The Trump administration says its current pause on border construction in Big Bend National Park will last “at minimum” until the end of the month, according to a Monday court filing in a lawsuit over the project.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott ordered all construction activity to stop last Monday ahead of his visit to the area, which was prompted by public outcryover land clearing and road grading getting underway in the park.
The agency’s current plans call for new patrol roads, vehicle barriers and technology in the park rather than the 30-foot tall steel bollard walls other parts of the region are set to receive. But opponents have continued to advocate against border construction of any kind in the area, especially within the national park, a long-protected swath of pristine desert landscape.
Among those opponents are the local nonprofit People of La Junta for Preservation, a coalition of members of the Lipan Apache community, and Far Flung Outdoor Center, a Terlingua river outfitter, that are now suing the administration to block construction across the Big Bend region.
In its lawsuit, the indigenous group argues that the alteration or destruction of ancestral sites will “substantially burden” their Native religious practices, while the river outfitter alleges economic harm to its tourism-reliant business. People of La Junta for Preservation stewards over 130 acres along the Rio Grande in the area.
The plaintiffs point out that the Trump administration’s “Smart Wall” project extends far beyond the border barriers themselves — to include roads, excavation, lighting, surveillance equipment, staging areas and other construction work — that they say has the potential to irrevocably harm habitat, the river, archaeological sites and dark skies “whose value depends substantially upon their undisturbed location, context, and relationship to the surrounding landscape.”
In the government’s response to those alleged harms, filed on Monday, attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security actively defended the project, arguing it is needed to stop the flow of illegal immigration and drug trafficking and that CBP has “extensive procedures in place to minimize the effects of construction on the environment.”
They wrote that activities that have taken place in the park so far including establishing access routes and removing vegetation constitute as “preconstruction,” fieldwork that will inform the designs of the patrol roads, vehicle barriers and technology which are not yet finalized by contractors.
They wrote that border construction plans in the national park “are now subject to a review by the Commissioner.” But warn the pause could cause delays for other activities originally planned for early September like the preparation of laydown yards and staging areas, as well as more vegetation removal and grading.
The government wrote in the recent court filing that injuries People of La Junta for Preservation and Far Flug Outdoor Center are alleging are “speculative,” and that there are no plans to install “pedestrian barriers or stadium lighting.”
“The compelling interests of the federal government in border security greatly outweigh the speculative harm that the projects may cause Plaintiffs, especially when the government’s mitigation efforts are considered,” the filing said.
The current timeline of the construction pause through at least August was outlined in a Monday court filing from Paul Enriquez, a Border Patrol official overseeing the Big Bend area border wall projects. In the filing, Enriquez firmly opposed the plaintiffs’ notion that border construction will change the character or nature of the region in a written declaration.
“The planned construction will not make the area any less remote, peaceful, and will not impact its suitability for river or outdoor recreation,” he wrote.
But communities on the ground are feeling the rising tension of the border barrier projects as the rapid development of several large man camps for wall workers get underway and staging areas for steel wall panels have popped up across the Big Bend region. Damage to an archeological site in Presidio County known as the Porvenir Massacre site has already taken place, according to one local archeologist, at the hands of CBP’s border wall contractors.
A hearing on the plaintiffs’ request for a temporary block on construction is set for Friday afternoon at a federal courthouse in San Antonio.
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