Thread by @rdevro

NEW: Trump is blowing up a national monument in Arizona to make way for the border wall interc.pt/2Uwec7Z

This week, government contractors began blowing apart a mountain on protected lands in southern Arizona to make way for the border wall.

The project is expected to last a month. Sacred Native American cultural sites are under threat. theintercept.com/2020/02/06/bor…

CBP says it will have an "environmental monitor" on hand for the blasting.

@RepRaulGrijalva says he has zero faith that the monitor "will do anything to avoid, mitigate, or even point out some of the sacrilegious things that are occurring and will continue to occur."

@RepRaulGrijalva The skepticism stems from a visit to the site last month.

In a letter to the head of DHS written after the visit, @RepRaulGrijalva voiced "serious concerns" that DHS was "not respecting tribal lands and sacred sites as they proceed with border wall plans and construction."

@RepRaulGrijalva Attached to that letter was a second letter, this one from chair of the Tohono O’odham Nation to the Border Patrol, which revealed that border wall construction has already "resulted in the inadvertent discovery of human remains."

@RepRaulGrijalva Those letters are here. They are worth reading in full, as they lay out the concerns that @RepRaulGrijalva says DHS and CBP are blatantly disregarding in pushing forward with the president's politically-motivated wall expansion.

naturalresources.house.gov/imo/media/doc/…

@RepRaulGrijalva In addition to Trump, it's worth remembering that what's happening in southern Arizona is also attributable to ongoing post-9/11 fallout — specifically the Real ID Act, which gives DHS sweeping authority to waive laws in order to build border barriers.