A federal judge on Aug. 14 refused to block the Trump administration from building a border wall spanning 62 miles of a Native American tribe’s reservation lands in southern Arizona.
In an 18-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon declined to issue a preliminary injunction sought by the Tohono O’odham Nation to prevent the government from constructing a border wall on its reservation lands bordering Mexico.
Leon said the Roosevelt Reservation—which designates all public lands within 60 feet of the international boundary as a public reservation—allows the government to construct the wall on those lands.
According to the ruling, the tribe had argued that it held aboriginal title to the reservation lands before the Roosevelt Reservation was created. But the judge said historical evidence showed otherwise, noting that President Theodore Roosevelt established the Roosevelt Reservation in 1907, before the tribe’s reservation was created. …