Significant Impact

“The Testimony of the Honorable Ned Norris Jr, Chairman to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border Security, Facilitation and Operations Hearing Examining the Effect of The Border Wall on Private and Tribal Landowners,” February 27, 2020, ➝. Ryan Deveraux, “The Border Patrol Invited the Press to Watch it Blow Up a National Monument,” The Intercept, February 27, 2020, ➝.

Here we refer to, among other policies, the Southwest Border Technology Plan, the Southwest Border Strategy, and Operation Gatekeeper.

Interview with Ophelia Rivas, December 13, 2016.

“The Testimony of the Honorable Ned Norris Jr,” ➝.

Molly Hennessy-Fiske, “Arizona tribe refuses Trump’s wall, but agrees to let Border Patrol build virtual barrier,” the Los Angeles Times, May 9, 2019.

For more on the history of the Tohono O’odham borderlands see Geraldo L. Cadava, “Borderlands of Modernity and Abandonment: The Lines within Ambos Nogales and the Tohono O’odham Nation,” Journal of American History 98, no. 2 (September, 2011): 362–383.

On the relationship between the history of federal infrastructure projects, current neoliberal infrastructure projects, and indigenous resistance see Nick Estes’s recent book on the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Standing Rock water protectors. Nick Estes, Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance (New York: Verso, 2019).

Joseph Nevins, Operation Gatekeeper: The Rise of the “Illegal Alien” and the Remaking of the US–Mexico Boundary (New York: Routledge, 2001).

“Final Environmental Assessment for Integrated Fixed Towers on the Tohono O’odham Nation in the Ajo and Casa Grande Stations’ Areas of Responsibility; U.S. Border Patrol Tucson Sector, Arizona; U.S. Customs and Border Protection Department of Homeland Security Washington D.C.,” (April 2017), 11, ➝.

ACLU, “Constitution in the 100 Mile Border Zone,” ➝.

Some of these instances were recounted to us by community members. More information on Border Patrol violence, and the hit-and-runs specifically, can be found on the webpage of O’odham activist group TOHRN, ➝. See also John Washington, “‘Kick Ass, Ask Questions Later’: A Border Patrol Whistleblower Speaks Out about Culture of Abuse against Migrants,” The Intercept, September 20, 2018, ➝; and Bayan Wang, “‘Justice Needs to be Done’: Mom of Man in Video Showing Border Patrol SUV Strike Him,” AZCentral, June 16, 2018, ➝.

Jessica Piekielek, “Creating a Park, Building a Border: The Establishment of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument and the Solidification of the U.S.-Mexico Border,” Journal of the Southwest 58, no. 1 (Spring 2016): 1-28.

Tim Gaynor, “Arizona Border Park Once Deemed ‘Most Dangerous’ in US Reopens to Public,” Al Jazeera, April 23, 2015, ➝.

Interview with Ophelia Rivas, March 12, 2017.

Interview with Organ Pipe National Monument Superintendent Brent Range, March 14, 2017.

Federal Register 73, no. 68, April 8, 2008, 19077.

“Final Environmental Assessment for Integrated Fixed Towers on the Tohono O’odham Nation in the Ajo and Casa Grande Stations’ Areas of Responsibility,” ➝.

Interview with Ophelia Rivas, December 13, 2016.

Interview with Ophelia Rivas, December 13, 2016.

“Final Environmental Assessment for Integrated Fixed Towers on the Tohono O’odham Nation in the Ajo and Casa Grande Stations’ Areas of Responsibility,” 36, ➝.

Theodore Roosevelt, Presidential Proclamation (35 Stat. 2136), 1907.

Hannah Appel, Nikhil Anand, and Akhil Gupta, “Temporality, Politics, and the Promise of Infrastructure,” in The Promise of Infrastructure (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2018), 15.

“The Testimony of the Honorable Ned Norris Jr,” ➝.

J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, “’A structure, not an event’: Settler Colonialism and Enduring Indigeneity,” Lateral 5, no. 1 (2016).

Audra Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across Settler States (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), 11. Italics in the original.