Border Patrol Unleashes Violence on Protesters Over Trump’s Border Wall

Por Mike Ludwig — Truthout

Activists say federal agents dragged protesters across a barbed wire and used “extreme pain compliance” tactics.

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Since construction began on President Donald Trump’s border wall in haste on October 5, federal agents have clashed with land defenders and arrested roughly two dozen activists who camped out on private land to protest the destruction of fragile desert ecosystems on both sides of the imaginary line that separates Mexico from the tiny town of Lochiel, Arizona.

The protest received media attention after Border Patrol agents extracted and arrested a tree sitter and cut down the “Grandmother Tree,” an ancient cottonwood in a grove of several trees that stood in the way of contractors building the border wall. Estimated to be around 200 years old — older than the current border — the grove’s branches reached from the United States to Mexico, a symbol of international solidarity for the protesters.

The felling of the Grandmother Tree may have also symbolized the Trump administration’s disregard for nature and public opinion, but it did not mark the end of the protests, as construction continues. Video captured by journalist Max Granger shows land defenders climbing into a tree on the Mexican side Tuesday morning and setting up another tree-sit style blockade in a renewed attempt to halt construction. Clashes with Border Patrol continued throughout that day, with activists accusing federal agents of dragging protesters across a barbed wire fence during a chaotic confrontation that was caught on video.

On Wednesday afternoon, a protester locked themselves to moving construction machinery, according to a statement from activists. Border Patrol agents attempted to remove the protester with “extreme pain compliance” and pepper sprayed the surrounding crowd, the activists said. Protester continued to lock themselves down after construction came to a halt and construction crews left, the activists noted. “We do not intend to back down,” said Adriana, a Tierra Libre activist identified only by first name, in a statement on Wednesday. “Our resolve only grows with their violence.”

Jason, an activist from the Tierra Libre protest camp in Lochiel who declined to use his last name due to concerns over state repression, said roughly two dozen people have been arrested. Some received citations on the spot, and others were taken into custody and released onto the streets of Nogales or Tucson hours later, he noted.

Among the police presence is an elite unit known as the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC). BORTAC was also deployed to Operation Metro Surge, the now-defunct federal invasion of Minnesota’s Twin Cities launched in December 2025 as part of the Trump administration’s violent immigration crackdown.

Activists say the tactics that the unit are using now in Arizona are similar to the ones deployed in Minnesota. “BORTAC was kind of one of the units famous for their brutality in Operation Metro Surge,” Jason said. “We are seeing a lot of the same tactics on the ground that they started to use during Metro Surge and some of these other large mobilizations against various cities like Chicago and Los Angeles.”

“A lesson from past attempts at a fascistic regime is that, if they are able to [abuse] one population of people that is easy to ‘other,’ what they are doing to that population will always expand out to other populations,” said Jason. “It’s all the more reason to take what they are doing to immigrants seriously, and what they are doing in Lochiel seriously.”

In their statement on Wednesday, protesters said Border Patrol and BORTAC have “beaten, detained, arrested, and maced activists engaged in morning prayer,” and “kidnapped” fellow protesters who faced further abuse while in custody for about 24 hours. Jason said arrestees were released at random public places such as a fast-food restaurant, mirroring stories about people swept up in Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Jessica Turner, a spokesperson for Customs and Border Patrol, said Border Patrol conducted an “enforcement operation” in Lochiel to protect personnel and the federally managed area around the border line. While most activity remained peaceful, Turner said agents took appropriate action in response to “alleged violations” and an “alleged assault on a federal officer.”

“U.S. Border Patrol respects the public’s right to lawfully express their views,” Turner said in an email. “Individuals are expected to comply with lawful orders and avoid conduct that endangers others or interferes with authorized federal operations.”

Based in El Paso, Texas, BORTAC is a specially trained “rapid-response force” that was typically deployed for “high risk” missions involving “terrorism and drug enforcement, sometimes abroad,” before Trump took office, according to Human Rights Watch. Under Trump, BORTAC and other militarized immigration enforcement units have also been deployed in immigration policing operations like the one in Minneapolis.

Despite violent arrests, more than 2,300 deportations, and the killing of two U.S. citizens by federal agents during Operation Metro Surge, the people of Minnesota famously continued to protest and provide for immigrant families. Operation Metro Surge was called off amid widespread public outcry on February 12.

The land defenders in Lochiel initially set up their protest camp shortly after contractors began clearing the area in late August. From Arizona’s Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument to southern Texas, a secondary 30-foot wall is being built 100 feet from the existing border wall. Flush with more than $46 billion in funding from Congress, Customs and Border Protection is building a “border barrier system” that includes a “primary and secondary wall” with a road between them, as well as “waterborne barriers, patrol roads, and the technology required to tie it all together, such as cameras, lights, and other detection technology.”

The area around Lochiel is historically Yaqui and Tohono O’odham territory, and Indigenous activists are protesting construction at multiple points along the border in and around the Tohono O’odham Nation. Jason said activists regularly gather to pray as a form of protest at the Quitobaquito Springs, a rare oasis ecosystem a few miles from Lochiel that has served as a sacred ceremonial site for generations of Tohono O’odham and Hia-Ced O’odham.

In May, federal border wall contractors clearing land in the nearby Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge damaged Las Playas Intaglio, a fish-shaped geoglyph made by human hands 1,000 years ago. Lorraine Marquez Eiler, a Hia-Ced O’odham elder, told High Country News in September that the Quitobaquito Springs are also a direct connection to their ancestors.

“All of my lifetime of work has been for the memories of my ancestors, of what they went through,” Marquez Eiler said. “With the incoming wall, should it be disrupted?” she asked. “That’s just another slap in the face, as far as I’m concerned, to my ancestors. And so, I ask: Why?”

The border wall also disrupts wildlife by blocking off migration routes and hunting grounds for species such as the endangered desert jaguar. As contractors began clearing and damaging areas near the spring to make way for border wall construction, conservationists removed endangered mud turtles from the springs to prevent the species from being lost forever.

“The water runs just a couple dozen feet from the border; if they put a second wall there, they will destroy the hydrology,” Russ McSpadden with the Center for Biological Diversity told Truthout in August.

While the Tohono O’odham Nation has for years allowed Border Patrol onto its territory to chase after a dwindling number of migrants and smugglers, the tribe sued the Trump administration in July over construction of border wall infrastructure along 62 miles of border that bisects the nation. However, a federal judge refused to issue an injunction to temporarily block construction, ruling in July that that government’s purported national security interests outweigh the tribe’s claims of sovereignty. To defend their sovereignty, the Tohono O’odham also put up “no trespassing” signs warning contractors to stay off their land or risk legal consequences.

Jason said the Trump administration has ignored the warnings and rushed to build as much of the “border barrier system” as possible before residents and federal courts have a chance to step in and start asking questions. “It all comes down to wanting to assert their control without any checks or balances and just do what they want, and anyone who stands in the way be damned,” Jason said.

Jason said contractors are working quickly, but the protest camps are located on private property and not going anywhere. A tree-sitter in the last remaining cottonwood on the Mexican side of the border was still blocking construction as of Wednesday evening, and activists on the ground say the fight is far from over.

“The tree has saplings already planted in several places, and the symbol of the tree has become more than the individual tree herself,” Jason said. “She lives through everyone’s actions and determination to defeat the border wall.”

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Mike Ludwig is a staff reporter at  Truthout   based in New Orleans. He is also the writer and host of “Climate Front Lines,” a podcast about the people, places and ecosystems on the front lines of the climate crisis. Follow him on Twitter: @ludwig_mike .

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Fonte: Truthout