Lochiel protest moves to tree in Mexico after border agents clear U.S. cottonwoods

Protesters trying to stop border wall construction in southern Arizona continue to occupy a cottonwood tree on the Mexican side of the border, days after federal agents removed a protester from another tree and cut it down.

Border Patrol agents arrested at least 20 people Monday in Lochiel, a tiny community in the San Rafael Valley. Agents then used a cherry picker to pull a protester from a cottonwood more than 150 years old.

Contractors cut the tree down that morning.

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Protesters had kept a makeshift camp at the site since July.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that surveys before construction found no active migratory bird nests and that environmental monitors were on site when the clearing began.

Russ McSpadden, Southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, disputed that.

“We were there before the trees were cut and during the time the trees were cut and there were no surveys that we saw,” he said.

Early Tuesday, protesters climbed a tree just inside Mexico whose branches reach over the U.S. side.

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They say in social media posts that Mexican state police and Border Patrol agents tried to remove the protester and cut away her platform.

The tree that was cut down Monday stood in the path of a second wall being built about 60 feet north of the border. Three nearby cottonwoods were cut down in July.

McSpadden said the valley is a key wildlife corridor between mountain ranges in the U.S. and Mexico, used by jaguars and ocelots.

The standoff in Lochiel is one of several fights over new border wall construction in southern Arizona.

In August, the Tohono O’odham Nation said about 20 armed and masked CBP agents escorted contractors onto its reservation to begin building, and the tribe’s chairman, Verlon Jose, called a second wall planned near Quitobaquito Springs, a sacred site in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, a desecration.

A federal judge earlier denied the nation’s bid to block construction.

KTAR New reporter Balin Overstolz McNair contributed to this report.

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