In 1933, Father Lourdes Costa had a vision for a cross on a mountaintop in southern New Mexico. Nine years later, Costa’s idea became reality. A 29-foot-tall limestone statue of Jesus Christ created by the sculptor Urbici Sole was installed at the top of Mount Cristo Rey, becoming a beacon for thousands of pilgrims every year, some who make the journey on their knees in prayer.
In 2026, desert terrain surrounding the holy site exploded. Contractors have already started to blast the mountain’s south side to prepare for a chunk of President Donald Trump’s long-promised border wall. The government is seizing more than 14 acres of land owned by the Diocese of Las Cruces, including the land at the base of a holy site that’s now an active construction zone.
In return, the government will give the diocese $183,071. Border Patrol said the area was getting a “face lift.” The monument is now at the center of a months-long legal battle pitting the diocese against the federal government and Trump’s anti-immigration agenda. The Trump administration, according to the diocese, believes the “power of eminent domain overrides the right to free exercise of religion” enshrined by the First Amendment.
Escandon is a third-generation volunteer protecting the site with the Mount Cristo Rey Restoration Committee. He doesn’t believe a potential wall on the south side of the mountain would interfere with the monument or the trail surrounding it, but it would close off a 1.5-mile gap that has provided vandals and other criminals with “easy access” to chip the statue, throw bottles and candle wax, and tag the limestone with graffiti, according to Escandon. The case is among several playing out in communities along the southern border, as the president’s government-wide anti-immigration agenda seeks to build on his first term’s attempts to construct a vast physical border wall — drawing legal challenges from environmental activists, Native American communities and other groups that have been tied up in litigation for months.
The Department of Homeland Security has invoked broad authority to build the wall and other barriers while awarding billions of dollars in contracts this year toward its construction. In New Mexico, the Trump administration has invoked the Declaration of Taking Act, which allows the federal government to acquire private land for public use with “just compensation” for the landowners. The law, enacted nearly 100 years ago, allows the federal government to acquire private land for public use through eminent domain.
A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection told The Independent that the agency’s “preference” is to obtain property “voluntarily” but retains the right to work with the Department of Justice “to acquire any necessary property interest(s) through eminent domain.” “Smart wall construction in this area is located within 250 feet of the southern border, well south of the Mount Cristo Rey cross and access road,” a spokesperson for Homeland Security told The Independent. The only individuals who could POSSIBLY be impacted by the border wall are illegal aliens attempting to illegally enter our country.” The diocese — represented by lawyers from the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy & Protection at Georgetown Law — argues that the attempted seizure of the Mount Cristo Rey footprint violates the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which blocks the government from interfering with religious practices. The Justice Department has argued that the diocese’s religious freedom arguments are not “cognizable” as “a legal defense to condemnation actions.” “The inescapable implication of the government’s position is that if Congress authorized the executive branch to bulldoze every Catholic church in the United States and replace them with parks, the religious rights of the faithful would have no role to play,” lawyers for the diocese wrote this week.
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