As the Trump administration plans to erect 35 miles of new border barriers, environmentalists gathered last weekend in a Southern Arizona hamlet to trade food and songs during a bi-national "border happening."

Under the shade of large, decades-old cottonwood trees, a man from the nearby village of Santa Cruz, Sonora, played a guitar to an adoring crowd and carne asada smoldered on a grill as hundreds turned out on Saturday in the village of Lochiel to protest a plan to build a border wall through the San Rafael Valley.

For weeks, environmentalists on both sides of the border have worried about federal plans to carve a new border wall through the valley, effectively sealing up protected grasslands in one of the few areas without a border barrier.

In April, officials with U.S Customs and

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