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Press Freedom Defense Fund

Trump Bulldozed a 1,000-Year-Old Archaeological Site to Make Room for a Second Border Wall

DHS was in talks with the wildlife refuge that hosts the ancient site to make sure it was protected, a local archeologist said.

A rare archaeological site in the Sonoran Desert was bulldozed by a Department of Homeland Security contractor involved in building the latest sections of Donald Trump’s border wall, according to multiple sources briefed on the incident.

The area, in a remote corner of Arizona’s Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, is a roughly 280-by-50-foot etching in the desert sand known as an intaglio.

Last Thursday, without any notice, a contractor working for DHS cut a roughly 60-foot swath across the middle of the intaglio, doing irreparable damage to the 1,000-year-old artifact.

“I liken it to destroying the Nazca lines — something that culturally we should have been relishing and promoting.”

“I liken it to destroying the Nazca lines — something that culturally we should have been relishing and promoting.”

Cabeza Prieta, one of the largest wilderness areas outside of Alaska, also encompasses lands sacred to the Tohono O’odham Nation, which borders the refuge to the east. The O’odham have fought to prevent border wall construction across their reservation and during Trump’s first term largely prevailed; they also managed to protect the intaglio and a nearby burial site that they consider to be part of their ancestral lands.

“I liken it to destroying the Nazca lines — something that culturally we should have been relishing and promoting. Not destroying,” Rick Martynec, an archaeologist, said in a phone interview, referring to the hundreds of figures drawn into the deserts of southern Peru.

A spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed the destruction in a statement to The Intercept and said the agency was coordinating with tribal authorities to figure out its next steps.

“On April 23, 2026, a border wall contractor inadvertently disturbed a cultural site known as Las Playas Intaglio, located west of Ajo, Arizona along the border,” said the spokesperson, John Mennell, who is working on the construction of the second barrier in Arizona. “The remaining portion of the site has been secured and will be protected in place.”

Well known to government officials, including the Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service, which manages the refuge, the intaglio lies just 10 or 15 feet from the massive steel wall that now runs along the U.S.–Mexico border. The destruction to the ancient site was first reported by the Washington Post.

Rick and Sandy Martynec, his wife, also an archaeologist........

© The Intercept