Border Wall Construction Damages 1,000-Year-Old Las Playas Intaglio Near Ajo, Arizona
A 200-foot-long fish etched into the desert floor near the U.S.-Mexico border has been damaged during construction tied to President Donald Trump’s $46.5 billion border-wall project. The work, known as Las Playas Intaglio, is thought to be about 1,000 years old, making the loss both archaeological and cultural.
According to a report in the Washington Post, crews destroyed a 60-to-70-foot section of the intaglio west of Ajo, Arizona. Satellite imagery from April first showed a disturbance crossing the site, and later images revealed bulldozer marks running through about a third of the fish formation. After the report was published, U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed the damage.
In a statement, CBP spokesperson John Mennell said that on April 23, 2026, “a border wall contractor inadvertently disturbed a cultural site known as Las Playas Intaglio, located west of Ajo, Arizona along the border.” He added that the remaining portion of the site “has been secured and will be protected in place.”
The episode has drawn sharp criticism from Indigenous voices. Lorraine Marquez Eiler, an elder of the Hia-ced O’odham Indigenous people, told the Post that the destruction was comparable to someone damaging revered sites in Washington. Her remarks point to a larger tension that has shadowed border infrastructure for years: the collision between construction, environmental oversight, and the protection of places that carry deep historical meaning.
Las Playas Intaglio is not simply a mark in the earth. It is a rare surviving record of human presence in a landscape where time, ceremony, and geography are tightly bound together. Its damage now stands as a stark reminder that large-scale public works can leave permanent scars on cultural heritage long before the political arguments around them are settled.
