After months of controversy surrounding plans to construct a border wall through Big Bend National Park in Texas, a $1.7 billion federal contract was awarded last week, listed for border wall construction in the Big Bend region, waiving environmental protections.
The contract was awarded just a week after Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott told the Washington Examiner there would be no border wall construction in the park following pushback and a lawsuit from local residents.
The contract, awarded May 11, is designated in its description "for border wall in Big Bend Texas". An additional $4.5 million contract was awarded May 14 for "resource monitoring support" of border wall construction in a separate area of the Big Bend region.
This is the single-highest amount awarded for a contract in Texas related to the border wall, according to listings on the U.S. government's official public spending database, usaspending.gov, the Texas Tribune reported on May 15.
An interactive "Smart Wall" map on the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) website shows no plans to build a wall through Big Bend. However, there are plans to install roads and "virtual wall" technology that will alert border patrol agents of activity along the border crossing.
“They have made it a mission to obfuscate and make this as confusing of a process as possible,” Laiken Jordahl, National Public Lands Advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity, told the Texas Tribune. “From constantly changing the online smart wall map — I mean, they’ve made dozens and dozens of changes to that thing without announcing any of them — to taking it down entirely.”
On May 14, the Trump administration waived environmental protections in the region in preparation for construction. In a notice from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the U.S. Border Patrol Big Bend sector was described as an area of "high illegal entry", with over 89,000 persons apprehended attempting to enter the United States illegally through border crossings in the sector between fiscal years 2021-2025.
Apprehensions in the sector accounted for 1.3% of more than 237,000 on the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2025, making it the least busy of the nine sectors.
“A border wall in the Big Bend region is an absurd, wasteful, counterproductive idea that is loathed by nearly every person who has ever lived or visited there,” Isaac Saul, the founder of the nonpartisan political newsletter Tangle, who lives in the region, wrote to WOLA.
Tensions are growing among Republicans over the debate surrounding construction in the region. As the ongoing controversy of the southern border lingers, debates continue over Big Bend construction.
