Background: For 70 days prayerful campers had stopped the destruction of Grandmother, an ancient cottonwood tree, that stood in the path of a new border wall being built thru Lochiel, Arizona. On Monday, October 5th 2026, border patrol agents stormed the camp, made arrests, and Grandmother cottonwood was cut down. The below reflection is from Carol Rose, who was on site and arrested that morning.
It was a beautiful and terrible weekend plus. I was with the community resisting the slashing wound being torn in creation by the border wall, standing with the ancient cottonwoods to protect the land and the peoples from dividing wounds.
Sunday Oct 4 was a beautiful festive day of action including:
- morning prayers standing in the border road looking into the rising sun as the community has done many times.
- celebration of Simcat Torah led by a Rabbi friend. Singing and dancing around the torah and the ancient tree, praying through the transitions that we flow in. Praying for rain
- a parade with joyous music, beautiful animal masks, costumes of more than human neighbors whose lives are threatened and destroyed by the border wall,
- sharings of poetry and reflection and challenge,
- wondrous dancing up the road and then many climbed to dance on top of pieces of wall whose installation has been delayed by years of cross border solidarity action and by 69 days of tree sit and other courageous resistance.
- In the evening we declared “¡Tierra Libre!” (The earth is free!) announcing the coming deconstructing of all walls.
Monday in the early AM of bright stars I woke and rolled around with thoughts about dynamics of power and privilege. How every use of a power granted by a system like racism re-enforces the system, but also for a moment may create a space for holy action. But our greater powers are ones that are in the image of God: the power of witness, of speech, of prayer… Eventually back to sleep.
My alarm woke me in the early gloomering. Wondering about a dream that seemed to point towards action. I rolled out of sleeping bag. Found shoes. Headed for dawn prayers under Grandmother Cottonwood who has stood in that place before borders were drawn over her wide stretching roots. Grandmother who is blessed by and who has blessed so very much life, including indigenous peoples for centuries.
My intention was to pray with the community, then join in the mundane of camp life by loading the trash and recycling bags into our car and heading back to Tucson. It was soon clear that Border Patrol had other plans.
Still, we stood again, as that gathered resisting community has many, many mornings, in the scar of the road, facing the horizon brightening with hope amid the spreading lush grasslands. Up the hill the border wall loomed, but also the memory of yesterday’s victorious dance. Also at the top of the hill were the headlights of Border Patrol trucks.
Still, with dawn wakes the undying hope of the end of evil, the collapse of colonialism and capitalism, the falling of all separation walls within us and between us. We pray for the sun to rise. We rise with the sun for the renewing of the land.
The trucks started moving down the hill towards us. Our prayer line stood then just beyond the crucial root zone of Grandmother that has been resting from damage since the gathered community claimed the space to protect her and let her heal. Down they came upon us, but stopped when they came to our line.
Armed and uniformed people got out and threatened arrest or the pain of being sprayed. We prayed. The sun peaked above the horizon.
They tried to go around us. We stood and prayed. The sun rose fully undeterred.
Holding the prayer I looked into the grate of a Border Patrol truck and wondered, if he rolls forward, could I get myself up onto the hood? If I can no longer stand might I sat to pray (as kneeling is no longer a great option for my old knees)? But the driver wouldn’t be able to see me. I’d better continue to stand in my prayer.
Deliberations that echo in the background of prayer faded away into a repeated call for Christ’s mercy on us, on these siblings gathered around us, on all creation. Human beings across from me who were dressed up in uniform seemed confounded. May colonization in them be confounded, haunted by this day.
Still praying I glanced over my shoulder. Friends were in a great hug around Grandmother Cottonwood’s trunk. My prayer renewed, glad that there had been time for them to gather.
Rows of highly armed humans dressed to intimidate marched by on to my right. Other uniformed human beings told me that I was arrested. Walked me away up the hill. A large row of trucks drove passed us.
Despite my telling the Border Patrol folk about the bone on bone arthritis that keeps me from fast walking, they pushing me forward faster… one even scoffed “that’s not arthritis.” Small indignities and temporary flare up of a chronic thing.
While they held me their stories kept changing about my legal status. It is questionable whether Border Patrol can legally arrest US citizens at all. It is unquestionable that it is not right for them to take anyone at all!
When they got out the mettle handcuffs, I looked at them with my best, ‘Really, I’m your mother’s age’-look. But they put them on my wrists behind my back. I asked if it was his intention to cause pain. He said that he should put them on tighter, but loosened them a notch. Self-advocacy is good.
He told me to get up into a truck, the floor of which was perhaps at the height of my thighs. I looked at him with my hands behind my back and said, “How?” Did he want me to fly?
Mostly they tried to get me to go away. They took off my cuffs. Cajoled. Threatened more charges, but couldn’t tell me what. They really, really wanted me to just go away. This old white woman praying was not up their ally.
But I could see a bit, could hear a bit. There were others being detained. Friends with much less un-earned privilege than myself. Some looked roughed up. I stayed.
At one point I was alone in a transport truck alone. I overheard a conversation between an officer and the person who had most recently been trying to convince me to leave. “Is she going to go?” The one I’d come to know a bit unlocked to back of the truck, looked in. His shoulders dropped. With resign dripping from his voice said, “She’s praying again.” By that time even the officer understood that that meant, “No.”
After a while the transport truck was full of us, but the only one with the painful metal cuffs behind her back was the only Black woman among us. Along bumpy journey to detention centers they tightened painfully.
We heard the lumbering rumble, then through scratched, barred window in the front of our metal compartment we saw a crane advance down the hill to Grandmother. No! We couldn’t see much, but even at that distance heard. They took her down branch by branch. Cherry picked a brave friend out of the tree. Demolish Grandmother Cottonwood. Tears. Wales. Lament.
I saw later in videos and heard in stories later, they brutally attacked friends, pulling them from the tree, pushing them back into barbed wire, cut the fence, invaded the camp (on land that a friend has the deed to)… They even tried to cover the wound of their evil deed.
We were taken to Border Patrol detentions. At one point the one friend who is Black was separated from us. I objected. The loud metal door clanged shut behind me in the good company of another friend who appears white.
I thought. Prayed. Knocked on the window. Our human guards, who have forgotten a great deal about how to act humanly, wouldn’t open the door and told me just to yell to them through the window. I thought, ‘you want me to yell this? I will.’ I said, “Is it your policy to hold people of African heritage in solidary confinement when white people get company?” The guard said, “What?” I repeated, “Is it your policy to hold Black people in solitary while white people have company? We want to be together.” They looked away. They scoffed. They seemed to do nothing. I thought the attempt failed. We watched what was happening in our friend’s direction. Noticed that she was advocating strongly for herself. Two hours later a supervisor opened the doors and brought all three of us into a room together.
Everything is cold in these prisons. At one point they took my sweatshirt away and gave me a t-shirt… Did they object to the bright orange, or the hood, or to me being warm?
Everything is loud in these cells: banging doors, toilets with a volcano-like flush, a yell at 5 AM for breakfast of soggy white flour tortillas wrapped around a mystery that included rice, probably beans maybe something else, even the space blankets crinkle loudly with every breath. Songs do echo beautifully.
Some of us were not released until well after 24 hours held in various Border Patrol cages. Throughout we were given differing stories about our status. No phone call allowed. Constantly the small and great indignities. Always me treated slightly more kindly while younger friends, friends of the global majority, friends who are targeted by other oppressions are targeted with more harshness, more indignity. May they heal well.
The preferences are also poison. Let us who are baited by the system with tokens of ease also detox. Let’s use the power that is God’s image in us: witness, speech, naming, kindness, truth, action, Love.
CALLS TO ACTION
- Donate: Support Land and Water protectors on the front lines
- Pray: For an end to border walls, and all man-made walls and divisions, that disconnect us from each other and Mother Earth. Join those praying at Lochiel in person or pray from afar with your community.
- Call for Clergy/Faith/Care Workers: If you can stay for longer than an evening, we need you now more than ever. Specific requests for clergy/faith/care workers:
- Descriptive Witness: observing with phone and recording observations through voice/text.
- Tending those on the Front Lines: staying further back on private property, folks from the front lines can come to you to treat physical / emotional wounding so that they can return to the frontlines.
Carol Rose is a pastor, sometimes a poet, always one to delight in earth. This former director of CPT is a longtime worker for a just peace that dismantles colonialism inside of us and in the structures that hold it in place. Carol is a member of the Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery Coalition and leader of the Coalition’s Protect Oak Flat Campaign that follows the lead of the Apache Stronghold. She lives on Tohono O’odham land in the verdant Sonoran desert city of Tucson, Arizona.
