‘Rally for the Valley’ honors Arizona’s San Rafael as border wall work continues

Forty-eight hours after she was finally seated as U.S. representative, Adelita Grjialva spent her morning bouncing along the rough dirt roads of Southern Arizona’s Borderlands to attend the “Rally for the Valley,” a celebration of the grasslands where the Trump administration has forged ahead with the construction of a new border wall. 

As the sun sharpened the sky, roughly 150 people stood on the border road just a few dozen feet from a camp carved from the grasslands of the San Rafael Valley, south of Tucson along the U.S.-Mexico border. The road is being used by a private contractor to support the construction of roughly 27 miles of new border wall in the region often called a “biological hotspot” because it serves as a migration corridor for dozens of species—including the ocelot and northern jaguar—and contains the headwaters of the Santa Cruz River.

Erik Meza, borderlands coordinator with the Sierra Club, introduced
Grijalva by describing his visit to her father’s office years ago. He said the late representative’s office included a “beautiful
flag” from the Tohono O’odham Nation. “It was filled with gifts from
different tribes of Arizona, art from Arizona. I felt right at home. I
felt represented,” Meza said. 

Meza said he knew Rep. Adelita Grijalva is “fighting for us,” adding he was thrilled
when she accepted his invitation.

“This is my official first
day of visits in Arizona,” Grijalva said. “I couldn’t imagine a place I
would rather be it is fighting against these types of projects. That’s
the reason why I’m in DC. It’s a fight against this.”

“None
of this should be disturbed. This should be a place that should be
pristine for generations to come, to come and visit,” the newly seated Democrat said. “We must
use every tool in our arsenal to fight the construction of this border
wall—a despicable symbol of hatred that does not belong in our beautiful
San Rafael Valley.”

She called the San Rafael Valley special
because of its beauty, “unique biodiversity and the people on both
sides of the border.”

The wall “will do nothing to
fix our immigration problems, nothing at all. The wall will threaten
critical conservation efforts of the Jaguar, restrict animals and their
natural migration routes, making it harder for them to mate, pray and
find natural resources,” Grijalva said. 

She called the valley beautiful and pristine before Trump “decided to build this completely unnecessary border wall,” she said. “Now it’s a construction site, and when you look around at how remote this location is, no people are crossing the border here.” 

“What does cross here are animals—wildlife—these are corridors for migration, and what is going to be devastated by the continued building of this wall,” Grijalva said.

She added the barrier’s construction will “place
a heavy burden” on the local aquifers as Fisher Sand & Gravel pulls millions of
gallons from the region to create concrete. “The project does nothing to
solve any problems and creates a multitude of other problems,” Grijalva
said. She added the Department of Homeland Security should comply with
the lawsuit filed by the Center for Biological Diversity and “stop all
construction while this case moves through the court.”

“What’s
happening here is an attempt to revive a harmful political agenda that
views this valley as a line to be enforced, rather than a community to
be protected,” she said. “I will continue to fight to protect and
preserve this valley and do everything I can to stop this destruction.” 

Kate Scott, one of the organizers. handed Grijalva a blue bobcat mask and hugged her.

This is the second event held to draw attention to the valley in the face of ongoing construction.

Over the summer, Scott and others held their first “border happening” in
nearby Lochiel, bringing dozen of people to the former US. border
crossing to celebrate the San Rafael Valley with food and art under the
shade of large, decades-old cottonwood trees.

Organized by coalition of environmental and human rights groups, the November rally was marked not only by signs and banners, but also masks representing the animals that live in the region and silhouettes of birds. It began with an opening ceremony to the cardinal directions, and a prayer by Austin Nunez, the chairman of the San Xavier District on the Tohono O’odham Nation.

Russ McSpadden, with the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, introduced Nunez and noted a partnership last year between the organization and the tribe to name a wild jaguar detected in Southern Arizona in early 2033—O:ṣhad Ñu:kudam, or “Jaguar Protector” in the O’odham language.

“There’s always been migration south, migration north,” said Nunez. He described how the region’s tribes easily moved through what is now the modern borderlands, carved in twain by the border wall. Nunez said plant life, animals, and people are intertwined, adding his people revere “animal life, Mother Earth, and sacred water” because “they help us survive.” 

As the wind rose, and rain seemed far off, Nunez nodded to the sky. “The rain is blind, so the wind brings his brother the rain,” he said. “The wind come first and then the rain right afterwards”

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.

Fisher, a private company that has been paid for other border projects, was earlier this year awarded a $334 million contract to build the wall, funded by a 2021 congressional appropriation. In mid-September, contractors installed nearly 250 feet of the planned border wall, and that work continued through October, even through the federal shutdown.

On Oct. 31, dozens of new metal panels were installed, and the company also began blasting into the foothills of Coronado National Monument, within sight of Montezuma Pass, about 15 miles southwest of Sierra Vista, and using the broken rock to feed the company’s burgeoning concrete plant—which is also consuming thousands of gallons of water.

Above the work, a zig-zag route was already carved into the mountain from the previous Trump administration. Then, contractors built 452 miles of
new wall, including nearly 224 miles in Arizona alone, and the
administration has moved to build projects throughout the Borderlands,
as well as adding more floating barriers in the Rio Grande 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, environmental 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, the new paint job means the new panels are barely warm to the touch.

McSpadden told the crowd to visit the section of wall already built across a stretch of San Rafael just a quarter-mile away.

“If
you haven’t had a chance, please do walk over to it,” McSpadden said.
“Put your hands on it. This is a manifestation of really small minded
and paranoid authoritarian this is happening on the pretense of an
invasion,” he said, alluding to statements from the White House. 

‘Operational control of the border’

On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security finalized a series of waivers issued by Secretary Kristi Noem allowing construction in the San Rafael, exempting it from a broad array of laws usually applied to federal construction projects.

In the document, Noem said the Tucson Sector—which spans from the Yuma County line to the New Mexico border—is an area of “high illegal entry” based on statistics beginning in 2021 through June 2025. She noted the U.S. Border Patrol apprehended over 1.3 million people during that period and intercepted over 16,600 pounds of marijuana, 473 pounds of cocaine, around 145 pounds of heroin, along with more than 8,000 pounds of methamphetamine, and over 3,000 pounds of fentanyl.

However, Noem also noted that since January when the Trump administration began, DHS has “delivered the most secure border in history.”

Unlike previous eras where apprehensions included single adults who largely attempted to evade Border Patrol agents, the people taken into custody through 2022 and 2023 were largely families with children, who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and immediately sought out authorities to request asylum.

“More can and must be done,” Noem said, adding that given a mandate to “achieve and maintain operational control of the border,” she would waive dozens of federal laws to build new barriers and roads. 

“Operational control” has long been a goal of border officials, but while Congress defined the term in the 2006 Secure Fence Act, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol—a component of DHS—has struggled to assess what this means.

“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct additional physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States,” Noem wrote. 

She used a similar authority in mid-October to waive most laws governing contracting and procurement, allowing DHS to quickly award construction contracts without following the usual procurement processes designed to ensure transparency and accountability.

The Center for Biological Diversity said the move sets aside “key provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act, the Small Business Act, the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act and federal acquisition regulations.” 

“These laws are central to federal contracting oversight. They require public notice and comment, competitive bidding, small business participation, labor protections, environmental compliance, and opportunities for administrative and judicial review,” the group said.

The procurement waiver also fast-tracks the installation of floodlight throughout the borderlands.

Similarly, environmental advocacy group Earth Justice criticized the waivers, arguing it will make a “harmful project worse and are emblematic of this administration’s blatant corruption and disregard for the law.” 

“By waiving dozens of laws that ensure good governance, transparency, and accountability, the administration is moving to rubber-stamp border wall construction anywhere along the U.S.-Mexico border and opening the door to more shady backroom deals and misuse of taxpayer dollars,” said Cameron Walkup, a legislative representative.

‘It’s a shame’

In the San Rafael Valley, around a dozen people walked to the wall and held a short ceremony, wrapping a string of cloth across the “Normandy” barrier followed by a dance troupe. The dancers themselves were held up for hours because a U.S. Border Patrol agents stopped a young man, and accused him of human smuggling. The man was later released. 

Despite the delay, the group whirled through
their routines at the beat of a thundering drum in the shadow of the wall.

After a moment of
reflection, the crowd turned to see a trio of vehicles rolling through
the grasslands on the Mexican side, which carried trays of handmade
burritos that were quickly handed over the vehicle
barriers.

Ruben Peralta, a historian who grew up in
nearby Santa Cruz, Sonora, which sits a few miles south of Lochiel, Ariz.,
told to the crowd in Spanish he was troubled by the construction,
telling the crowd it would separate friends and neighbors.

“There was once just wire,” he said. “Now, there’s more and more and more. I feel bad for the animals, for the land, for the people separated by this. It’s a shame.”

Peralta reached across the border and hugged a woman, shaking hands with others and smiling as people took pictures. Others laughed, and pulled more burritos from the deep aluminum trays, sharing the food across two nations divided by a complicated history, and a rising trammel of steel.

McSpadden called the second Trump administration’s effort “unprecedented” because their goal is to wall off the entire southern border.

“That is walling off the entire continent of North America from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico,” McSpadden said. “So from sea to sea, they’ve made their intention clear— to build a wall across” roughly 2,000 miles of border.

“No society before has ever attempted to wall off an entire continent,” he said, adding the disruption is “almost unimaginable.”

However, McSpadden cautioned against despair, rather telling the crowd to root themselves in a “kind of fierce love and presence by being here. I think this is an incredible step by all of you coming out here today.” 

“We have to feed ourselves on hope because despair is bullshit,” he said. “The odds might seem impossible, but But humans have come together and fought things and won, and I think we just have to be here, and we have to be present. We have to show up.” 

“They want to imprison the entire landscape,” he said. “Walls are part two of an attempt to normalize the militarization and isolation of all aspects of our life. We’re seeing it around the country.” 

“We can fight back in little ways and beautiful ways and together,” he said. “I think we we can win, but we have to, you know, it’s going to take a long time.”