US-Mexico border wall construction is desecrating sacred sites, Indigenous leaders say - By Julie Watson and Morgan Lee, Associated Press
White sage burning, Norma Meza Calles gathers guests at a Mexican wellness resort into a semicircle facing Kuuchamaa Mountain and asks everyone to close their eyes and feel its presence.
"This is sacred to us like a church for you all. The mountain is our healer, our psychologist," said Meza Calles, a Kumeyaay Nation tribal leader who explains that in its creation story a shaman transformed into the mountain. "Here is where we gather strength to live in this difficult world."
Then she calls for a moment of reflection. But the silence is pierced by the crushing of rock. U.S. federal contractors have been blasting and bulldozing Kuuchamaa, which straddles both countries, to make way for new sections of wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Indigenous leaders say that in the Trump administration's rush to build border walls, contractors are desecrating Native American sacred places and cultural sites at an unprecedented pace, more than 170 years after the international boundary split the territories of dozens of tribes.
Federal crews set off blasts on sacred mountain
Barrier construction has ramped up along the 1,954-mile (3,145-kilometer) border even as illegal crossings have plummeted to historic lows. Much of it began this year after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security waived cultural and environmental laws.
In California, explosions on Kuuchamaa send rocks hurtling down its Mexico side.
"We feel that in our DNA," said Emily Burgueno, a California member of the Kumeyaay Nation, adding that "body" and "land" are the same word in the Kumeyaay language. Some tribal leaders met with DHS officials to urge them to protect Kuuchamaa and are looking into legal action.
"No one ever consented or supported the use of dynamite on the mountain," Burgueno said.
The nation consists of more than a dozen tribes in California and Mexico's Baja California.
In Arizona, DHS contractors last month carved through a massive 1,000-year-old fish-shaped geoglyph called "Las Playas Intaglio." The rare drawing, etched into the desert floor much like Peru's Nazca Lines, was created on a lava field in what is now the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge.
The Tohono O'odham Nation said it had pointed out the site on its ancestral land for contractors to avoid.
"This was a devastating and entirely avoidable loss," Tohono O'odham Chairman Verlon Jose said in an April 30 statement. "There is nothing more important than our history, which is what makes us who we are as O'odham. The site was also an irreplaceable piece of the United States' history, one none of us can ever get back."
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that a contractor "inadvertently disturbed" the site west of Ajo, Arizona, on April 23, but it vowed to protect the remaining portion. CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott is talking to tribal leaders to determine next steps.
Members of the Inter-Tribal Association of Arizona, which represents 21 tribes, traveled to Washington last month to lobby against a 20-foot (6-meter) secondary wall being built along that section of the border, as well as a primary 30-foot (9-meter) bollard wall planned on Tohono O'odham tribal lands. They met with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, a Cherokee Nation member, who listened but made clear his intent is to build more border walls as fast as possible, the Tohono O'odham Nation said in a statement.
Hundreds of miles are under contract
The Trump administration says the barriers are necessary to keep people and drugs from entering the U.S. illegally. It wants walls to cover at least 1,400 miles (2,250 kilometers) of the border.
Trump's " big, beautiful bill " devoted over $46 billion to the effort.
CBP has awarded contracts or begun construction on over 600 miles (966 kilometers) of new border wall, with companion surveillance technology. A double wall is planned or under construction along another 370 miles (596 kilometers).
In Arizona, where the Patagonia Mountains descend to the border, heavy machinery crawls along freshly graded roads to extend a double wall that could block a wildlife corridor for endangered ocelots and jaguars. Jaguars have long coexisted with the Tohono O'odham, who consider the species "spiritual guardians," Austin Nunez, a tribal leader, said in a 2025 lawsuit that unsuccessfully challenged the DHS waivers.
In Sunland Park, on New Mexico's border with Mexico, crews this year set off blasts on Mount Cristo Rey, a pilgrimage site topped with a limestone crucifix.
CBP is seeking to seize a strip of the mountain owned by the Roman Catholic Church for wall construction. The Diocese of Las Cruces asked a judge this month to deny the land transfer as an affront to religious liberties and the "faithful who seek to commune with God on Mount Cristo Rey."
In western Texas, the federal government in February notified ranchers on the Rio Grande east of Big Bend National Park of its interest in their land that contains canyonland pictographs and petroglyphs, said Raymond Skiles, a retired Big Bend National Park ranger.
"There are pictographs, paintings of shaman figures and various things that we don't know how to interpret," said Skiles, describing the drawings on his family's ranchlands.
After community backlash, CBP's online planning map showed the 30-foot-wall plans were scrapped for surveillance technology, patrols and some vehicle barriers. A segment in the national park and neighboring Big Bend Ranch State Park would rely on technology alone.
CBP says it recognizes the importance of natural and cultural resources and is working to minimize the construction's impact, including leaving drainage gates open in wildlife corridors for animal passage. Illegal border crossings have littered, polluted and trampled sensitive habitat, the agency says.
CBP also says 535 miles (860 kilometers) of remote, rugged border terrain will solely rely on detection technology.
Many tribes would prefer that to walls.
Desecrating Native American sites is a felony
Tribes along the border "are all experiencing the same tragic desecration of our cultural and sacred sites," said Burgueno, chair of the Kumeyaay Diegueño Land Conservancy, a nonprofit organization in California that works to protect Kumeyaay lands. "This is a great example of the federal government not following federal laws."
Desecrating a sacred Native American site on U.S. federal or tribal land is a felony, punishable by imprisonment and fines. In 1992, the National Park Service listed Kuuchamaa Mountain, also called Tecate Peak, in the National Register of Historic Places, giving it limited protection. It noted that "discarding or disturbing the mountain's natural state would be sacrilegious."
Rising 3,885 feet (1,184 meters) above sea level, Kuuchamaa has also captivated non-Native people.
Sarah Livia Brightwood Szekely said her father, Edmond Szekely, felt the mountain's healing energy when he arrived in Tecate, Mexico, as a Hungarian Jewish refugee during World War II, and started the renowned wellness resort, Rancho La Puerta, which she now runs.
"There are all of these people that have a deep relationship with the mountain," she said.
Meza Calles leads walks at Rancho La Puerta to teach guests about Kuuchamaa.
Traditionally, young men would spend 40 days at its base in a coming-of-age ceremony before becoming warriors or shamans, she said. Today's rituals are shorter. People suffering from a death, debt, divorce or other difficulty seek Kuuchamaa's healing, she said.
"It's sad they are ruining the mountain," she said. "We'll see how far they go. Destiny is destiny. But the fight is not over."
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Lee reported from Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Seven Cabins Fire near Ruidoso triples in size in a day - Natalie Robbins, Albuquerque Journal
A southern New Mexico wildfire that started after a medical plane crashed near Ruidoso Thursday has more than tripled in size since Saturday, authorities say.
The Seven Cabins Fire in the Capitan Mountains Wilderness area had burned 8,971 acres as of Sunday evening, according to the U.S. Forest Service.
The fire is 0% contained, and 276 responders have been dispatched, officials said. Evacuations have been ordered for areas north of the blaze.
Just a day prior, the fire covered 2,645 acres.
Forest Service officials said crews kept the fire south of N.M. 246 and worked to slow the spread as the fire grew toward the northeast Sunday. The communications towers at Summit Peak remain undamaged, officials said.
Responders had difficulty extinguishing the initial blaze safely due to the area’s steep and rocky terrain, officials said.
The fire started on Thursday after a plane crashed, killing the two nurses and two pilots onboard. Lincoln County officials said the aircraft, a Beechcraft King Air 90, was traveling from Roswell to the Sierra Blanca Regional Airport — roughly 15 miles from Ruidoso — for a medical transport and did not arrive as scheduled.
The cause of the crash is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration.
The four on board the plane were Generation Jets pilots Keelan Clark and Ali Kawsara and Trans Aero MedEvac flight nurses Sarah Clark and Jamie Novick, according to a joint statement from both companies.
A spokesperson for Trans Aero told the Journal Saturday some of the crew members were from New Mexico, while others lived out of state.
New Mexico expands voting locations on Saturday, rolls out new tool for poll challengers - Danielle Prokop, Source New Mexico
As of Saturday, counties across New Mexico will expand voter locations for the June 2 primary beyond clerks’ offices.
In addition, more than 20 New Mexico counties will participate in a pilot program designed to modernize the poll challenging process via a digital tool.
According to Santa Fe County Clerk Katharine Clark, a Democrat running in the primary election for secretary of state, her office conceived of and helped develop the tool. Correspondence with the company that developed the tool, which Clark shared with Source NM, appears to bolster that claim.
A spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s Office, however, says that office developed the tool and Santa Fe County was simply the first to use it.
Under state law, county political party chairs can authorize challengers who must be able to hear voters check in at the polls and verify their names on the voter rolls.
The new digital tool, Clark’s office said in a news release this week, was developed to help streamline that process, particularly in busy polling places with multiple check-in stations where “it became increasingly difficult for a single challenger to effectively track voter activity without disrupting voter flow or slowing election workers.”
The tool, which will be used in 23 counties for the June 2 election, will allow challengers to research public voter registration information without risking voter privacy, according to Lindsey Bachman, director of communications, legislative and executive affairs for the Secretary of State’s Office.
Clark says that tool is based on software she ordered and used in the 2024 election cycle.
“Now we’re seeing it launch statewide,” she told Source NM. “This is one of the innovative things we have done in Santa Fe County that now the secretary of state has adopted.”
Clark also shared emails with Source NM from the vendor that developed that tool, including one from Robis Elections Inc. Director of Customer Development Rachel Jenkins that confirms to Clark that Santa Fe County partially covered development costs in 2024, and that state elections officials “determined they wanted to extend the pilot.”Robis Elections Inc., the vendor, did not respond to emails or voicemails from Source NM.
Bachman, however, told Source NM via email that state elections officials developed the tool in response to concerns raised by the New Mexico Republican Party in 2022.
Republican Party Chair Amy Barela provided Source NM with a copy of the written agreement between the party and the Secretary of State’s Office regarding challengers’ rights to access voter information at the polls.
“The Republican Party of New Mexico prides itself on election integrity,” Barela said in a statement, also provided to Source NM. “We are encouraged to see the results of the 2022 lawsuit finally come to fruition so that poll challengers will now be empowered to oversee the process and impose a legitimate challenge.”
It is unclear what lawsuit Barela is referring to and she was unavailable for additional comment prior to publication. According to Bachman, no such lawsuit exists over challenger access.
“The document reflects agreed upon stipulations between the Secretary of State’s Office and the Republican Party of New Mexico from 2022,” Bachman said. “No lawsuit was ultimately filed regarding this matter.”
After Santa Fe County piloted the technology, the Secretary of State’s Office received funding from the Legislature and “worked with a vendor to develop and implement the tool,” Bachman said.
Clark, however, maintains the creation of the tool in 2024 did not stem from any legal action, but instead was instigated by complaints from both Republican and Democratic challengers about the noise levels in the Santa Fe County fairgrounds precinct making it difficult for challengers to hear voters’ names.
Doña Ana County Clerk Amanda López Askin, who is running against Clark in the Democratic primary for secretary of state, oversees elections for one of the counties trying out the technology for the primary. She told Source NM she thinks the tool is “a really great system for counties to have access to.”
She also thinks Clark is taking undue credit.
“The vendor is the one who develops the software after you give them basically the parameters,” López Askin said.
She said Doña Ana County had requested a similar tool, but did not have the funds to pay for it in 2019.
“The reality is they have more money, they have more resources, they were able to purchase it, while we were not able to,” Askin López said.
UNM's new president calls selection 'a profound honor' - Natalie Robbins, Albuquerque Journal
California health sciences administrator Dr. Steve Goldstein will be the 24th president of the University of New Mexico.
The Board of Regents announced its choice from a group of five finalists to succeed President Garnett Stokes on Friday after deliberating for two hours in a closed session.
Stokes will retire this summer after eight years at UNM.
The Board of Regents conducted the search for Stokes’ successor with the help of a 14-person advisory committee which included faculty, students, staff and alumni. The decision to choose Goldstein was unanimous, UNM officials said.
Stokes, in a statement, said she was “delighted” to welcome Goldstein to the university.
“He inherits a university that is stronger, more innovative and more consequential to the people of New Mexico than ever before, and I have every confidence that he will build on that momentum in ways that will continue to benefit our students and our state for years to come,” she said.
Goldstein is vice chancellor for health affairs at the University of California, Irvine, where he oversaw the opening of the schools of pharmacy and public health and expanded clinical care fourfold. Like UNM, UC Irvine is the region’s only academic health system and a Hispanic-serving institution.
In a statement, Goldstein called his appointment at UNM “a profound honor.”
“UNM is a truly distinctive institution: a world-class research university and premier academic health system, committed to the well-being of all the diverse peoples of New Mexico,” he said.
Goldstein is a pediatric cardiologist and a professor of physiology and biophysics. He holds a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from Brandeis University, where he later served as provost, and an M.D. and a Ph.D. in immunology from Harvard University.
He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
UNM is in the midst of a major expansion of its own health sciences programs — the university plans to double the size of its medical school in the coming years and recently opened a new critical care tower in a bid to serve more patients at its overcrowded hospital.
“The opportunity to lead an institution with this scope of responsibility and resolve is compelling,” Goldstein said. “Building on the strong foundation that has been laid by outgoing President Stokes and her predecessors, I look forward to joining this community and to all we will accomplish together."
At Brandeis, Goldstein formed the Office of Diversity, and was the dean and chief diversity officer at the medical school at Loyola University Chicago. He held leadership positions at the University of Chicago and the Yale University School of Medicine.
Goldstein’s contract will be negotiated in the coming weeks, UNM officials said.
UNM Faculty Senate President Roberta Lavin told the Journal in an email she was pleased with the selection and looked forward to working closely with Goldstein.
“We were fortunate to have a field of exceptional candidates, and I was deeply impressed by the high caliber of everyone involved in the process,” Lavin said. “Dr. Goldstein’s background particularly stood out to me; I am so glad to see him bring such a rich blend of experience from a university renowned for the liberal arts alongside his robust background in the health sciences. I look forward to a collaborative and productive partnership with him.”
Members of the Graduate and Professional Student Association said they wished Goldstein well.
“I’m excited for the future of UNM because I trust Goldstein will lead UNM to better from a place of compassion, advocacy, and understanding,” GPSA Council Chair Jacob Griego said in an email.
Incoming GPSA President Marisa Paige said she was eager to begin working with the new UNM president.
“He recognizes the significance of engaging and working with students and other communities, and I wish him success in his new role,” she said.
At his campus visit Tuesday, Goldstein promised to be an advocate for students and faculty.
“I believe in the power of higher education to expand opportunity and improve lives,” he said.
Loss of 2,700 federal jobs drives New Mexico's unemployment rate higher for third-consecutive month - John Miller, Albuquerque Journal
New Mexico’s unemployment rate keeps inching upward as the Trump administration’s sweeping federal workforce cuts ripple through the U.S. job market.
The state’s joblessness rate crept up for the third-consecutive month in March, with an unemployment rate of 4.8% — up from 4.7% in February, 4.5% in January and 4.1% in March 2025.
Unprecedented cutbacks across the federal workforce are the main source of the pain.
“The sector that seems to be driving job losses is really the federal government,” said Sarita Nair, secretary of the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions.
Steady growth in state government jobs, mining and logging, alongside New Mexico’s burgeoning energy and tech sectors, hasn’t been enough to absorb a 9.3% reduction in the Land of Enchantment’s federal workforce in just a year’s time.
“Year over year, we’ve seen a loss of 2,700 jobs in the federal government, countered by an increase of 900 jobs in the private sector,” Nair said. “So we're just not keeping up with new jobs at the same rate as we're losing those federal jobs.”
With a high concentration of federal jobs compared to many other states, New Mexico’s unemployment rate has climbed higher than any of its neighbors — a full percentage point over Utah — and is tied with Connecticut for the 11th highest unemployment rate in the nation.
By comparison, the national unemployment rate has been declining — from 4.4% in February to 4.3% in March, buoyed by steady growth in the healthcare, transportation and warehouse and retail sectors.
New Mexico recorded a roughly 17% year-over-year percentage increase over its unemployment rate of 4.1% in March 2025, shortly after the Trump administration initiated large-scale staff cuts across federal agencies.
Most federal offices faced workforce reductions from September 2024 through January of this year, with thousands of jobs slashed across USAID, Health and Human Services and the departments of Defense, Treasury, Agriculture, Interior, Education and Veterans Affairs, among other agencies.
With more than 9 million acres of national forest land and 13 million acres under the supervision of the Bureau of Land Management, cuts to the U.S. departments of Interior and Agriculture have run deep across New Mexico and other Western states with large public land endowments.
Former federal workers who either retired, were fired or are still seeking new positions include forestry managers, technicians, botanists, wildlife experts and research teams.
Former federal workers the Journal has spoken to over the past year have expressed alarm as to how public lands will be managed moving forward. Climate models predict warmer, drier conditions in coming decades and the nation’s forests pose heightened catastrophic wildfire risk from decades of densification.
Sandee Hart, a Forest Service employee who retired from the agency’s Washington, D.C., field office in Albuquerque in 2015, said closures of regional field offices and research labs undermine the agency’s 120-year history.
“They’re gutting the Forest Service, basically, which is very upsetting,” she told the Journal.
The regional field office in Albuquerque was one of nine slated for closure as part of a reorganization plan Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins published last summer, but the agency recently announced the office will be among just a few that will remain open.
Cuts to federal land management agencies, which also manage wildland fire response for thousands of acres of forests targeted for thinning work, have displaced many workers across New Mexico offices and other parts of the West, though official numbers remain unconfirmed by the federal government.
Those who remain are now overburdened and demoralized, said Scott Fitzwilliams, who retired as supervisor of White River National Forest in Colorado around the onset of the Trump administration's workforce culling in early 2025.
Fitzwilliams said dozens of White River employees were either fired or took the notorious “fork in the road” offered under the Department of Government Efficiency, otherwise known as DOGE.
“I can tell you the morale of the rank-and-file people that I am still friends with and communicate with is awful,” he said. “It’s a fearful environment, and people are less committed to the work, because it’s very confusing and changing. There’s just this fear of what’s next.”
Reilly S. White, associate dean of teaching and learning and a tenured professor at the University of New Mexico, said government jobs constitute around 21.5% of New Mexico’s overall labor force, but explained that the loss in that sector isn’t the only force driving up the state’s unemployment rate.
As one example, he pointed to the state’s construction sector, which saw a roughly 4.2% decline since March 2025.
“That’s really cyclical, so that comes and goes with big and smaller projects,” he said.
But New Mexico also recorded reductions of 5.4%, 2%, 1.7% and 1.6% in its information services, local government education, financial activities and professional and business services sectors over the same period, respectively.
A total of 935,729 New Mexicans were employed and 46,694 were unemployed but seeking work in New Mexico as of March, according to the Department of Workforce Solutions.
More than half of the state’s overall federal job losses took place in Albuquerque, which saw the most federal unemployment claims — a category Nair said the state started tracking in January 2025 at the onset of the DOGE cuts.
Other New Mexico cities most heavily impacted by the federal cuts include Rio Rancho, Las Cruces, Alamogordo, Clovis, Carlsbad and Farmington.
The New Mexico Legislative Finance Committee published a report last month estimating that 32,000 young people in the state are neither attending school nor employed, costing the state approximately $623 million annually.
But Nair said the state is taking action to bolster its workforce.
“We offer a lot of re-employment services,” she said. “That’s everything from resume reviews to interview practice to hiring events and placing people with employers.”
In March, the state Economic Development Department’s Job Training Incentive Program board approved $5.5 million to support the creation of 207 jobs and 18 internships at seven New Mexico companies.
Companies that added new jobs and internships as a result of the funding infusion included ABC Technology Group in Albuquerque; Sceye in Moriarty; Navitas Global in Portales; Ideum in Corrales; Half Life Digital in Albuquerque; Mesa Quantum Systems in Albuquerque; and Eden Pharmacy, also located in Albuquerque.
For those still looking to get back to work, Nair said the Department of Workforce Solutions maintains 24 local offices throughout the state.
“Getting that field staff out into the community has been really important,” she said. “Not everybody understands that there are all these free services that we provide out there, so our teams have been really getting out there to let people know that we’re there if they need assistance finding a new job.”
NM AG Torrez agrees to hold off on enforcing immigrant detention bill amid federal lawsuit - Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez has agreed not to enforce a new state law related to immigrant detention while a United States Department of Justice lawsuit seeking to invalidate the law plays out in federal court, according to a new filing in the case.
House Bill 9, also known as the Immigrant Safety Act, prohibits counties from contracting with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to hold immigrant detainees at local facilities. It would have gone into effect May 20.
But the Justice Department sued Torrez and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham late last week, alleging the law is unconstitutional and would, if implemented, cause irreparable harm to Otero County, which owns an immigrant detention facility in Chaparral.
Late Wednesday, Torrez signed a letter to the court in which he agreed not to bring any litigation under House Bill 9 while the federal lawsuit unfolds. Holding off on enforcement will conserve judicial resources and “expeditiously move this litigation to resolution,” he wrote.
In exchange, Torrez’s filing notes that the federal government is withdrawing its request that a judge intervene immediately to prohibit HB9 enforcement. In addition to a lawsuit filed last week, federal lawyers with the USDOJ’s Civil Division sought a preliminary injunction that would have prohibited Torrez from enforcing the law under court order.
In his filing, Torrez specifically noted that he would not sue Otero County over its continued use of an ICE contract to house immigrant detainees at the Otero County Processing Center in Chaparral until a “final judgment on the merits” of the lawsuit has been reached.
Torrez’s filing also said declining to enforce the law at this time does not mean the state is admitting liability or fault in enacting or implementing HB9.
Lauren Rodriguez, the New Mexico Department of Justice’s chief of staff, told Source NM in an emailed statement Thursday that the filing does not mean that Torrez has “backed away” from enforcing HB9.
“This is a short-term tactical agreement designed to get this case to a final ruling on the merits and a full defense of the law as quickly as possible,” she said.
Rodriguez also noted that “a preliminary injunction fight, if lost, could have created adverse precedent that hampered enforcement statewide and endangered the other protections the Immigrant Safety Act provides to immigrants and communities across New Mexico.”
The USDOJ’s lawsuit also named the City of Albuquerque, alleging a city-wide ordinance that prohibits ICE from using city-owned property for immigration enforcement is also unconstitutional.
The city’s lawyers have not yet responded to the lawsuit in court filings, though Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller said on social media recently that the city is ready to “defend our community, our values, and our public safety in court.”