White sage incense burning, Norma Meza Calles gathers guests at a Mexican wellness resort into a semi-circle facing Kuuchamaa Mountain and asks everyone to close their eyes and feel the presence of the mountain.
“This is sacred to us like a church for you all. The mountain is our healer, our psychologist,” said Meza Calles, a Kumeyaay tribal leader who explains in their creation story that a powerful shaman turned into the mountain. "Here is where we gather strength to live in this difficult world.”
Then she calls for a moment of reflection. But the silence is pierced by the hammering and crushing of rock. Over recent months, U.S. federal contractors have been blasting and bulldozing Kuuchamaa on the U.S. side of the border to make way for new sections of wall.
Indigenous leaders say U.S. government contractors in the rush to expand the wall are desecrating Native American sacred places and cultural sites at an unprecedented pace, more than 170 years after the international boundary split the territories of dozens of tribes.
Construction of barriers along the 1,954 miles (3,145 kilometers) U.S.-Mexico border has ramped up even as illegal crossings have plummeted to historic lows. Much of it began this year after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in November waived cultural and environmental laws to add border barriers.
In California, crews have set off dynamite on Kuuchamaa, a sacred site revered by the Kumeyaay people who have lived in the binational region for thousands of years. The explosions boom as rocks hurtle into Mexico, rolling down the imposing mountain that straddles both countries.
“We feel that in our DNA,” said Emily Burgueno, a California member of the Kumeyaay Nation. In the Kumeyaay language, land and body are the same word, she said.
The Kumeyaay Nation consists of more than a dozen tribes in California and Mexico’s Baja California. Some tribal leaders met with DHS officials and urged them to protect Kuuchamaa on their ancestral land. They are looking into legal action.
“No one ever consented or supported the use of dynamite on the mountain,” Burgueno said.
In Arizona, Homeland Security contractors last month damaged a 1,000-year-old geoglyph of a geometric fish etched into the desert floor known as “Las Playas Intaglio." The rare drawings, much like Peru’s Nazca Lines, are created on geological surfaces known as desert pavement.
The Tohono O’odham Nation said it had noted the sacred site on its ancestral land for federal contractors to avoid.
“This was a devastating and entirely avoidable loss,” Tohono O'odham Chairman Verlon Jose said in an April 30 statement. “There is nothing more important than our history, which is what makes us who we are as O’odham. The site was also an irreplaceable piece of the United States’ history, one none of us can ever get back.”
Customs and Border Protection said in an email to The Associated Press that a contractor “inadvertently disturbed” the cultural site west of Ajo, Arizona, on April 23 but vowed to protect the remaining portion. CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott is talking to tribal leaders to determine next steps, the email said.
The Inter-Tribal Association, which represents 21 Arizona tribes traveled to Washington last month to lobby against the 20-foot secondary wall being built along that section of the border. They met with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, a member of the Cherokee Nation, who listened but made clear his intent is to build more border walls as fast as possible, Tohono O’odham said in a statement.
The Trump administration has argued it is acting in the name of national security and that a strong physical barrier along the border is necessary to keep drugs and people from entering the U.S. illegally. It has vowed to complete some 1,400 miles (2,250 kilometers) of uninterrupted border barriers.
Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” devoted $46.5 billion to the effort. Under contract is 230 miles of border for a so-called “Smart Wall” that combines steel barriers, waterborne barriers, patrol roads, lights, cameras, and advanced detection technology.
Erick Meza of the Sierra Club flew over the Arizona border in May and said he saw crews scraping through sensitive habitats.
Where the Patagonia Mountains descend to the border, heavy machinery crawls along freshly graded roads to extend a 30-foot bollard wall that will block a key wildlife corridor for endangered ocelots and jaguars. Jaguars have long co-existed with the Tohono O'odham who consider the species “spiritual guardians," said Austin Nunez, a tribal leader in a 2025 court challenge to the border wall plans.
In Sunland Park, on New Mexico's border with Mexico, construction crews this year dynamited the flanks of Mt. Cristo Rey, a pilgrimage site owned by the Roman Catholic Church that is topped with a 40-foot limestone cross.
In western Texas, the federal government in February notified ranchers on the Rio Grande east of Big Bend National Park of its interest in their land that contains canyonland pictographs and petroglyphs, said Raymond Skiles, a retired Big Bend National Park ranger.
“There are pictographs, paintings of shaman figures and various things that we don’t know how to interpret,” said Skiles, describing the drawings on ranchland his grandparents bought in 1947.
After fierce community backlash, CBP has signaled it would consider less obtrusive options. The agency's online planning map shows the 30-foot wall being scrapped in that section for a so-called virtual wall using surveillance technology — though DHS officials have not released details.
Such accommodations are rare.
Tribes along the border “are all experiencing the same tragic desecration of our cultural and sacred sites,” said Burgueno, chair of the Kumeyaay Diegueño Land Conservancy, a nonprofit organization in California that works to protect environmentally and culturally sensitive lands of the Kumeyaay. “This is a great example of the federal government not following federal laws.”
Desecrating a Native American sacred site on U.S. federal or tribal land is a felony, punishable by imprisonment and significant fines. In 1992, the National Park Service listed the mountain — whose name it spelled as Kuchamaa — in the National Register of Historic Places, giving it limited protection. It noted that “since the mountain is sacred, discarding or disturbing the mountain’s natural state would be sacrilegious.”
Rising 3,885 (1,184 meters) above sea level, Kuuchamaa's power is felt even by non-Native people.
Sarah Livia Brightwood Szekely said her father, Edmond Szekely, felt the mountain's healing energy when he first arrived to Tecate, Mexico, as a Jewish refugee from Hungary during World War II. He and his wife, Deborah Szekely, started the renowned wellness resort, Rancho La Puerta, in 1940. She runs it today. The resort's 4,000-acre property includes the lower slopes of Kuuchamaa on the Mexican side, where it has preserved 2,000 acres for hiking and conservation, and protecting the mountain's watershed.
“There are all of these people that have a deep relationship with the mountain,” she said.
Meza Calles leads walks at Rancho La Puerta to teach guests about Kuuchamaa.
Traditionally young men would spend 40 days at its base as a coming-of-age ceremony before becoming warriors or shamans, she said. The rituals are shorter today. People suffering from a death, debt or divorce or other difficulty seek Kuuchamaa's healing, she said.
“It's sad they are ruining the mountain," she said. “We'll see how far they go. Destiny is destiny. But the fight is not over.”
AP video by Julie Watson/Greg Bull/Javier Arciga
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Lee reported from Santa Fe, New Mexico.