Catholics fight border wall plan threatening Mount Cristo Rey pilgrimage site

Mount Cristo Rey has become a flashpoint where border enforcement meets Catholic devotion. The Diocese of Las Cruces argued that a planned federal wall would cut across the base of the mountain in Sunland Park, New Mexico, blocking pilgrimage paths to the 29-foot limestone statue of Christ that overlooks El Paso and Ciudad Juárez.

The mountain has drawn pilgrims for decades. Father Lourdes Costa envisioned the monument in 1933, Urbici Soler sculpted the statue, and the shrine was dedicated in 1940. Each fall, on the feast of Christ the King, as many as 40,000 people climb the mountain for Mass, and some make the ascent barefoot or on their knees. For believers across the El Paso-Southern New Mexico borderlands, the site is both a religious summit and a cultural marker.

The federal government’s plan would reach into that sacred landscape. In a May 2026 filing, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it sought to seize 14 acres valued at $183,071 and use the land for roads, fencing, vehicle barriers, lighting, cameras, sensors and related border-security structures. The planned wall segment discussed in 2026 stretched about 1.3 miles across Mount Cristo Rey, part of a broader push to close one of the last major gaps in the barrier through the rugged slopes above the El Paso-Sunland Park-Ciudad Juárez metro area, home to more than 2.5 million people.

The diocese’s challenge carried stakes beyond one mountain. Religious advocates and environmentalists also opposed the project, arguing that the wall would scar a landmark long treated as sacred terrain. The dispute echoed earlier local resistance, including a 6-1 Las Cruces City Council vote in 2017 against Trump’s border wall, when officials said it would damage the region’s economy by weakening its ties to Mexico.

At its core, the fight over Mount Cristo Rey tested whether a pilgrimage site could slow or reshape federal border infrastructure. If the diocese prevailed, the case could set a legal marker for how far religious freedom and cultural heritage can reach when a wall meets a mountain that has carried both devotion and symbolism for nearly a century.