Editor’s note: PRT reporter Robert Gay pieced together this account of the activities at the Lochiel encampment based on email exchanges and social media communications from people on the scene and a visit to the campsite on Monday afternoon. The PRT has reached out to the Border Patrol by phone and email for their account of Monday’s altercation but has not received a response.
Day 1, Life. Sunday, Oct. 4, 2026
This breezy San Rafael Valley day saw roughly 70 people gather for an all-day, multipart celebration along the border wall at the still-unwalled segment in Lochiel. The agenda for the day integrated other issues: a nod to Vermont’s week (Oct. 4-10) of “shutting down ICE,” and an afternoon panel on the hot-button issues around data centers. Additionally, a Sukkah structure and celebrations have been added to the encampment, honoring Jewish customs. With these added layers of meaning, it’s fair to label the Lochiel encampment as an inclusive polycultural community of land defenders.
RELATED STORY: ‘Grandmother’ is no more, but resistance continues
The protest to save the last ‘grandmother’ cottonwood in Lochiel came to an end Monday after Border Patrol agents cleared the way for its removal, but activists say the resistance is only more emboldened.
The protest to save the last ‘grandmother’ cottonwood in Lochiel came to an end Monday after Border Patrol agents cleared the way for its removal, but activists say the resistance is only more emboldened.
In email correspondence with two event goers, Patagonians Maggie Urgo and Mary Sky Schoolcraft offered their observations on the celebration. Edited together for flow, here is their reporting:
“It was, an upbeat, even joyous, celebration of the resistance, the encampment, and Mother Nature itself. It was peaceful, nonviolent, joyful and simultaneously quite serious, as people declared their opposition to the border wall construction and all it represents.
“It opened with the daily sunrise ceremony and prayers and included a guided nature walk at 8 a.m., a festive parade at 10:30 a.m., a communal lunch served under the tree, a public info meeting on data centers, and closed with a sunset ceremony. The parade was simple, with a few banners and a speaker booming out lively music and protest songs. Along with a call to protect the Earth, prayers, poems and banner phrases were offered, including one slogan the earth defenders have chanted to Border Patrol in a couple of encounters, “All walls must fall.
“At the rally a jaguar, a spotted owl, and Justice, a young woman poet from the Southern border of Texas, and others spoke movingly of why they were there, what the wall meant, its destructive effects on the natural and human environment, the insanity of the double wall and wove in some connections to the largest issues of the day. The spotted owl cried out “Migration is an earthright!” And then everyone started dancing again.
“The gathering was primarily of younger people, although there were a couple of grey heads, several dogs, and at least one child. Many had come from other parts of the U.S., one young woman said she had quit her job to become part of the protest.
“The event had the best playlist ever created for a march, it was more of a moving dance party than a march. A rap song by the group The Neighborhood Kids “Kids in the Cages,” and the ceremonial robes (kafflas) that many wore made it clear that the Lochiel encampment and tree-sit was not just about a single tree, as significant as it was, but symbolized so much more.”
One Patagonian who wished she could have been there, added, also by email, a thoughtful perspective on the intention of this kind of protesting. India Aubrey wrote:
“It’s a Constitutional right to protest. You don’t do it with a guaranteed outcome. You do it because it’s your right to do so, and it may result in the outcome you want. As for nonviolence: absolutely. If you went out there, you would see what’s happening, and it’s all peaceful.” And the tree-sit ended on October 4 its 70th day.
Day 2, Death. Monday, Oct. 5, 2026
But the tree-sit did not make it through its 71st day, nor did the Grandmother Tree. On the border road, the day had started with the now-traditional morning prayer ceremony, interrupted around 6:30 a.m. with a massed arrival of a show of force: an unconfirmed number of Border Patrol agents (estimates have ranged as high as “over 200”), and possibly other officers. They were masked, and none would identify themselves or their agency, except for the BORTAC agents, the elite SWAT team of BP, who had last month helped construction preparation contractors wedge their way onto the O’odham reservation.
The confrontation was also coordinated with Mexican authorities, who had two vehicles on the other side but did not cross the line. It was an action BP had mapped on an “incident plan” one agent accidentally dropped during the fracas. As you might expect, this map has labels like Incident Command Center, Vehicle Blockade, Containment Zone and Protest HQ.
The agents confronted and forced back the defenders, causing a brawl that resulted in some injuries and the arrests of an as-yet-unconfirmed number of them. The melee happened both in the private lands of the encampment and on the federal side, the 60-foot strip of the Roosevelt Reservation.
The first removal had been the tree sitter, after a high-lift chainsaw operator began cutting tree branches near the sitters’ platform. Once the protesters had been sufficiently cleared, the large excavator appeared and took down the Grandmother tree. From the east side, Russ McSpadden posted an Instagram reel of the tree falling onto the road, against the background of other big cottonwoods from both sides of the line. The soundtrack has a lot of painful wailing. First comment afterwards was “The barbarism of these agencies is simply incredible. Soulless!”
A different point of view of the tree falling is in a video taken from the west by two reporters from Charlie Kirk’s organization, Turning Point USA. Named Brandon Drey and Tayler Hansen, Hansen had appeared walking with armed BP agents in the roadway, i.e. he was an “embedded journalst.” On X and Twitter platforms, as Frontlines TPUSA, they offer a far-right alternate point of the view on the Lochiel situation. They start by presenting Lochiel as “lotsa foot traffic coming thru, lotsa cartel issues,” and then state “We haven’t seen any coverage on it, it’s just been radio silence” and “‘Border patrol has not been allowed to come in an enforce the law and remove them.’
Throughout the day Monday in the online world, there was an explosion of communications about the tree removal and confrontation, definitely a viral spread of info and alarm.
Some of the news outlets that have picked up the story preliminarily include Washington Post, USA Today, Newsweek and Democracy Now. There’s also been coverage by KGUN9 in Tucson, AZ Luminaria, Arizona Daily Star, Sonoran Desert Press, and others, with more to come.
U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva used her regular “Monday minute” format on Facebook to express her anger, beginning with ten seconds of the brawling with defenders. About the reasons for this outrage, she feels “it’s all because DHS has more money than it knows what to do with. That’s the DHS playbook: shut out the public, evade scrutiny, bulldoze our lands to build a completely unnecessary second border wall.”
Social media also shared information about the arrestees’ whereabouts. BP was not transparent about the arrests, but communications indicated that about a dozen had been taken offsite in the first group and later would be released from the Sonoita station to McDonald’s in Nogales, where volunteers were able to give them transport. When a group of three got back to Lochiel, they were pleasantly surprised to find things intact on the private property the encampment uses and fell into catching up with others who’d gotten back. They were in a bit of shock it seemed, but of the feeling that one tree may have died, but the resistance movement there had not.
Day 3, Rebirth. Tuesday, Oct. 6, 2026
Breaking news today: Tree-sitting renews on the Mexico side, construction again stopped. About 25 “campers” are back in residence, and two more arrests occurred, with no info available about their identities or location as of midafternoon.