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Supreme Court Lets Border Wall Work Resume in the Big Bend Region
An unsigned order lifts a judge's pause on wall construction along a stretch of border that includes parts of Big Bend National Park.
The Supreme Court on Monday, November 9, cleared the way for the Trump administration to resume building a border wall in the Big Bend region of southwest Texas, which includes parts of Big Bend National Park, SCOTUSblog reports. In an unsigned order, the justices paused a federal district judge's order that had halted the project. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to note that she would have denied the government's request.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone in El Paso had barred construction on October 2 "until and unless" the government complied with environmental and other laws. The plans include 30-foot steel barriers, patrol roads and surveillance systems, NPR reports. Homeland Security Secretaries Kristi Noem and Markwayne Mullin had issued waivers of environmental and conservation laws for the work, saying the area is one of high illegal entry; Cardone found that the Big Bend sector, more than 25 percent of the border, accounts for between 0.3 and 2.2 percent of apprehensions.
The Supreme Court wrote that federal law shows a "clear preference for expeditious border construction over the very harms respondents assert," according to NPR. The challengers are the Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit working to preserve a historic church near the border and a landowner who works as a river guide. "This decision greenlights the contractors and allows the bulldozers to come roaring back into the region," said Laiken Jordahl of the Center for Biological Diversity. The government had told the court that a gap in border defenses there would be "a dangerous magnet for cartels and other bad actors."
The lawsuit itself goes on in the lower court. The park has not announced any visitor closures tied to the construction; the Boquillas crossing, which reopened November 7, is on its Thursday-to-Sunday winter schedule.
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