'We are homeland security': Tohono O'odham Nation demands role in border talks

Wednesday, January 16, 2019

By Acee Agoyo

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As the record-breaking shutdown continues to wreak havoc on Indian Country, one tribe is still trying to engage with the politician whose demand for a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico started it all.

President Donald Trump has refused to sign bills to fund the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Indian Health Service and a host of other federal agencies unless he gets money for the controversial project. The impasse, now in its 26th day, has put a tremendous strain on the health and welfare of the first Americans, whose programs and services are slowly running out of money promised to them by the federal government.

For the Tohono O'odham Nation, the struggle goes back even further, to the president's first week in office. That's when Trump called for the "immediate" construction of the wall, without taking into account the tribe's long-standing opposition to a physical barrier that would further divide its people.

Since then, the tribe has welcomed the former leader of the Department of the Interior to its homelands to discuss border issues. Two years later, Vice Chairman Verlon Jose said his citizens are still waiting for a real meeting, one with the real person in power.

"We need to have a seat at the table," Jose said at a Democratic forum in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. "I have said, publicly, time and time again President Trump, I welcome you to the Tohono O'odham Nation."

"I will walk with you the 62 miles, if we can," Jose added, referring to the length of the border that his tribe's reservation shares with Mexico.

Thank you to all of our guests from the border and beyond who came to Capitol Hill today to tell the stories of how Trump's border wall will negatively impact their communities and the environment. #NoBorderWall pic.twitter.com/bStmTSLneT
— Raul M. Grijalva (@RepRaulGrijalva) January 16, 2019

But the invite so far has gone unheeded. "We have not had these discussions with the president himself," Jose confirmed.

Trump in fact has gone to the U.S. border with Mexico. Last Thursday, on the 20th day of the shutdown, he visited a patrol station in McAllen, Texas, more than 1,100 miles from the primary border crossing used by Tohono O'odham citizens.

The distance was more than physical. During a briefing at the border and at a roundtable with local and state officials, he didn't once mention the first Americans, instead focusing on public safety and related issues.

"A lot of the crime in our country is caused by what’s coming through here," Trump said at the border.

The Tohono O'odham Nation shares those concerns, Jose said on Wednesday. The tribe spends more than $3 million every year on border security issues alone, he said.

"We are homeland security," Jose told a panel of lawmakers that included Rep. Deb Haaland (D-New Mexico), one of the first two Native women in Congress.

"We'll always be homeland security," Jose said.

The Tohono O'odham Nation welcomed then-Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, third from left, and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary John Tahsuda, far left, to its homelands along the United States border with Mexico on March 17, 2018. They are seen here at the San Miguel Gate, a border crossing used solely by tribal citizens. Photo: U.S. Department of the Interior

But a wall is not the solution to crime, drugs, human trafficking and similar concerns, Jose insisted. A physical barrier would prevent citizens on both sides of the border from practicing their religion because he said it would eliminate the San Miguel Gate, where passage is restricted to the Tohono O'odham.

"If a wall is there we won't have traditional passage," Jose said.

The community in San Miguel would be severely impacted as well, according to Jose. A border wall would prevent seasonal sources of water that are located on the Mexico side from freely flowing into the reservation, the vice chairman said.

"There is a church there," Jose said of San Miguel. "There is a cemetery there."

If a wall is erected, Jose said "the flood waters would back up and destroy those homes, destroy the church and destroy cemeteries."

House Natural Resources Committee Democrats on YouTube: Representative Haaland's Question for Witnesses at Border Wall Forum

Flooding is a very real threat to the Tohono O'odham. The tribe lost more than 10,000 acres of its reservation when the U.S. built the Painted Rock Dam in the late 1950s.

The tribe was eventually compensated for its losses -- but not until some 30 years later. Haaland, who is a citizen of the Pueblo of Laguna in neighboring New Mexico, predicted history would repeat itself when it comes to the new intrusion.

"Has this administration, or the previous Congress, consulted with you or the tribe about this proposed wall and offered you a seat at the table upholding the federal government's trust responsibility?" Haaland asked at the forum.

"We continue to ask for a seat at the table," Jose responded. "We continue to ask for true government-to-government relations."

With talks to end the shutdown at a standstill, President Trump on Wednesday signed S.24, the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act, into law. While the bill does not resolve the crisis or restore funds to Indian Country, it ensures that the thousands of BIA and IHS employees who have worked without pay since December 22 will be compensated.

“Our civil servants and contractors need to support their families and we need to make sure they get paid for the important work they do,” Rep. Sharice Davids (D-Kansas), who is a citizen of the Ho-Chunk Nation, said in support of S.24. The bill passed the House by wide margins and passed the Senate without any objections.

Haaland, Davids and other Democrats also have been voting to pass appropriations bills that would reopen the BIA, the IHS and other federal agencies, But Republicans in the Senate have refused to take them up because they said Trump won't sign them into law unless he gets money for the border wall.

According to the White House, $5.7 billion is needed to erect "new steel barrier" along 234 miles of the U.S. border with Mexico. The Trump administration is also asking Congress for more than $6.2 billion in other funding to address a wide range of law enforcement, judicial and other issues.

"We are now in the longest shutdown of this country and it's all, I think, done out of an almost obsessive mythology that is being created around the issue of the wall," said Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Arizona), the new chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, whose Subcommittee on Indian, Insular and Alaska Native Affairs deals with Indian Country issues.