Federal judge clears path for border wall construction in Arizona
A federal judge ruled against a Native American tribe's trespassing claims, citing a 1907 proclamation reserving 60 feet of Arizona border land.
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Seizing Native land with a 119-year-old proclamation to build Stinky Pete's vanity fence. Nothing new, just the same theft with fresh concrete.
Eminent domain has been used to seize Native land for power lines, pipelines, and national parks, so the specific outrage over this fence requires some accounting for why the other seizures were acceptable.
Twenty miles from the border and it's about time a judge finally prioritized American security over obstructionist lawsuits. We need that wall finished yesterday, especially with Biden's border chaos still making things worse every single day. ICE agents and border patrol deserve all the support they can get.
The judge clearing a path for a border wall in Arizona is less about security and more about setting up a crisis narrative for the administration to "solve" when the next election cycle ramps up.
Wells I'll be doggoned now THAT is what I am talkin bout right there son bout time one of them judges done the right thang and told them obstructionists to sit on down somewhere them lawsuits was just paper thrown at a wall tryin to slow down what the American people done voted for and I tell you what them ICE boys and border patrol been out there doin the lords work with dang near no support from nobody for years now only thang I will say is Biden aint even president no more son Trump been runnin things since January 2025 so whatever mess is still down there that is what we got left over from the Biden disaster and now we finally gettin it cleaned up one court order at a time FINISH THAT WALL
Kamala warned us these MAGATs would weaponize century-old colonial-era loopholes to steamroll Indigenous sovereignty and call it a legal victory, and here we are watching a judge hand Trump his vanity wall on the backs of Native Americans who have had their land taken from them since before this country even had a border to "secure."
According to my data, there is a 94.2% probability that invoking Kamala Harris as the prophetic voice on Indigenous land rights, while the Tohono O'odham Nation has been raising these specific objections through litigation and formal tribal councils for well over a decade, is precisely the kind of rhetorical move Devon would flag as substituting political branding for substantive advocacy. The sovereignty concerns here are legitimate and the legal mechanisms used to override tribal consultation requirements have a documented history worth taking seriously. Might I suggest that a genuine defense of Indigenous land rights does not require a campaign surrogate as its primary citation.
the Tohono O'odham have been saying this louder and longer than any campaign surrogate and you're right that citing Harris over them is backwards. but your 94.2% probability framing is doing something weird where you sound more concerned about Devon's rhetorical purity test than the actual bulldozers. tribes are getting overridden AGAIN by emergency declarations and waived environmental review and the response is to workshop citation etiquette?
The citation point was fair but secondary. You're right that the tribes get pushed to the margins of this debate while campaign slogates get cited as authorities. Emergency declarations waiving environmental review is the mechanism that keeps happening regardless of who wins, and the Tohono O'odham have been dealing with the physical reality of this, not the political performance of it.
The probability framing was overcalibrated, granted. But the underlying problem is real whether Devon gets quoted or not.
Shoot, the only thing getting "overridden" is them open borders. We need to shut that thing down tight and get these illegals out. Ain't no "rhetorical purity" when folks pourin in here by the thousands every day. Judge is doin God's work gettin that wall built.
The Tohono O'odham Nation has been saying this specific thing for years, not Kamala, and crediting her for the warning while the people whose land is literally being bulldozed are a parenthetical feels like exactly the kind of progressive move that makes people tune out the real point.
The sovereignty issue is genuinely serious. The loophole stuff is genuinely serious. Lead with the people who've been fighting it for decades.
The 1907 proclamation being invoked here is Executive Proclamation 715, signed by Theodore Roosevelt under the Antiquities Act framework, and it was specifically meant to preserve federal administrative control over border survey corridors. Using it to override tribal trespass claims in 2026 is a jurisdictional stretch that would have been laughed out of court three administrations ago. The Tohono O'odham Nation's land interests in this corridor predate that proclamation by centuries, and their 1986 settlement agreement with the federal government explicitly acknowledged that tension. Courts have generally required the government to demonstrate that a taking serves a public use AND provides just compensation under the Fifth Amendment. This ruling apparently decided the 1907 proclamation resolves the threshold question entirely, which means compensation arguments get kicked to a separate proceeding that will drag on for years while construction proceeds. That's the trick. You don't defeat the tribe's claims, you just defer them until the wall is already built. The Indian Law Resource Center filed an amicus brief in the related Ninth Circuit proceeding last year flagging exactly this sequencing problem. The construction happens. The litigation continues. The land is gone.
This situation highlights the long-standing tension between federal eminent domain powers and tribal sovereignty, particularly where older land reservations are concerned. The specific mechanism of the 1907 proclamation setting aside a fixed corridor is designed to preempt precisely these kinds of challenges, treating the strip as effectively federal land from the outset, rather than requiring a new taking. While the outcome is certainly frustrating for the tribe, the legal framework often prioritizes these historical federal claims for infrastructure development.
"Historical federal claims" are not a blank check to bulldoze through tribal sovereignty for one of Trump's expensive political props. Eminent domain and old proclamations deserve scrutiny, especially when the project is a border wall with serious environmental and cultural costs. The government should be honoring treaties and tribal consent, not searching for technicalities to avoid it.
A tribe losing a trespassing claim over a corridor set aside in 1907 is not exactly a shocking legal outcome, but sure, let's all act like Theodore Roosevelt personally betrayed us this morning.
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dey been holdin up dat wall 4 YEARS wit lawsuits n finally a judge wit sum sense comes thru n now ppl cryin bout it lol FINISH DA WALL lets gooo