Big Bend’s border construction pause reaches beyond the national park

For river guide Danny William Miller, a planned border wall threatens access from his land to the Rio Grande—and the wilderness setting of his tours. A federal judge’s October 2 order now restricts construction across Texas’s Big Bend Sector while the legal fight continues. Miller described those threatened losses in testimony reported by the Big Bend Sentinel.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone issued the preliminary injunction on Friday, October 2. Its reach extends beyond Big Bend National Park to projects upriver and downriver, where construction would largely require private land. The Associated Press reported that officials had been seeking landowners’ permission to survey and build.

The signed order, available through the case docket, uses the geographic wording “in the Big Bend Sector.” It imposes two distinct restrictions: one on construction, another on the legal waivers used to speed it up. Both differ from CBP’s earlier pause inside the national park.

The distinction matters because construction takes several forms. The park proposals included patrol roads and steel vehicle barriers. In August, CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott said the agency was not seeking a 30-foot steel wall inside the park. Roads and vehicle barriers can still require substantial clearing, which helps explain why the dispute extends beyond wall panels. Marfa Public Radio reported seeing machinery near what appeared to be a newly cleared path near Mariscal Mountain during an August 17 flight.

The waivers address a different question: which rules the government must follow. DHS had used them to bypass environmental and cultural-resource protections for faster construction, Marfa Public Radio reported. Their suspension removes those exemptions for the duration of the injunction; it does not permanently invalidate them.

Cardone found the challengers likely to succeed on at least one claim and likely to suffer serious harm that could not adequately be repaired later without an injunction. She also found that the balance of competing interests and the public interest favored them, according to the AP’s account.

Those findings support temporary protection while the dispute continues. An injunction can stop specified actions while a case proceeds; a final judgment resolves the dispute. The federal judiciary’s glossary distinguishes those functions. Cardone’s short order leaves detailed reasoning to a later memorandum.

The landowners’ concerns are concrete. Hudspeth County rancher Bill Guerra-Addington testified that a barrier would cut off river access, while Miller described how construction could change the character of his guiding business, the Sentinel reported. These are accounts of threatened consequences. The injunction restricts further work; it does not itself order restoration of land already disturbed.

The government argues that physical infrastructure is needed even in remote, lightly trafficked areas to prevent unauthorized crossings, according to the Sentinel. After the ruling, CBP maintained that it could secure the border while preserving Big Bend’s landscape and said it was working with the Justice Department on next steps. The AP also reported that the administration was reevaluating its national-park plans without announcing what it would build there.