Construction has begun on part of the Trump administration’s 175-mile border wall through the Big Bend region, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
On Thursday, CBP’s online map of border infrastructure projects showed that a segment of the Big Bend area wall in Hudspeth County was “under construction.” It’s unclear when exactly the construction started; a CBP spokesperson didn’t immediately answer questions from Marfa Public Radio.
That project – known as “Big Bend 1” – accounts for about 47 miles of the broader plan for a 30-foot-tall steel border wall stretching from an area south of Sierra Blanca, Texas to Big Bend Ranch State Park in Presidio County. Construction has not yet started on the wall’s two segments through Presidio County, according to the CBP map.
The news comes just days after a coalition of West Texas landowners sued the Trump administration over the wall plan in federal court, arguing the administration’s waiver of federal environmental laws for the project was illegal. The lawsuit seeks an injunction to stop border wall construction in the entire region. That includes halting separate projects calling for steel vehicle barriers and roads inside Big Bend National Park – southeast of Hudspeth County – where construction remains paused amid other legal challenges.
Laiken Jordahl, an environmental advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in an interview Thursday that he and other activists did not see border wall panels being installed when they visited the Big Bend 1 project area earlier this month, though they did see widespread signs of construction activity gearing up. Jordahl’s group is among those suing over the border plans.
“I saw the largest staging area, the largest amount of scraped bare earth that I have ever seen anywhere along the border,” he said. “We saw concrete batching plants, dozens of earth movers, the largest water tank I’ve ever seen in my life.”
The nonprofit Conserve Big Bend is among the plaintiffs in this week’s landowner lawsuit against the wall plan. The group also spearheads the “No Big Bend Wall” coalition.
Clara Bensen, one of the group’s board members, said in a statement to Marfa Public Radio the construction start shows “harm is imminent and we are beyond the planning and research phase of this project, which is contrary to what CBP has been saying.”
“This development will likely be reflected in the legal argument the landowner lawsuit will make,” Bensen said.
The Trump administration has awarded more than $7 billion in federal contracts for the various border wall and related infrastructure plans across the Border Patrol’s Big Bend Sector. The sector has historically seen among the lowest numbers of illegal border crossings across the Southwest, with border apprehensions in the region accounting for just 1.3% of all apprehensions along the southern border in 2025, according to CBP data.
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