The Trump administration has swept aside a range of environmental and historical protection laws to clear the way for border security infrastructure in Big Bend national park, one of Texas's most visited and ecologically sensitive landscapes.
The Department of Homeland Security published the waiver on Tuesday in the Federal Register, granting U.S. Customs and Border Protection sweeping authority to build virtually any security infrastructure it deems necessary in the 800,000-acre park without compliance with major federal statutes including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
The move has ignited fierce opposition from a bipartisan coalition of local leaders, public land advocates, and outdoor enthusiasts. The Big Bend area harbors several endangered species, a fragile bighorn sheep population, and extensive Native American rock art and petroglyphs.
While CBP has not committed to a full steel bollard wall inside the park itself, the current plan calls for 17 miles of vehicle barriers ranging from 4 to 6 feet tall, positioned in four separate locations along the Rio Grande. The agency also intends to construct 205 miles of roads up to 24 feet wide equipped with detection technology, utility poles, lighting, and surveillance cameras.
Bob Krumenaker, the park's former superintendent and now director of the advocacy group Keep Big Bend Wild, described the infrastructure as transformative in scope. "It's massive impact, massive destruction," he said. "You're looking at some of the most remote parts of a remote national park."
The timing of the waiver has drawn particular criticism given the current state of border security in the region. Illegal crossings at Big Bend have fallen to minimal levels. In 2023, Border Patrol made 100 arrests within the park; that number rose slightly to 125 in 2024. The Big Bend sector accounts for less than half a percentage point of all unauthorized border crossings nationwide. Since Trump took office in 2025 and his administration dismantled humanitarian immigration protections, crossings have plummeted further across the entire southern border.
U.S. Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat, called the project wasteful and unnecessary. "Billions of taxpayer dollars are being wasted on this unnecessary project, as Big Bend's rugged mountains make illegal crossings nearly impossible," he said. CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott acknowledged the topography as an obstacle, telling the Washington Examiner that placing a 30-foot wall atop natural cliffs would be "kind of silly." The canyon walls at Big Bend's Santa Elena reach 1,500 feet.
The waiver marks the first time DHS has used emergency statutory authority to install border security infrastructure inside a national park, though the agency has previously invoked such waivers for other federal lands in Arizona, including Organ Pipe Cactus national monument and Buenos Aires national wildlife refuge.
Advocates worry that the broad language of the waiver could serve as a license for far more extensive construction than CBP has publicly committed to. Krumenaker raised alarm that the agency would now face no environmental accountability, even for catastrophic incidents. "If they have a fuel spill, they're not subject to any laws. They've waived the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act," he said.
A CBP spokesperson stated in a statement that border security plans for areas adjacent to Big Bend "are still in the planning stages, while CBP focuses on other higher priority locations." The agency said it continues to coordinate with the National Park Service and state wildlife agencies on deployment plans.
Democrats in Congress attempted to block the use of border wall funding for Big Bend. Representative Henry Cuellar of Texas proposed a measure in an appropriations committee to strip DHS of those funds for the park, but the effort failed on Tuesday amid Republican opposition.
A legal challenge to the waivers has already been filed. The Friends of the Ruidosa Church, river guide Billy Miller, and the Center for Biological Diversity updated an existing lawsuit on Thursday, arguing that the DHS waivers violate due process and other constitutional protections.
Laiken Jordahl, a public lands advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity, characterized the action as unprecedented and alarming. "This is an attack on the integrity of the National Park Service itself," he said. "They have never waived these laws on a national park itself. If they're willing to do this in a national park, where virtually no one is crossing the border, where won't they?"
Author James Rodriguez: "The waiver essentially gives CBP a blank check to remake one of America's most spectacular parks in the name of border security when crossings there are already negligible. That's not a rational policy choice, it's an ideological one."
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