Border wall construction continues in remote S. Az valley

While much of federal government has remained closed for weeks, contractors for Fisher Sand & Gravel continued to build a border wall across the San Rafael Valley, installing new panels of bollard wall, as well as tearing into a section of the Coronado National Forest for rock.

Last week, contractors began using explosives to carve into the rock below Coronado Overlook, about 15 miles southwest of Sierra Vista, before moving the shattered chunks into dump trucks that roared along a nearly cleared border road marked by a few shattered trees.

Above the work, a zig-zag route was already carved into the mountain from the previous Trump administration.

Fisher, a private company that has been paid for other border projects, was awarded a $334 million contract to build the wall, funded by a 2021 congressional appropriation earlier this year.

In mid-September, contractors installed nearly 250 feet of the planned border wall. 

On Friday, Oct. 31, dozens of new metal panels had been installed. The region also showed signs the company was continuing to build the infrastructure that will allow the company to install the complete 27-mile-long barrier across the valley — long considered a “biological hotspot” which 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, enivronmental advocates said.

Dubbed the Tucson Sonoita Project, the work continues despite a legal challenge from the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity.

The section includes dozens of 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 dark paint job as a “deterrent,” hoping the steel will heat up in the sun and burn the hands of those climbing the barrier.

However, even by late afternoon in the Arizona valley on Friday, the new panels were barely warm to the touch. The paint also acted as a kind of mirror, catching the bright yellow highlights of a Caterpillar excavator. 

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.

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.