Contractors have begun drilling at three pre-construction sites on the Arizona border through the Tohono O'odham Nation, advancing a wall project the Trump administration says targets a major smuggling corridor.
CBP says the remote desert route has enabled decades of drug trafficking, migrant deaths and cartel activity, and the broader $46 billion border push includes 30-foot steel bollard walls, vehicle barriers and surveillance technology.
The 37,000-member tribe says the work damages sacred land and amounts to trespassing, even if it stays within the 60-foot-wide federally owned Roosevelt Reservation buffer zone.
A federal judge rejected the tribe's June bid to halt construction, finding the government had not shown plans to build outside that federal strip, but tribal officials say they are pursuing other legal options.