On a late September evening in Nogales, Sam Saunders walked into a community meeting carrying a handful of papers.
It was a letter from the federal government, alerting Saunders about a new border wall project near his house.
“I’m just wondering if it's going to be displacing a lot of my neighbors,” he said.
Saunders lives along the southernmost street in Nogales, Arizona. A 30-foot-high bollard fence already stands meters away from his home. But the Department of Homeland Security is making inroads on a secondary fence, just north of the existing barrier. The so-called “double wall” would stretch not only through rural areas, but into border towns like Nogales, Naco and Douglas, according to the federal government’s online Smart Wall Map.
Saunders was surprised to hear the new wall would trickle into city limits.
“I don’t think it’s necessary at all,” he said of a secondary wall in Nogales. “And I think most people would agree with that.”
From San Diego County to Big Bend, Texas, the Trump administration is swiftly attempting to fulfill one of the president’s most defining promises: expanding the border wall. DHS has largely expedited the process through methods that include waiving federal environmental laws and awarding no-bid contracts, often citing national security concerns to justify the fast-tracked construction.
Critics of the wall – which include conservationists, human rights advocates and tribal leaders – note that a wall fails to properly address the root causes of migration; has devastating effects on the environment; and that it does not effectively curb the flow of illicit drugs entering the United States.
Now, midterm elections are approaching, with recent polls indicating that Democrats could take control of the House, the Senate or both. And some of those Democratic candidates have repeatedly decried DHS’s recent border wall construction. Incumbent congresswoman Adelita Grijalva, who’s up for re-election, has announced plans to introduce legislation that would scale back some of DHS’s power to waive environmental laws for expedited border wall construction.
And in one of the country’s most closely watched Senate races, Texas Democrat James Talarico has lambasted Trump’s attempts to build new border barriers through the state’s most visited national park — a plan that has garnered rare bipartisan pushback from Republicans and Democrats in the state.
“We can stop our government from spending billions of our tax dollars on a useless wall in Big Bend, one of the most sacred places in the state of Texas,” Talarico told a crowd of supporters on the campaign trail this summer.
But is that possible?
Stopping construction would be ‘very, very hard’
The potential blue wave raises an important question: If Democratic lawmakers take control of Congress, could they change the fate of the Trump administration’s border wall projects?
“It's going to be very, very hard,” said Chad Westerland, an associate professor of political science at the University of Arizona.
The ongoing border wall construction is funded by H.R.1, dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was passed by Congress in 2025 and signed into law by Trump that summer.
Hypothetically, Westerland said, Congress could pass legislation that seeks to rescind money from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
But any legislation with that goal “would clearly be vetoed by President Trump,” he added.
In certain cases, Congress can override a veto. But that would require support from two-thirds of Congressional members, and “even the best case scenarios for the Democrats in both the House and the Senate won't be super majorities,” Westerland said.
The polls predict a similar reality. Harvard University’s median elections forecast predicts with 0.81 probability that Democrats will win 52 Senate seats, and 241 House seats — far below the two-thirds threshold of a super majority.
“You need to override the veto. You need a super majority in both the House and Senate to do it And it's just hard to see the math on that,” Westerland said.
Speaking to AZPM last week, Rep. Adelita Grijalva expressed optimism that certain issues could draw bipartisan support — ranging from healthcare to the war in Iran.
“My hope is that immigration is one that we can work on for some of the easier pieces of legislation to pass, like hopefully DACA,” Grijalva said. “There are a few (issues) that even Republicans have said, ‘Yeah, this doesn’t make sense.’”
Grijalva noted she was still working on her own prospective bill addressing border wall construction, and expected to introduce it soon.
Hearings, investigations could be a tool for Democrat-controlled Congress
“The one thing that will change, day one, is investigations,” said Westerland, the University of Arizona professor.
Though Congress is often susceptible to gridlock and presidential vetoes, federal legislators also reserve the power to call for public hearings.
Westerland said those could range from investigations into Trump’s business dealings to probes into Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“Like, what are (ICE’s) hiring practices? You know, a lot of that's been happening in the courts right now, but that those will be congressional hearings,” Westerland added.
A Congressional committee could also opt to investigate the Trump administration's border wall contracts — though it likely wouldn’t be a top priority in the 120th Congress amid other issues, such as the ongoing Iran war, Westerland said.
In a separate interview, Grijalva made the same prediction.
“I think almost immediately, we’re definitely going to have congressional hearings,” she said.
‘That’s my birthplace’
In the meantime, border wall construction continues across southern Arizona — a tangible reality for borderlands residents like Ophelia Rivas.
Her home on the Tohono O’odham Nation sits in a valley filled with cacti, less than a quarter-mile from the border. DHS is preparing to build a 62-mile fence through the Nation, despite an ongoing lawsuit from the tribe.
Rivas has spent decades advocating for O’odham rights, recently co-authoring a book on the federal government’s surveillance infrastructure on the Nation. This summer, after attending a town hall on wall construction, she wondered whether her own home would survive the new border fence.
“I’m thinking, are they going to relocate me, or what?” Rivas said. “That’s my birthplace. You know?”
As dozens of people streamed out of the town hall, Rivas recalled a past conversation with tribal Elders about having to carry tribal IDs to cross to O’odham communities in Mexico.
“And the Elder man said, ‘So, when the water comes, are they going to stop the water and ask it for papers? So, when the wind comes, are they going to stop the wind and ask it for papers?” she said.
