����Ӱ��AV

Conservationists say the valley, located far from major roadways in the U.S. and Mexico, has a low number of migrant crossings and that construction of the 30-foot-tall wall — replacing the low-lying vehicle barriers currently in place — will be devastating to animals that rely on the critical migratory corridors there. It will also disrupt the hydrology of the Santa Cruz River, which crosses the border twice in that area, environmentalists say.

Since 2020, Sky Island Alliance’s 60 wildlife cameras in this stretch of the border have documented an average of five pedestrians per month, including Border Patrol agents, hunters, hikers and possible migrants, said Emily Burns, program director with the alliance, a regional nonprofit dedicated to protecting the critical habitats of the “sky island” mountain ranges in the U.S. and Mexico.

That’s a rate of one human sighting every 10 months, per camera, she said. Excluding border agents and people recreating, each camera recorded a person that could be a migrant just once every 20 months, Burns said.

“The devastation that will come with the wall is going to be very difficult to mitigate, so it’s really a terrible place for the wall to be built, and it’s completely unnecessary,” Burns said.

The border wall project includes almost 25 miles of wall stretching east from the Patagonia Mountains to the Coronado National Memorial, south of Sierra Vista. It would block essential migratory paths for wildlife like jaguars, mountain lions, black bears, ocelots, bobcats and mule deer, said Russ McSpadden, Southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity.

The project also includes a 0.2-mile segment to close a gap where the Santa Cruz River heads north into Arizona, and a 2.1-mile segment across the steep terrain of the Coronado National Memorial, near where then-candidate Donald Trump and running mate JD Vance both held campaign events at the border last summer.

Wall construction will bulldoze into a steep cliffside at the memorial, which already acts as a natural barrier, said Eamon Harrity, wildlife program manager for the Sky Island Alliance.

“The cliff where they’re going to place new wall will be twice as tall as the wall itself,” he said. “It really highlights how disconnected from logic this wall is.”

Migrant arrests low

A CBP spokesman said the agency does not release migrant-arrest figures for specific areas within Border Patrol sectors, in response to the Star’s query about unauthorized crossings in the San Rafael Valley, which is in the Tucson sector.

Stretching 262 miles from the Yuma County line to the New Mexico state line, the Tucson sector “is an area of high illegal-entry attempts and experiences large numbers of individuals and narcotics being smuggled into the country illegally,” CBP spokesman John Mennell said in an emailed statement. CBP is complying with President Trump’s executive orders “to ensure complete operational control of the southern border,” the statement said.

Migrant crossings border-wide, including in the Tucson sector, have plummeted over the last year, beginning in the Biden administration, and are currently at “historic lows,” according to CBP.

Border agents encountered 8,725 migrants outside ports of entry in May, a 93% drop from nearly 118,000 in May 2024, CBP data show. In the Tucson sector, agents encountered 1,588 migrants in May.

The $309 million contract for the border-wall project went to Fisher Sand and Gravel, a North Dakota-based company with a record of thousands of environmental violations and legal problems including a 2019 lawsuit, filed by the U.S. Department of Justice, alleging poor workmanship on a 3.5-mile border-wall segment in Texas, which was privately funded by Trump supporters.

A 2022 settlement agreement requires Fisher to maintain a $3 billion bond for 15 years for future repairs of the troubled wall, which caused erosion so severe that engineers said the structure could fall into the Rio Grande, ProPublica .

Fisher spokesman Eric Kittelson did not respond to the Star’s multiple requests for comment last week.

The San Rafael Valley, the low-lying grasslands between the Patagonia and Huachuca mountains, is the birthplace of the Santa Cruz River, which tracks a scenic dirt road running south through the center of the valley, on the river’s way to Mexico. From there, the river veers north and enters Arizona again, east of Nogales.

Though dry at the surface, the Santa Cruz River is easily spotted from a distance by the line of tall cottonwood trees running along it, with deep roots that reach to the aquifer below.

In the San Rafael Valley, the existing border fence is “wildlife permeable,” with a combination of “Normandy-style” vehicle barriers and strings of barbed wire, allowing animals to move between Arizona and Sonora, Mexico.

Protected wilderness areas exist on both sides of the border in the region, which has been the focus of binational conservation efforts and is the most important corridor left for jaguars in the region, McSpadden said. The new wall would run through the habitats of 17 threatened and endangered species, he said.

“This region is unparalleled for its biodiversity and conservation values,” he said. “This is the biodiverse heart of the Sky Island archipelago.”

Wildlife impact

Currently, small animals are able to make their way under the existing vehicle barrier in the San Rafael Valley, and larger animals like mountain lions, deer and bears can wiggle under or leap over it, said Harrity of the Sky Island Alliance.

But the planned wall, about 30 feet tall, will have gaps of just 4 inches between its steel bollards. It’s expected to reduce all wildlife crossings in the San Rafael Valley by 86%, according to a recent Sky Island Alliance study, and will completely halt crossings for larger species, including the rare jaguars who have been spotted multiple times in the Patagonia Mountains, Harrity said.

The study documented how 20 animal species, weighing 2 pounds or more, interacted with the vehicle barriers of the San Rafael Valley, compared with how those species dealt with a bollard-style wall in other areas.

“Anything that has a head larger than 4 inches can’t get through,” Harrity said. Skunks, gray foxes and raccoons managed to squeeze through the bollards, and even some young coyotes and javelina. But larger species such as mountain lions, wild turkey, black bears and desert tortoises were completely shut out, he said.

The study documented one adult javelina who got stuck between the bollards and died, he said.

Sealing the San Rafael Valley will create the longest unbroken stretch of border wall in Arizona, stretching 100 miles from near the New Mexico border to the Patagonia Mountains, where there’s a small gap that will likely be closed after the next round of border-wall funding, Harrity said.

“There will not be a single opening for wildlife of large size,” he said.

The wall will also affect how rainfall and snowmelt move from the Huachuca Mountains, east of the San Rafael Valley, into northern Mexico, where riparian habitats are home to families of beavers and other wildlife at the Rancho Los Fresnos project, managed by The Nature Conservancy.

Water flows from the Huachucas to Los Fresnos have already been altered by former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey’s short-lived shipping-container wall, said Edgar Carrera, a Mexico-based project manager with The Nature Conservancy.

“Because less water is coming down from north, in the last two years we have seen a significant decrease of the water levels in ponds, natural and manmade,” at Los Fresnos, he said.

Even if the wall includes floodgates at the Santa Cruz River that can be opened in monsoon season, construction requires installing concrete foundations that disrupt water flows of an already imperiled river, Harrity said.

A 2024 report from American Rivers named the Santa Cruz one of the most endangered rivers in the U.S.

Advocates are pressing for changes in the wall’s design that won’t affect security, but could allow countless more animals to pass through, Harrity said, such as adding a series of small-wildlife passages, openings of about 8-by-11 inches. Those passages exist in some other areas of the border wall, but they’re far too infrequent to be effective, he said.

Harrity said there seems to be an openness to that idea among CBP staff who deal with environmental planning.

“It does seem like something CBP and DHS (Department of Homeland Security) recognize as a realistic modification that doesn’t affect the security at all,” he said. “These small wildlife passages should be mandated, and should be built very regularly in the new project, so we’re not completely destroying the ecosystem of this valley.”

Other ways to mitigate the wall’s damage include adding bigger openings for large animals, increasing the distance between bollards to 5.5 inches and adding “break-away” segments that would detach during major flooding events, McSpadden said.

Ranchers divided

After three years of drought, the Santa Cruz River’s perennial flows through the valley have almost totally halted, said San Rafael Valley rancher Ross Humphreys, who purchased the historic San Rafael Ranch from The Nature Conservancy in 2000 and has a herd of cattle on his 18,500 acres there.

The massive amount of concrete mixing that will be required to build the new wall will draw down the water table even further, as it did at Quitobaquito Springs south of Ajo, Humphreys said.

“Open a spigot somewhere and let the river drain, that’s what you’re talking about doing,” he said.

Opinions among ranchers and residents of the valley are mixed when it comes to the need for a new border barrier there. Sidney Spencer of Lazy J2 Ranch, about 8 miles from the border, told the Star in April that she supports the border wall project.

“I’ve been here 30 years and the drug lords have controlled this valley as long as I’ve lived here,” Spencer said. “They know who I am, where I am, when I’m home and not home. It’s a drug alley. It always has been.”

But Humphreys said times have changed, and illicit activity in the area has been low for years, especially since Border Patrol installed high-tech surveillance towers.

“It’s state-of-the-art technology that lets Border Patrol see everything,” he said.

That’s been a deterrent for smugglers and migrants, as are the border agents who often position themselves to be visible to would-be smugglers, he said.

In the early 2000s, Humphreys said he’d occasionally see “backpackers” carrying marijuana, but today, “we don’t see it all,” he said.

“With the current fence and surveillance towers, they know where you are,” Humphreys said. “Personally, I don’t think we need a 30-foot-tall barrier at all. We’re safe, and our livestock are safe.”

CBP now says most drug smuggling happens at official ports of entry. The agency estimates more than 90% of seized fentanyl now enters the U.S. through the ports, mostly in vehicles driven by U.S. citizens.

Humphreys is also concerned about how construction vehicles will impact his land and cattle.

“It’s going to be a huge nuisance to me, because you gotta drive right down the middle of our place” to get to the border, he said.

Environmental waiver

The new wall segments are among several border-wall projects exempted from the normal environmental review process, thanks to environmental waivers issued under the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act and the Real ID Act of 2005.

The waivers are responsible for the “rapid proliferation” of the border wall over the last 20 years, Myles Traphagen of the Wildlands Network has told the Star.

The waiver allows the Trump administration to ignore crucial environmental safeguards, said McSpadden of the Center for Biological Diversity. Those include the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, as well as laws that protect Native American cultural sites.

Environmentalists are also concerned about contractor Fisher Sand and Gravel, after its troubled border wall in Texas, and reports of myriad environmental violations over the years. Its leaders have made hefty donations to Republican lawmakers and made direct appeals to Trump on Fox News in pursuit of border-wall contracts, the Associated Press reported.

The Project on Government Oversight in 2019 that Fisher had thousands of environmental violations, naming it a “bad actor” among border contractors.

Fisher Sand and Gravel was among five contractors who were awarded an “indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity” contract, or IDIQ, in July 2023, under the Biden administration, CBP spokesman Mennell said.

“The contract for the Tucson Sector Border Wall Projects is a task order that was awarded under the IDIQ,” he said in an email. “All procurement actions and task order evaluations are conducted in accordance with the Federal Acquisition Regulation.”

McSpadden says the environmental waivers also allow for CBP to waive certain federal contracting obligations.

“The company they picked has a pretty troubling track record, based on the documentation I’ve seen, and it’s not clear they’ve taken that into account,” he said.

Although due to the waiver, CBP isn’t obligated to address public concerns submitted about the wall project, McSpadden says submitting those comments is still important to ensure public opinion is on the record, and to press the agency to mitigate the project’s environmental harms.

The public-comment period for the border-wall project runs through July 7, and comments can be submitted via Sky Island Alliance’s , the nonprofit says, or to CBP.

Asked if CBP will consider public comments, spokesman Mennell said, “CBP intends to consider and address comments submitted during the public comment period. ... CBP identifies potential resources present within a project area to avoid, minimize, or mitigate impacts to the greatest extent practicable, while also making sure to meet the U.S. Border Patrol’s operational needs and the government’s international treaty obligations.”