Construction crews working on a segment of the U.S. border wall in southern Arizona bulldozed part of a documented indigenous cultural site on April 23, cutting into the Intaglio de Las Playas at the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
A week earlier, CBP had added $45.6 million in scope to the active construction contract without additional time, according to federal contracting records reviewed by ENR, a change that expanded the amount of work required in the same time period during the week before the incident.
BCCG, the joint design-build company of BCSS, Caddell Construction of Montgomery, Ala., and Gibraltar of Burnet, Texas, was awarded the $659 million contract to build the Smart Wall in the Tucson and Yuma sectors of the US Border Patrol, according to federal procurement records reviewed by ENR at USAspending.gov. Stephen Strickland, president of Caddell’s government division, did not respond to a request for comment.
The joint venture is one of five prequalified contractors eligible to build under CBP’s border infrastructure program, which has a combined obligated value of $3.5 billion in BCCG awards alone. The contract structure reflects CBP’s broader shift toward delivering design and construction in multi-year packages across border sectors, concentrating barrier, road, drainage and systems work into large packages led by joint ventures, as previously reported by ENR.
The incident in the intaglio is specific and documented. The Tohono O’odham Nation said in a statement that the site had previously been identified by a cultural protection monitor as one that the contractor should avoid. Tohono O’odham Nation President Verlon Jose called the loss devastating and entirely preventable.
“The site was also an irreplaceable piece of American history, one that none of us can ever get back,” Jose said. The Nation said it was not notified of the damage until April 28, five days after the incident.
Archaeologist Richard Martynec, who has studied the site since 2002, told The Washington Post that he visited two weeks before the damage and found stakes already driven through the roughly 272-foot-long earth figure, marking the intended route of the wall. He said there were no tire tracks leading to the stakes, indicating they were set on foot rather than by vehicle to avoid disturbing the site.
Looking for quick answers on construction and engineering topics?
Try Ask ENR, our new intelligent AI search tool.
Ask ENR →
The incident drew immediate criticism from conservation professionals. Aaron Wright, a preservation anthropologist and rock art expert at Archeology Southwest, a Tucson-based nonprofit focused on preserving cultural heritage in the Southwest, said the damage went beyond vandalism.
“It was a deliberate act of harm, disgrace and disrespect carried out in our names, on our public lands and with our tax dollars,” Wright said in a statement.
On April 23, the cleanup crew cut an approximately 60- to 70-foot-wide swath across the intaglio, a fish-shaped geoglyph carved into the desert pavement west of Ajo, Arizona, in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. The etching is considered sacred by the Hia-Ced O’odham and Tohono O’odham peoples and is believed to be at least 1,000 years old.
CBP spokesman John Mennell confirmed the damage in a statement, calling it inadvertent and saying the rest of the site has been secured. “Commissioner Scott is directly engaged with tribal leadership to determine the appropriate next steps,” Mennell said in an email to ENR. CBP did not respond to procurement and construction questions submitted by ENR.
RELATED
Border wall contractor says $2 million federal award package sets stage for 2026 construction
Scope modification
Federal procurement records provide additional details about the contract change. USAspending.gov data shows CBP signed a supplemental agreement on April 16, adding more than $45 million in scope to BCCG’s Tucson and Yuma sector contract, with the transaction description “ADD WORK, NO ADDITIONAL TIME.”
In design-build contracting, this language typically indicates that additional work has been incorporated into the delivery schedule without extending the performance period.
CBP has not confirmed whether the April 16 change affected clearing or sorting operations near the intaglio.
RELATED
First border wall contracts of Trump’s second term awarded in Texas, San Diego
Waiver frame
The incident occurred within a delivery structure in which standard protections for federal cultural resources had been suspended. DHS issued waivers under Section 102 of the REAL ID Act that authorize construction of border barriers to proceed without complying with the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, and other federal review frameworks.
With normal project delivery, Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act requires federal agencies and their contractors to identify and attempt to prevent impacts to historic properties, including Indigenous cultural sites, before soil disturbance begins.
The waiver removed those legal requirements. The protections that remained were those voluntarily or contractually incorporated by CBP and BCCG, including the boundary stakes observed in the pre-damage engraving. The gap between those bets and the team that subsequently crossed them is the central question of accountability that the public record has yet to answer.
Similar performance conditions were established at the start of the current construction. ENR previously reported that DHS waived more than two dozen environmental regulations to restart border wall construction in California and Texas in 2025, allowing work to continue immediately with existing contract vehicles. These projects were awarded through an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity procurement shared between a small group of contractors, including BCCG.
The delivery structure reflects a broader shift in federal border construction toward pooled, multi-sector design-build contracts executed by a small group of pre-qualified joint ventures. When due diligence is waived and scope is extended without added time, field-level controls become the last line of defense and the point of failure when breached.
