The drama is heating up along Arizona’s border with Mexico.
It must be an election year.
Most of the drama revolves around the Trump administration trying to build as much border wall as possible before the anticipated blue wave in November, while protesters and tribal officials try to stop it any way they can, from fighting in court to sitting in cottonwood trees.
The various kerfuffles certainly aren’t about a spike in immigrants crossing the border, although we did notice Fox News trying to drum up some hysteria about a migrant caravan in Honduras a few weeks ago. That Hail Mary didn’t get any traction in the news cycle, probably because border crossings have stayed at historic lows since Trump 2.0 began.
At the top of the list of ongoing border dramas is the fallout from last week’s arrests of protesters who camped in cottonwood trees to block wall crews near Lochiel.
The Border Patrol tries to remove a protester from a cottonwood tree in Lochiel. (Rally For the Valley / Instagram)
The stories coming out of the incident are getting uglier, including some outrageous statements that protesters say they heard from Border Patrol agents during a standoff two days after the first arrests.
Multiple protesters reported hearing a Border Patrol agent tell a protester he would take the protester to “a place where nobody can hear you scream,” while other protesters reported being told by agents “we know where you live,” John Washington reports for Lookout.
When a protester locked themself to a gravel haul truck, protesters say agents and wall contractors wrapped the protester in silver emergency blankets, forcing the protester to breathe truck exhaust.
“At one point, a construction worker drove the truck a few hundred feet down the road with the activist still attached,” Washington writes. “At least two activists ran into the road and threw themselves in front of the truck. They were arrested.”
The Lochiel arrests also exacerbated a divide between the Arizona Sheriffs’ Association and Santa Cruz County Sheriff David Hathaway.
The sheriffs’ association wrote a letter condemning Hathaway for telling his deputies not to respond to calls from border wall contractors, unless an incident turns violent. (As an odd sign of the times, the sheriffs’ association warned of “masked participants from outside Arizona,” which could easily apply both to Border Patrol agents who hide their faces and protesters dressed up as jaguars and other endangered species.)
But it’s not necessarily a political stance from Hathaway, although he is playing a big role in helping Attorney General Kris Mayes, also a Democrat, look tough on the border during her reelection campaign.
Hathaway tells Arizona Daily Star columnist Tim Steller that lots of calls from wall contractors were much ado about nothing.
They were “saying things like ‘We’ve been kidnapped,’ ‘Our vehicles have been stolen,’ ‘We feel we’re not free to leave,’” Hathaway said of the contractors. “When we went out there, it was just peaceful people sitting there,” he said of the protesters.
On a lighter note, Hathaway also made an appearance on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show.” The bit highlighted the concern that jaguars would be separated from potential mates by the border wall and generally poked fun at the whole border security buildup.
The segment featured a few other notable names in Southern Arizona’s border debate, like Russ McSpadden (”an activist whose name sounds totally made up,” per “The Daily Show”) from the Center for Biological Diversity and Dan Dellinges, chair of the Santa Cruz County Republican Party.
“There’s cameras watching us right now! I didn’t know,” Daily Show correspondent Grace Kuhlenschmidt said after Hathaway told her about the border surveillance that’s already in place. “I would’ve dressed up a bit.”
On a more dour note, the simmering tensions between the Tohono O’odham Nation and the Border Patrol got an in-depth treatment from ProPublica’s Ryan Devereaux, who has covered border issues in Arizona for many years.
If you want to understand how much the relationship between the Trump administration and the Tohono O’odham Nation has gone off the rails, check out this anecdote.
In late August, the Border Patrol gave Tohono O’odham Nation Chairman Verlon Jose just 60 seconds’ notice that wall crews were inbound. Not that it mattered. There wasn’t going to be any real discussion, and tribal members were already spreading the word on Facebook that a column of vehicles was speeding across the reservation.
“You just feel helpless. You see these people, and they’re just so aggressive. They want you to react. They want you to show them that we could be ugly too,” Deshane Gregg told Devereaux, recalling when her vehicle was forced off the road by a convoy of contractors. “We’re just here doing prayer. We’re just here, not trying to bother them, but it gets to you when it’s constantly being like that.”
Adding to the tension was the decision by U.S. Customs and Border Protection to remove thousands of saguaros to make way for the wall, Mitchell Koch reports for AZFamily. Tohono O’odham officials were quick to file an emergency injunction to try to protect the saguaros, which tribal members consider spiritual monuments, per Arlyssa D. Becenti at the Republic.
As all these tensions boil over, it probably doesn’t help that, as Devereaux noted, when the White House won a court battle with the Tohono O’odham Nation, a lawyer for the Department of Homeland Security posted a “Star Trek” meme with the words “RESISTANCE IS FUTILE” in all caps.
Yes, a high-ranking member of the Trump administration actually posted this on Twitter.
Those big fat early ballots are landing in mailboxes across Arizona this week, and you’ve got a lot of bubbles to fill in.
Before you start guessing, open the Elections Agenda.
It’s our voter guide for every statewide, congressional and legislative race on your ballot, plus the propositions.
You get candidate bios, district stats, debate videos, who’s funding them, and every time they’ve shown up in In Other News.
Some of it’s pretty funny.
Everything you need, in one place, so you never have to wade into a candidate’s Facebook page. (But we have those links too, in case you’re curious.)
Fending for themselves: Democratic Rep. Alma Hernandez was profiled in the New York Times as one of the many local and state officials who face threats of political violence, but don’t have the same resources to protect themselves as members of Congress or other national officials, Reis Thebault reports for the Times. The threats of retaliation for certain pieces of legislation, such as Hernandez’s pro-vaccine bill during the height of the COVID pandemic, pushed her away from addressing certain issues altogether. But Hernandez remains a vocal supporter of Israel, which she says has brought more threats than any other topic.
“I would tell Alma almost nine years ago, ‘Girl, wait. Go live your life,’” Hernandez said. “This has not been an easy time.”
To Arizona, and beyond: Sierra Vista Mayor Clea McCaa and Yuma Mayor Douglas Nicholls joined the push to get the U.S. Space Academy to set up shop in Arizona, per the Herald/Review. They were named to the committee put together by Gov. Katie Hobbs to pitch the Trump administration on Arizona’s ties to NASA and space exploration. The academy itself is still just an idea, though, and the NASA administrator won’t make a recommendation on where to put an academy for several more months.
Private equity vs. property taxes: Tucson officials signed onto a national class action lawsuit against fire truck manufacturers and the private equity firms that are buying them up, Kiera Riley reports for Capitol Media Services. Officials at local fire departments — and at fire districts in Arizona that are funded entirely by property taxes — say inflation doesn’t account for the sudden spike in equipment costs, including pump trucks doubling in price from 2020 to 2025. Attorney General Kris Mayes launched an investigation a month ago into allegedly anticompetitive conduct by the manufacturers.
Not a good look: The Arizona Daily Star issued an apology after running a cartoon that compared voting for Democrats to voting for a pretty racist image of a man wearing a turban and wielding a bloody scimitar while yelling “Death to America!”
Also on the ballot: You may have forgotten about this one, but Tucson voters are going to decide whether to extend a sales tax to fund the Reid Park Zoo in November, Stephanie Casanova reports for the Arizona Luminaria. Voters gave the green light to the 0.1% sales tax in 2017, which funded a slew of zoo improvements, including bringing squirrel monkeys to Tucson and a lagoon habitat for flamingos. Now, the sales tax extension is on the ballot as Prop 422.
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We were not expecting Admiral Ackbar to make an appearance in the 2026 election.
We’re pretty sure the Rebel fleet had bigger things to worry about than Arizona’s mail-in voting laws. You know, like the Death Star.
We’re just disappointed nobody thought to ask Boba Fett for an endorsement.
We know he is available for the right price.