Supreme Court Lets Big Bend Border Wall Construction Resume While the Lawsuit Plays Out
The court's unsigned Monday order lifted a Texas judge's halt on barrier construction across the Big Bend region — including a 17-mile vehicle barrier in the national park — with Justice Jackson the lone public dissent.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday gave the Trump administration the green light to proceed with barrier construction along the U.S.-Mexico border in the remote Big Bend region of West Texas, including in and around Big Bend National Park, granting the administration's emergency request to lift a federal judge's order that had halted the work, Reuters reported.
In an unsigned opinion, the court said Congress has expressed a "clear preference for expeditious border construction," which outweighs "any aesthetic, recreational, and environmental harm," USA TODAY reported; the court said the government's interest outweighs the harm alleged by the challengers. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to publicly dissent. Reuters reported the court also said the law at issue likely precludes judicial review of the claims in the lawsuit, which continues in the lower court.
The order reverses, for now, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone in El Paso, who blocked the project in October. Cardone noted that the Big Bend sector spans 517 miles — more than a quarter of the entire U.S.-Mexico border — yet has the lowest number of apprehensions of any Southwest border sector, USA TODAY reported. The lawsuit, brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, a Big Bend-area river guide and a group seeking to preserve a historic adobe church in Ruidosa, challenges waivers the Department of Homeland Security issued between February and July under a 1996 law to expedite construction past environmental and conservation laws, according to Reuters.
The administration has said most of the construction across the sector's more than 300 miles of projects will take place on privately owned land, and that the national park itself would get a 17-mile noncontiguous vehicle barrier rather than the 30-foot pedestrian barrier slated for other areas, Reuters reported. The administration paused construction in Big Bend in August after the project drew bipartisan criticism over its potential impact on the park's landscape and wildlife.
