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TECATE, Mexico — <\/span>White sage burning, Norma Meza Calles gathers guests at a Mexican wellness resort into a semicircle facing Kuuchamaa Mountain and asks everyone to close their eyes and feel its presence. <\/p>\n \u201cThis is sacred to us like a church for you all. The mountain is our healer, our psychologist,\u201d said Meza Calles, a Kumeyaay Nation tribal leader who explains that in its creation story a shaman transformed into the mountain. “Here is where we gather strength to live in this difficult world.\u201d<\/p>\n Then she calls for a moment of reflection. But the silence is pierced by the crushing of rock. U.S. federal contractors have been blasting and bulldozing Kuuchamaa, which straddles both countries, to make way for new sections of wall<\/a> along the U.S.-Mexico border. <\/p>\n Indigenous leaders say that in the Trump administration’s rush to build border walls, contractors are desecrating Native American sacred places<\/a> and cultural sites at an unprecedented pace, more than 170 years after the international boundary split the territories of dozens of tribes.<\/p>\n Barrier construction has ramped up along the 1,954-mile (3,145-kilometer) border even as illegal crossings have plummeted<\/a> to historic lows. Much of it began this year after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security waived cultural and environmental laws. <\/a><\/p>\n In California, explosions on Kuuchamaa send rocks hurtling down its Mexico side.<\/p>\n \u201cWe feel that in our DNA,\u201d said Emily Burgueno, a California member of the Kumeyaay Nation, adding that \u201cbody\u201d and \u201cland\u201d are the same word in the Kumeyaay language. Some tribal leaders met with DHS officials to urge them to protect Kuuchamaa and are looking into legal action. <\/p>\n \u201cNo one ever consented or supported the use of dynamite on the mountain,\u201d Burgueno said. <\/p>\n The nation consists of more than a dozen tribes in California and Mexico\u2019s Baja California.<\/p>\n In Arizona, DHS contractors last month carved through a massive 1,000-year-old fish-shaped geoglyph called \u201cLas Playas Intaglio.” The rare drawing, etched into the desert floor much like Peru\u2019s Nazca Lines, was created on a lava field in what is now the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge. <\/p>\n The Tohono O\u2019odham Nation said it had pointed out the site on its ancestral land for contractors to avoid.<\/p>\n \u201cThis was a devastating and entirely avoidable loss,\u201d Tohono O’odham Chairman Verlon Jose said in an April 30 statement. \u201cThere is nothing more important than our history, which is what makes us who we are as O\u2019odham. The site was also an irreplaceable piece of the United States\u2019 history, one none of us can ever get back.\u201d<\/p>\n U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that a contractor \u201cinadvertently disturbed\u201d the site west of Ajo, Arizona, on April 23, but it vowed to protect the remaining portion. CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott is talking to tribal leaders to determine next steps. <\/p>\n Members of the Inter-Tribal Association of Arizona, which represents 21 tribes, traveled to Washington last month to lobby against a 20-foot (6-meter) secondary wall being built along that section of the border, as well as a primary 30-foot (9-meter) bollard wall planned on Tohono O\u2019odham tribal lands. They met with Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin<\/a>, a Cherokee Nation member, who listened but made clear his intent is to build more border walls as fast as possible, the Tohono O\u2019odham Nation said in a statement.<\/p>\n The Trump administration says the barriers are necessary to keep people and drugs from entering the U.S. illegally. It wants walls to cover at least 1,400 miles (2,250 kilometers) of the border. <\/p>\n