Big Bend residents oppose proposed border wall
Residents push back on proposed border wall near Big Bend citing environmental and economic concerns, among others.
Contractors building President Donald Trump’s southwest border wall are bulldozing portions of Big Bend National Park in Texas, sparking fresh outrage from longtime area residents and environmental groups.
“It is horrifying. An invasion. Occupation,” said Rio Grande river guide Mike Davidson, who has lived in the area for nearly 50 years.
Trump campaigned on tough immigration enforcement and border controls, and has made expansion of the border wall a key campaign promise.
Congress last summer supercharged Trump’s efforts with $46.5 billion in funding, and federal officials in June waived dozens of environmental regulations to speed up wall construction in or near the national park.
Construction is expected to include blasting new roads through the area so Border Patrol personnel can better reach remote areas of the park, which is about 330 miles southeast of El Paso. Protesters have argued that there’s little illegal immigration because the area is so rugged.
The National Parks Conservation Association, which has repeatedly sued the Trump administration over border wall and environmental issues, condemned the construction.
“Bulldozing Big Bend National Park is an unconscionable attack on one of America’s greatest treasures,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, NPCA’s president and CEO.
The border wall expansion has sparked controversy elsewhere. In July, for example, conservationists demonstrated after a group of trees believed to be more than 100 years old was felled at the U.S.-Mexico border to make way for the barrier. The three cottonwood trees stood in Lochiel, Arizona, for more than a century, said Erick Meza, a border program coordinator in the state for the Sierra Club. The massive trees had long been a home for rare species and a shady place for neighbors to gather.
In May, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Las Cruces in New Mexico asked a federal judge to block the government’s acquisition of a portion of Mount Christo Rey, a religious site topped with a statue of Jesus, on the Texas-Mexico-New Mexico border. That lawsuit is ongoing.
Big Bend National Park was formally created in 1944 and spans about 801,000 acres of desert and mountains, in part along the Rio Grande river corridor. The park’s southern boundary forms about 118 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border. Protests against the border wall over the past several years have included some Trump voters, many local elected officials, environmental activists and migrant rights organizations.
The exact path of the border wall through Big Bend remains uncertain. Earlier this year, the Trump administration indicated that it would skip building a physical barrier along about 372 miles of the border because of “unfavorable terrain or remoteness of location.” Other locations will receive vehicle bollards that will let wildlife pass through unimpeded, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
DHS officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Local residents say they’re dissatisfied with DHS’ assurances that not all of the park is getting a wall, and argue that the road construction itself is an environmental catastrophe.
Environmental groups, including the NPCA and the Center for Biological Diversity, have sued to stop wall construction. Those lawsuits are ongoing, but Davidson, the Rio Grande river guide, said he thinks there will be “no recourse” from the courts. He added he believes the White House is pushing to finish as much construction as possible before the midterm elections and the possibility that Democrats could retake Congress and halt progress.
Some Big Bend-area residents have argued that more cameras and better remote surveillance technology would be both less destructive and more effective at securing a border area that rarely sees significant illegal migration from Mexico. Tourism is a major industry in the area, with about 568,000 people visiting the national park last year, according to the National Park Service.
“This is the most heinous attack on an American national park in generations,” Laiken Jordahl, a national public lands advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, said in an Aug. 6 statement. “Big Bend belongs to us all, and sacrificing it is a betrayal of every Texan and every American who believes our national parks should be protected.”
Davidson said residents are hoping Congress can pressure the White House to back off.
“There is almost unanimous local opposition,” he told USA TODAY, “and that is becoming more and more vocal as the scale of destruction becomes apparent.”