On a Saturday<\/span> morning in March, high school students, mountain bikers and soldiers from a nearby Army base climbed the winding path up Mount Cristo Rey.\u00a0From the summit, they could see most of El Paso, the sprawling city that dominates a stretch of desert where New Mexico, Texas and the Mexican state of Chihuahua meet.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n They paused to trace the line of the Rio Grande, where it divides Mexico and the United States, and then touched the smooth tiles lining the base of the Christ the King statue, a cherished monument that gives the mountain its name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Two days later, on a Monday morning, explosions rattled the same site. Contractors were blasting the south side of Mount Cristo Rey to prepare the terrain for construction of the border wall President Donald Trump has long promised would run from San Diego in California to Brownsville in Texas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the explosions, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) uploaded a video of the blasts to social media. One earlier post boasted the mountain was getting a \u201cface lift\u201d to \u201csecure a historically challenging terrain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The sarcasm didn\u2019t sit well with thousands of residents from both sides of the border, who looked forward to the annual Good Friday pilgrimage to the mountain summit. This year, they would be walking above an active construction zone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Walls have long separated El Paso and Sunland Park, New Mexico, from the Mexican metropolis of Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez. But building a wall on the rugged slopes of Mount Cristo Rey was long considered impractical. Eventually, the mountain\u2019s slopes became the only significant gap without an imposing border fence in the binational metro area of more than 2.5 million people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In recent years,<\/span> Sunland Park and the area around Mount Cristo Rey saw high numbers of unauthorized crossings. Migrant deaths in the nearby desert soared. In lieu of a wall, Border Patrol agents blanketed the mountain and stationed themselves, along with surveillance equipment, on nearby roads. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Border crossings in the El Paso sector slowed during the final year of the Biden administration and have plummeted since Trump returned to office. The second Trump administration is intent on sealing every border gap. <\/p>\n\n\n\n SLSCO, a Texas company based in Galveston, has a $95 million contract to build a 1.3-mile wall on Mount Cristo Rey and two other barriers near El Paso. CBP waived environmental and historical preservation laws in June 2025, clearing the way for a border wall on the mountain. Over the objections of the local Catholic diocese, which owns most of the mountain, work began at the site in January. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Robert Ardovino, a business owner in Sunland Park, is no stranger to the traffic of Border Patrol vehicles and undocumented migrants crossing into New Mexico. But he was appalled to see the side of the mountain being shaved off. \u201cElectronics would have made more sense than destroying a whole mountain,\u201d Ardovino said on a recent afternoon. \u201cBut they\u2019re doing what they\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He predicted that when the Good Friday pilgrims ascended the mountain, many would be shaking their heads at the destruction.\u00a0\u201cThere is no accountability,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd the damage will be irreparable.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCBP has environmental monitors present during these activities to ensure construction best management practices are being followed and implemented by the construction contractor,\u201d an agency spokesperson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An environmental summary report, completed in lieu of an environmental impact assessment, is not available to the public, the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mount Cristo Rey<\/span> is where the land border between the US and Mexico ends and the Rio Grande becomes the dividing line. This point, for centuries called\u00a0Paso del Norte<\/em>\u2014the northern pass\u2014has been a crossroads for Indigenous peoples, Spanish colonizers and later settlers traveling west on the early transcontinental railroads.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once the railroad reached El Paso in 1881, the city grew quickly. A brick company opened on the flanks of Mount Cristo Rey, and a quarry was carved into the mountainside. Later, a copper smelter rose in its shadow. Mexican American workers lived nearby in a company town called Smeltertown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A priest at Smeltertown\u2019s Catholic church first proposed building a statue on the mountaintop. The 29-foot limestone statue of Christ was dedicated in 1939. The mountain, previously known as Cerro de los Muleros, or Mule Driver\u2019s Mountain, was renamed Mount Cristo Rey. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Smeltertown was demolished in the 1970s. But descendants of several families who lived there still volunteer with the Mount Cristo Rey Restoration Committee, which maintains the trail and monument. They keep a watchful eye on the thousands of people, the religious and the secular, who join the Good Friday walk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n During the first Trump administration, in 2019, a group called We Build the Wall, that included Steve Bannon, tapped private donations to build a half-mile wall on the eastern side of Mount Cristo Rey. Fisher Sand and Gravel, which has received billions of dollars in border wall construction contracts under the Trump administration, built this section of wall on private property. CBP cut a dirt road across the south side of the mountain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bannon later pleaded guilty to defrauding donors. Lights illuminating the wall, which separates Mexico from the United States and El Paso from New Mexico, were turned off when the builders\u2019 bank accounts were frozen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Border wall construction largely stopped during the Biden administration. But once Trump returned to office, Mount Cristo Rey became a priority. Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem waived more than two dozen laws on June 3 to expedite construction of the wall across the mountain. The REAL ID Act of 2005 granted DHS the authority to \u201cwaive all legal requirements\u201d necessary to expedite construction of border barriers. Among the laws waived were the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Geologist Eric Kappus considers Mount Cristo Rey one of the premier sites anywhere for geology education.\u00a0<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n CBP announced plans for a 30-foot-high barrier that would run along the south side of the mountain and loom over the Anapra neighborhood in Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez. Agency plans state the wall will consist of steel bollards spaced four inches apart. It will require drainage gates and access roads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Funding for CBP\u2019s El Paso Anapra 16-4 Wall Project, which includes Mount Cristo Rey, dates back to DHS 2020 border wall appropriations. Since then, the agency has received 224 written statements about the proposal. According to the summary, 211 comments opposed the wall. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Notably, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Las Cruces urged the agency to exclude Mount Cristo Rey from its barrier plans. In its comments, the diocese referred to the mountain as a place \u201cwhere faith transcends borders.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA grant of entry onto land [the diocese] owns for CBP purposes, whether temporary or permanent, would deter those pilgrims and migrants from exercising their religion as they have done for almost one hundred years,\u201d wrote the Diocese\u2019s general counsel, Kathryn Brack Morrow. \u201cA place of hope, faith, and communion would become a place of fear, exclusion and division.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Morrow wrote that the Diocese had received multiple requests for access to its property from the Department of Justice, which were denied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The trail to the summit has not been disturbed by construction. But last year, the area along the border in Sunland Park and at Mount Cristo Rey was designated a National Defense Area, part of the US Army\u2019s Fort Huachuca. People who enter a National Defense Area can be charged with trespassing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Contractors are blasting the mountain along a 60-mile strip of federal property known as the Roosevelt Reservation. The City of Sunland Park also owns property on the mountain. A city spokesperson said Sunland Park has no jurisdiction over the area where construction is occurring. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The construction company JOBE also owns property on the mountain and declined to comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To the untrained eye,<\/span> Mount Cristo Rey, like many Chihuahuan Desert locales, can appear desolate. A local CBP spokesperson compared it to a \u201cmoonscape\u201d in a local news interview. \u201cIt\u2019s just rock and sand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But for geologists like Eric Kappus, Mount Cristo Rey is a \u201ctreasure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kappus discovered a series of dinosaur footprints at Mount Cristo Rey in 2002 while he was a graduate student at the University of Texas at El Paso. The prints were formed between 80 and 100 million years ago when Iguanodons and theropods plodded through mud on the edge of what was then a vast sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kappus said he spent thousands of hours exploring Mount Cristo Rey, looking for fossils and prints. After working as an exploratory geologist and teaching across the country, he still considers it one of the premier sites anywhere for geology education. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI could teach 75 to 80 percent of an introductory geology class in the field at Mount Cristo Rey,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s like a giant chalkboard.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe border wall is quite disrespectful to a lot of work that\u2019s been undertaken by numerous government agencies.”<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n The prints, preserved in sandstone, were exposed during excavation for the brick yard. The site was later donated to the non-profit INSIGHTS El Paso Science Center. The dinosaur tracks site is not threatened by border wall construction.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n William Lukefahr, an INSIGHTS tour guide, led a group down a rocky trail to the dinosaur tracks on a warm March morning. He slowed down to look for plants and animals. He pointed out a Black-spined prickly pear cactus and a Mormon Tea shrub. Then he spotted a spider web encasing a cocoon-like structure made of debris\u2014the home of a desert shrub spider.\u00a0\u201cThis mountain is very unique,\u201d he said. \u201cBut there hasn\u2019t been a lot of scientific research done here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other creatures commonly seen on Mount Cristo Rey include coyotes, canyon wrens, and the greater earless lizard. Scruffy sotol and creosote shrubs dot the mountainside. Lukefahr explained that Mount Cristo Rey creates a corridor connecting the mountains in Ju\u00e1rez with those on the western and northern flanks of El Paso.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In their public comments to CBP, more than 80 people expressed concern for Mount Cristo Rey\u2019s prized environment. The agency\u2019s summary statement, in response, explained that a biological survey yielded no federally listed threatened or endangered species. The survey deemed that the habitat has a \u201clow to moderate\u201d suitability for wildlife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCBP has also determined there is minimal impact to vegetation and behavioral patterns of wildlife since the project area is flanked by existing barrier and an active patrol road,\u201d the agency wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ardovino, the local business owner, said that wildlife activity in Sunland Park diminished after Border Patrol was \u201cunleashed\u201d to drive across the desert and carve new roads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Years ago, he said, there were 18 pairs of burrowing owls, a diminutive variety, on his property. That was until Border Patrol vehicles repeatedly disrupted their habitat. \u201cThey\u2019re gone now,\u201d he said. \u201cConcern for the environment is last on [the CBP] list.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Myles Traphagen coordinates the borderlands project of the Wildlands Network, a nonprofit advocacy group. He said building the border wall will counteract federal efforts to foster endangered species, including the Mexican gray wolf.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n US and Mexican government biologists collaborate on wolf reintroduction, with pups from New Mexico transported to Northern Mexico to grow the population and increase genetic diversity. \u201cThe border wall is quite disrespectful to a lot of work that\u2019s been undertaken by numerous government agencies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"In](\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/03242026-Border-wall-Sunland-Park-31-2048x1365-1.jpg?w=642\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/03242026-Border-wall-Sunland-Park-15-2048x1366-1.jpg\")
![\"Construction](\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/03242026-Border-wall-Sunland-Park-41-1024x683-1.jpg\")
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/03242026-Border-wall-Sunland-Park-19-1024x683-1.jpg\")
![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/03242026-Border-wall-Sunland-Park-12-2048x1366-1.jpg\")