Tohono O'odham, Native American Tribe, loses border wall argument

Federal judge clears way for Arizona border wall after tribe's bid to block construction fails

A federal judge denied the Tohono O'odham Nation's attempt to halt border wall construction along 62 miles of its Arizona reservation, ruling that national security interests outweigh the tribe's claims of harm. The Nation consists of 2.8 million acres.

U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon rejected the tribe's request for a preliminary injunction, a court order that would have stopped the Trump administration from building on or near the reservation's southern boundary with Mexico.

The ruling allows federal contractors to move forward on a stretch of border that has long lacked a physical barrier, cutting through the Sonoran Desert along one of the most remote corridors on the entire U.S.-Mexico line. Fox News Digital reported that Judge Leon grounded his decision in a 1907 presidential proclamation and the timeline of the reservation's own creation.

The tribe, which has more than 37,000 members, thousands of whom live on the Mexican side of the border, argued the wall would damage sacred sites, disrupt religious rituals, and sever family ties between communities split by the international boundary. Judge Leon was not persuaded. A 1907 proclamation settled the legal question before it started--

Judge Leon's reasoning turned on a fact of chronology. In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt issued a proclamation placing all public land within 60 feet of an international boundary under exclusive federal government control. Roosevelt's stated purpose: "a protection against the smuggling of goods between the United States and the Republic of Mexico."

The Tohono O'odham (meaning desert people) reservation was not officially established until 1917, a full decade after Roosevelt's order. Leon cited that sequence directly, concluding that the federal government's claim to the border strip predated the reservation itself.

Read about it... The United States owned the land first and put under U.S. government control..