or supported the use of dynamite on the mountain,” Burgueno said.
The nation consists of more than a dozen tribes in California and Mexico’s Baja California.
In Arizona, DHS contractors last month carved through a massive 1,000-year-old fish-shaped geoglyph called “Las Playas Intaglio.” The rare drawing, etched into the desert floor much like Peru’s Nazca Lines, was created on a lava field in what is now the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.
The Tohono O’odham Nation said it had pointed out the site on its ancestral land for contractors to avoid.
“This was a devastating and entirely avoidable loss,” Tohono O’odham Chairman Verlon Jose said in an April 30 statement. “There is nothing more important than our history, which is what makes us who we are as O’odham. The site was also an irreplaceable piece of the United States’ history, one none of us can ever get back.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that a contractor “inadvertently disturbed” the site west of Ajo, Arizona, on April 23, but it vowed to protect the remaining portion. CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott is talking to tribal leaders to determine next steps.
Members of the Inter-Tribal Association of Arizona, which represents 21 tribes, traveled to Washington last month to lobby against a 20-foot (6-meter) secondary wall being built along that section of the border, as well as a primary 30-foot (9-meter) bollard wall planned on Tohono O’odham tribal lands. They met with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, a Cherokee Nation member, who listened but made clear his intent is to build more border walls as fast as possible, the Tohono O’odham Nation said in a statement.
Hundreds of miles are under contract
The Trump administration says the barriers are necessary to keep people and drugs from entering the U.S. illegally. It wants walls to cover at least 1,400 miles (2,250 kilometers) of the border.
Trump’s “ big, beautiful bill ” devoted over $46 billion to the effort.
CBP has awarded contracts or begun construction on over 600 miles (966 kilometers) of new border wall, with companion surveillance technology. A double wall is planned or under construction along another 370 miles (596 kilometers).
In Arizona, where the Patagonia Mountains descend to the border, heavy machinery crawls along freshly graded roads to extend a double wall that could block a wildlife corridor for endangered ocelots and jaguars. Jaguars have long coexisted with the Tohono O’odham, who consider the species “spiritual guardians,” Austin Nunez, a tribal leader, said in a 2025 lawsuit that unsuccessfully challenged the DHS waivers.
In Sunland Park, on New Mexico’s border with Mexico, crews this year set off blasts on Mount Cristo Rey, a pilgrimage site topped with a limestone crucifix.
CBP is seeking to seize a strip of the mountain owned by the Roman Catholic Church for wall construction. The Diocese of Las Cruces asked a judge this month to deny the land transfer as an affront to religious liberties and the “faithful who seek to commune with God on Mount Cristo Rey.”
In western Texas, the federal government in February notified ranchers on the Rio Grande east of Big Bend National Park of its interest in their land that contains canyonland pictographs and petroglyphs, said Raymond Skiles, a retired Big Bend National Park ranger.
“There are pictographs, paintings of shaman figures and various things that we don’t know how to interpret,” said Skiles, describing the drawings on his family’s ranchlands.
After community backlash, CBP’s online planning map showed the 30-foot-wall plans were scrapped for surveillance technology, patrols and some vehicle barriers. A segment in the national park and neighboring Big Bend Ranch State Park would rely on technology alone.
CBP says it recognizes the importance of natural and cultural resources and is working to minimize the construction’s impact, including leaving drainage gates open in wildlife corridors for animal passage. Illegal border crossings have littered, polluted and trampled sensitive habitat, the agency says.
CBP also says 535 miles (860 kilometers) of remote, rugged border terrain will solely rely on detection technology.
Many tribes would prefer that to walls.
Desecrating Native American sites is a felony
Tribes along the border “are all experiencing the same tragic desecration of our cultural and sacred sites,” said Burgueno, chair of the Kumeyaay Diegueño Land Conservancy, a nonprofit organization in California that works to protect Kumeyaay lands. “This is a great example of the federal government not following federal laws.”
Desecrating a sacred Native American site on U.S. federal or tribal land is a felony, punishable by imprisonment and fines. In 1992, the National Park Service listed Kuuchamaa Mountain, also called Tecate Peak, in the National Register of Historic Places, giving it limited protection. It noted that “discarding or disturbing the mountain’s natural state would be sacrilegious.”
Rising 3,885 feet (1,184 meters) above sea level, Kuuchamaa has also captivated non-Native people.
Sarah Livia Brightwood Szekely said her father, Edmond Szekely, felt the mountain’s healing energy when he arrived in Tecate, Mexico, as a Hungarian Jewish refugee during World War II, and started the renowned wellness resort, Rancho La Puerta, which she now runs.
“There are all of these people that have a deep relationship with the mountain,” she said.
Meza Calles leads walks at Rancho La Puerta to teach guests about Kuuchamaa.
Traditionally, young men would spend 40 days at its base in a coming-of-age ceremony before becoming warriors or shamans, she said. Today’s rituals are shorter. People suffering from a death, debt, divorce or other difficulty seek Kuuchamaa’s healing, she said.
“It’s sad they are ruining the mountain,” she said. “We’ll see how far they go. Destiny is destiny. But the fight is not over.”
_____
Lee reported from Santa Fe, New Mexico.
