‘Tree sitter’ climbs down, taken into BP custody as Az border wall protest continues

Prostesters trying to protect the last historic cottonwood tree at risk of demolition during Arizona border wall construction continued to clash with Border Patrol agents for the fourth day in a row.

A “tree sitting” protester climbed down Friday evening, according to fellow activists, after authorities spent hours unsuccessfully trying to remove her from the last historic cottonwood tree in the path of construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall in Southern Arizona’s San Rafael Valley.

Border Patrol agents took her into custody after, said some of the protesters, who’ve sent regular updates to reporters, asking to be credited as the Sonoran Desert Press Office.

They announced she came down on social media, and a video they shared with reporters shows her sliding down a safety tether, taking off her harness and walking out of the frame with agents.

The group of activists declined to name the protester who climbed down from the tree, saying identifyng her could put her from federal agents

The woman was been perched in the sprawling branches of the tree, which extend over the border, in an attempt to keep contractors from destroying it as the Trump administration pushes ahead with building the wall in a remote area south of Tucson.

Around 8 a.m. Friday, activists said the person was still in the nearly 200-year-old cottonwood, which is growing just a few feet south of the border in La Noria, Sonora, Mexico.

The climber has been in the tree since early Tuesday morning, right across the border from fellow demonstrators camped on a property in the small hamlet of Lochiel, Ariz., which they call “Camp O:Shad.”

Protesters said authorities just after midnight Friday began attempts to pull the “tree sitter” into a cherry picker, dropping her food, water and other supplies, plus the platform she’d sat on since Tuesday, about two stories to the ground. The woman went about 20 hours without needed supplies, they said.

A protester live-streaming through the @tierralibre_noborders Instagram account said authorities placed the tree-sitter in danger by not being adequately trained, taking her platform and using the wrong equipment.

“They’re absolutely putting her life in danger,” said a live-streaming activist. “They removed all her supplies, with only a safety line and a harness.”

Border Patrol agents could be heard shouting at her to come down. One appeared to tug at a safety line keeping her secured to the tree.

‘Itchy triggers’

For more than 70 days the protesters have tried to defend the grove of cottonwood trees in the path of border wall construction.

Three of four in the way on the United States side were toppled by construction crews over the summer.

The final U.S. tree, which demonstrators named “grandmother,” fell Monday as Border Patrol agents raided the protesters’ camp.

The tree where the protester has been perched, dubbed “Abuela,” is the last one to stand in the path of border wall construction.

Contractors working under a $334 deal with U.S. Customs and Border Protection are building 27 miles of double border wall through the grassy San Rafael Valley.

Prior to their attempt to remove the protester from the cottonwood, tensions between the group of demonstrators and Border Patrol agents seemed to have waned after four days of confrontations.

Kate Scott, one of the three people to start the tree sit in late July, said one person Thursday was arrested after they tried to chain themselves to a rebar in a ditch in the path of the wall’s construction.

Two others were also arrested that day, she said.

Scott said she didn’t expect violence from Border Patrol to escalate like it did Wednesday, when a protester locked herself for around seven hours to a gravel hauler used for the building the wall while agents sprayed them with pepper spray or shot pepper balls at them several times.

“They have a lot of equipment to guard,” she said. “Last night, we had the lockdown and they had itchy triggers.”

Scott added that the she believed the person who locked herself to the gravel truck was still in custody on Thursday.

“I still don’t know anything more about them,” she said. “They haven’t come back to us.”

‘Indefinitely O’odham land’

Dozens of people gathered at the campsite Thursday evening, next to two casitas on the property, for a memorial ceremony for the “grandmother” tree.

After a few Border Patrol agents began filming the ceremony, protesters lined a barbed-wire fence separating them from wall construction to block their view.

Within hours, the protesters hung tarps and blankets to keep themselves out of agents’ sight as they sang, chanted, socialized and ate dinner together.

Katie Martínez instructed campers on what to do during the ceremony and sang in O’odham as they formed a circle around a bonfire and took turns wafting smoke onto themselves.

Martínez, an Akimel O’odham tribal member, said she’d come to Lochiel from the Gila River Indian Reservation four different times in the months of the tree sit to show her solidarity.

“Any way it could be halted, we’re gonna support,” she said of the wall.

She said the wall construction is on track to halve the O’odham ancestral homeland and damage Quitobaquito Springs, considered a sacred site to her sister tribe, the Hia C-ed Oʼodham.

The Tohono O’odham Nation is suing the federal government to stop the wall from being built.

“The urgency to come back lies within representation,” she said. “This is indefinitely O’odham land.”

Julie Gharbi, of Tucson, said she spent part of Monday protesting outside the Border Patrol station in response to the raid and arrests that day. She wasn’t able to get to Lochiel until Thursday.

“I wanted to be here at the ceremony for the grandmother tree,” she said. “And seeing everything that happened last night, I definitely wanted to be here.”

She referred to the razing of the trees, plus other disturbances to flora and fauna by construction “ecocide.”

“It’s scarring the land, ripping out native plants,” she said. “Migration is natural, and blocking it is wrong. Blocking it is evil.”

Gharbi, a regular volunteer with the Arizona Palestine Solidarity Alliance, said she noticed similarities between decades of conflict between Palestine and Israel and the situation in Lochiel.

“In Palestine, they built a border wall between the West Bank and occupied land. That’s what’s happening here,” she said.

‘Why are they carrying guns?’

Jacob Nissenbaum said he entered into chaos when he arrived at camp on Tuesday.

By then, about 15 people were arrested.

“They’ve been really aggressive,” he said of Border Patrol agents. “They say they’re here for our safety. Why are they carrying guns?”

Over the next two days, he said, construction crews worked day and night to build the wall, while Border Patrol agents shone stadium lighting and flashed the high beams of their vehicles towards protesters as they tried to sleep.

The wall was only built as far as the west side of camp on Thursday morning, he said, but crews worked quickly.

The structure crossed over most of camp by that evening.

At it’s core, Nissenbaum said, the reasons for building the wall were rooted in racism.

“People will tell you it’s about drugs or human trafficking,” he said. “But when the man who decided to build the wall decided, he said they were rapists, criminals or worse.”

In his time at Camp O:Shad, he had conversations with about 10 agents. Many knew they were “just a number,” he said, and simply working for a paycheck.

Others believed their work as Border Patrol agents made the nation safer.

“It’s an ‘If I let one person in, then 10 bad people will come in’ mentality,” he said.

Many told Nissenbaum they were bored and hot, he said. And one mentioned they wanted to one day go to culinary school, he added.

They are still people,” he said. “I will admit, some of them do seem like their eyes are glossed over and they just can’t be saved.”

Martínez wasn’t present during most of the prior arrests and or when demonstrators were pepper sprayed, but she was distinctly aware it was a possibility.

But it would ultimately be worth it for Martínez if her descendants would one day be able to move through her ancestral homelands with ease.

“I’m a two-spirit, queer, indigenous woman. Violence, mistreatment and racism are nothing new to me,” she said. “In O’odham society, we’re always thinking about our babies that haven’t even been born yet.”

Gharbi said she also was aware she could be injured or detained. She also was undeterred.

“I think that it’s my obligation as a human, as an Arizonan,” she said. “Che Guevara said when he was being assassinated that you can kill one man, but not a movement.”