San Diego (AP) – A California tribe whose ancestral lands stretch along the U.S.-Mexico border is suing the Trump administration to block the structure of a segment of the border wall that, according to the Kumeyaays, desecrated the sacred cemeteries.
The Posta Band of the Diegueño Mission filed a lawsuit in federal court in San Diego on Tuesday seeking a court order to temporarily suspend the installation of a large steel wall until the tribe can recover its devotee and cultural heritage. Posta is one of 12 teams from the Kumeyaay people.
The tribe needs its members to be able to monitor the paintings and interrupt them to human remains and cultural objects.
The lawsuit filed against President Donald Trump, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, who oversaw the diversion of the military’s budget to the border wall; Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf; and Lt. General Todd Semonite, commander general of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, who is in the process of building the wall.
“The defendants are recently building the border wall through the Kumeyaay cemeteries and sacred lands, causing irreversible and easily avoidable damage to the remains, cultural objects, history and devout practices of Kumeyaay,” the trial states.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.
The Kumeyaays have lived border dominance of San Diego and imperial counties for more than 12,000 years. The tribe has moved through its ancestral territory through a formula of paths, many of which cross the U.S.-Mexico border and have a devout meaning, according to demand.
The places along the border region are history of the creation of the tribe.
Among the places threatened by the structure is an ancient tribal cemetery near the city of Jacumba, according to the tribe. They said research on the cultural resources and historians of Kumeyaay noted the lifestyles of human remains, burial sites and archaeological sites of Kumeyaay on the way to structure.
Sealing the border disrupts the tribe’s devoted practices because its members have been threatened with unlawful arrests and transgression for attempting to succeed in prayer spaces and ceremonies, according to the trial.
The tribe claims that its members were not adequately consulted through border agents and that they were not allowed to protect their cemeteries or treat well the remains exhumed through the structure of the wall.
Members of the young tribes, adding to the school’s top students, organized demonstrations opposed to the border wall to draw attention to the problem.