Contractors for U.S. Customs and Border Protection began work earlier this month on a new "secondary" wall in the desert southeast of Nogales, Ariz., a stretch of landscape already lined by 30-foot steel panels installed during the previous administration. Along the remote corridor south of Kino Springs — a tiny village roughly eight miles east of Nogales — the older panels creak in a light breeze; where the new work has begun that sound is doubled, a hollow, metallic note that carries across a recently cleared swath of desert.
Left: a man signs a plaque at a past border-wall ceremony; right: construction crews and trucks work atop a metal border barrier near Nogales, Ariz., where authorities are erecting a new 'secondary' wall.
On a recent afternoon crews with Fisher Sand & Gravel had cut access into the landscape, scraping and bleaching the earth as they removed vegetation and prepared footings and conduits. PVC pipe for electric lines lay alongside the older wall in neat bundles, intended to feed stadium-style lighting and other systems. A handful of boom lifts and heavy equipment stood idle in the wind while a security contractor watched the site, and additional vehicles and machinery were staged farther north inside the Coronado National Forest.
The work is being carried out under a CBP program labeled the Tucson 2 Project and is a component of a broader plan that the agency has described as the installation of 222 miles of "barrier system" across portions of Pima, Yuma, Santa Cruz and Cochise counties. The overall proposal includes 19 miles of new primary wall — described as 30-foot-high steel bollards set in concrete footers with anti-climb panels — as well as 42 miles of a secondary barrier. CBP officials have said that in some locations the secondary barrier will be smaller than the main wall, but near Kino Springs the second layer is being constructed at roughly the same size and scale as the primary barrier. In addition to steel panels, the project calls for fiber-optic cables, tall lighting poles with stadium-style fixtures, surveillance cameras and new access and patrol roads.
Administrations in recent years have pushed to add layers of barriers, sensors and roads along the border. The current buildout is funded in part by billions appropriated by Congress, and federal agencies have signaled interest in installing not only double-layer fencing on land but also floating barriers in the Colorado and Rio Grande rivers. Locally, the recent surge of activity has been linked to several controversial incidents: contractors may have ignited a wildfire that consumed about 60 acres of public land on the southern edge of the Huachuca Mountains, and crews were reported to have damaged the ancient Las Playas Intaglio, a cultural artifact within yards of the international boundary in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.
Conservation groups and tribal members have sharply criticized the construction. "Building double border walls near Kino Springs is an ecological disaster," said Russ McSpadden, a southwest conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity, adding that the ocelot nicknamed Himdam "was detected in this exact area." Members of the Tohono O’odham Nation last month voted to name an ocelot repeatedly captured on remote cameras; researchers say the animal, called Himdam, or "traveler" in the O’odham language, moved at least 111 miles across four mountain ranges over more than a year. Those who study the region say the area south of Kino Springs forms part of one of North America’s most biologically rich wildlife corridors.
Visitors who have gone to view the construction described stark scenes. Kate Scott, co-founder of the Madrean Archipelago Wildlife Center and an opponent of the wall, visited the site on May 17 and called the work a "catastrophic gruesome monstrosity of otherworldly dimensions." "You are in the Coronado National Forest witnessing your public lands being treacherously butchered," she said, urging people to visit the area and see the changes for themselves. The Sierra Club and other environmental organizations have likewise criticized the program, warning that new roads, lighting systems and surveillance infrastructure will transform wide areas of ecologically and culturally sensitive land into de facto militarized zones.
Eric Meza, border program coordinator for the Sierra Club, wrote that the infrastructure now being built will "further fragment wildlife corridors, erasing the culturally significant places that have been stewarded by Indigenous people since time immemorial, and continuing to industrialize desert landscapes." He also accused the administration of again using waiver authority to bypass environmental and cultural protection laws, a practice that was used during prior construction efforts. Meza said that seeing the secondary barriers in person felt like "stepping into a science fiction movie," and he described the pace and scale of the work as if contractors were operating with "what feels like an unlimited budget."
The new construction follows a December announcement that the Department of Homeland Security planned to spend roughly $3.3 billion on so-called "smart wall" projects in Arizona and Texas. That funding package included nearly $1.5 billion in awards to Fisher Sand & Gravel for a bundle of work that the agency described as 19 miles of new primary wall, 19 miles of secondary wall and 136 miles of detection technology. Fisher Sand & Gravel, based in North Dakota, has been a major contractor on border projects in recent years and received a series of large awards, including a $309 million contract last June to build 27.5 miles of fencing through the San Rafael Valley. In that and other projects crews have used explosives to quarry rock along mountain edges, activity critics say has scarred slopes inside federal memorial and wildlife areas designated as critical habitat for species such as jaguars and Mexican spotted owls. Fisher has amassed nearly $9 billion in border-related contracts overall, including roughly $1.2 billion for work in Texas, awards that in some cases were granted without a competitive bidding process.
Customs and Border Protection officials have defended the layered barriers as operational tools to improve agents' response times. John Morris, chief of the Tucson Sector Border Patrol, said the double wall provides a better opportunity to intercept people attempting to cross the border and pointed to areas such as San Diego where the installation of barriers corresponded with a sharp decline in detected crossings. "I mean, the data is out there," Morris said in a recent interview, and added that within the Tucson Sector — which stretches from the Yuma county line to the New Mexico border — agency staff continue to evaluate where a double wall is necessary versus where other measures may suffice. As construction proceeds on the ground in sensitive and remote areas, opponents say public notice has been limited and that the physical and cultural consequences of the buildout will be long-lasting.