As the borderlands coordinator for the Wildlands Network, Traphagen had visited the area many times before. It was among the sites he examined in an extensive report published in July documenting the environmental impact of the border wall expansion under President Donald Trump. President Joe Biden paused the construction shortly after his inauguration.

Traphagen spotted a new staging area and water holding tanks under construction. Fixed to the wall were new signs citing an Arizona trespassing law. A security guard at the scene told him construction was resuming. Later, a Border Patrol agent ordered him to leave the area.

“It’s feeling like it felt during border wall construction with Trump,” Traphagen told the Intercept. “I hadn’t felt that on the border in a year and a half, and now it’s like, oh, shit, here we go again.”

Six days after Traphagen’s visit, US Customs and Border Protection confirmed that work on the border wall that began under Trump is revving back up under Biden. The wall’s environmental harms have been particularly acute in southern Arizona, where CBP used explosives to blast through large swaths of protected land — including sacred Native American burial grounds and one-of-a-kind wildlife habitats.

When asked if CBP envisioned a day when the barriers might be removed, Shelly Barnes, the environmental planning lead for the Border Patrol’s infrastructure portfolio, stated, “there are no current plans to remove sections of the barrier.” The wall will remain a permanent fixture of the Southwest for generations to come.