The Trump administration has waived a series of environmental and historical preservation laws to expedite construction of a border wall through Big Bend National Park, a vast protected wilderness in south Texas. The move comes despite plunging border crossings in the region.
Congress allocated $46.5bn for border wall construction in the 'Big, Beautiful' bill last year, fueling President Trump's ambition to wall off the southern border. The longest unwalled stretches lie along a roughly 500-mile section of west Texas known as the Big Bend sector, which includes large chunks of protected land such as Big Bend National Park, Big Bend Ranch State Park and Black Gap Wildlife Management Area.
The prospect of building a wall through these landscapes has drawn fierce backlash from a bipartisan group of local leaders and public land users. The 800,000-acre Big Bend National Park, which attracts half a million visitors annually, has sparked the most fury. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has sent mixed signals about its intentions, initially indicating plans for a steel bollard wall along the park's river frontage before changing its map to show only detection technology and vehicle barriers.
The Department of Homeland Security published a waiver on Tuesday that empowers CBP to build security infrastructure in the park, from 30ft steel bollard fencing to unpaved roads, bypassing protections under the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act and others. The area is home to endangered species, bighorn sheep and Native rock art.
US Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat, criticised the move as 'ludicrous' given that illegal crossings in the area account for less than half a percentage point of all such crossings nationwide. 'Billions of taxpayer dollars are being wasted on this unnecessary project,' he said in a statement.
The only formally proposed project within the park so far is a 17-mile vehicle barrier system with steel rails 4-6ft tall, along with 205 miles of roads and surveillance equipment. Bob Krumenaker, former Big Bend superintendent, called it 'massive destruction' that would alter some of the most remote parts of a remote national park.
