{"id":1001815,"date":"2026-08-15T06:09:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T06:09:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1001815\/"},"modified":"2026-08-15T06:09:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T06:09:15","slug":"judge-allows-trump-administration-to-build-border-wall-along-tribal-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1001815\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge allows Trump administration to build border wall along tribal land"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 A federal judge refused on Friday<\/a> to block the Trump administration from taking steps to build 62 miles of international border wall along part of a Native American tribe\u2019s reservation without its consent.<\/p>\n

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in Washington, D.C., denied the Tohono O\u2019odham Nation\u2019s request for a court-ordered halt to border wall construction on its 2.8-million-acre reservation. Leon ruled the tribe hasn\u2019t established that a border wall will change its reservation boundaries without congressional authority.<\/p>\n

The judge also rejected the tribe\u2019s claim that the planned border wall would illegally trespass on its reservation.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd in any event, I find that the Government\u2019s interests in securing the border, enforcing immigration laws, and ensuring public safety outweigh any surviving irreparable harms at this juncture,\u201d Leon wrote.<\/p>\n

The tribe released a statement late Friday strongly disagreeing with the decision.<\/p>\n

\u201cToo many critical issues were not adequately addressed, such as inevitable impacts construction will have on the Nation\u2019s land and the permanent destruction of sacred sites,\u201d Tohono O\u2019odham Nation Chairman Verlon M. Jose said. \u201cThe Nation will consider all possible options for moving forward, as this issue is simply too important to the O\u2019odham.\u201d<\/p>\n

The O\u2019odham reservation in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona abuts 62 miles of the Mexico border. The tribe has over 37,000 members, including thousands who live in Mexico.<\/p>\n

Building the border wall would led to \u201csignificant devastation\u201d on the reservation, including the destruction of mountain peaks that are sacred to the O\u2019odham, tribe attorneys said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would fray the ties between O\u2019odham communities and families on opposite sides of the border, interfere significantly with O\u2019odham religious rituals and practices, and destroy plant and animal resources sacred to the O\u2019odham,\u201d the lawyers wrote.<\/p>\n

In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt issued a proclamation reserving a 60-foot strip of public land along the U.S.-Mexico border for a buffer zone called the \u201cRoosevelt Reservation,\u201d which was formed a decade before the reservation\u2019s establishment.<\/p>\n

Tribe attorneys say it is \u201cfanciful at best\u201d to suggest that border wall construction can be confined to a 60-foot-wide corridor.<\/p>\n

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During a July 22 hearing, Leon appeared to be skeptical that U.S. laws tip in favor of the tribe\u2019s bid for a preliminary injunction, calling it an \u201cextraordinary\u201d request. Leon, who was nominated to the bench by Republican President George W. Bush, said he couldn\u2019t find a previous court ruling under comparable circumstances.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a novel case with novel issues,\u201d the judge said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 A federal judge refused on Friday to block the Trump administration from taking steps to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1001816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[5643,11029,1613,12785,84,69,57,3755,409,20149,1612,2222,50,80,246235,167660,61,67,370,132,68,93],"class_list":["post-1001815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","category-us","tag-arizona","tag-az-state-wire","tag-central-america","tag-dc-wire","tag-district-of-columbia","tag-donald-trump","tag-general-news","tag-george-w-bush","tag-immigration","tag-indigenous-people","tag-latin-america","tag-mexico","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-richard-j-leon","tag-theodore-roosevelt","tag-u-s-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-government","tag-unitedstates","tag-us","tag-washington-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117098038398094287","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1001815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1001815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1001816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1001815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1001815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1001815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}