The Supreme Court is paving the way for the Trump administration to resume border construction throughout the Big Bend region in Texas, including inside Big Bend National Park.
The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 Monday that the government “is exceedingly likely to prevail” in its argument that a district court lacked jurisdiction to pause construction when it issued a preliminary injunction in October.
The Trump administration’s plans to build a combination of physical walls, access roads and vehicle barriers in the Big Bend region have sparked bipartisan backlash.
In May, ABC News spoke with Charlie Angell, a resident and landowner in Redford, Texas, who said he received a letter from U.S Customs and Border Protection (CBP) alerting him that the government wanted access to his land for border construction purposes and may want to take ownership of it if he declined to agree.
Angell runs an outdoor expedition company out of his property on the banks of the Rio Grande. According to a map of the administration’s plans, his property would be split in half and he’d be cut off from the river, where he often launches kayaks for his business.
“It’s devastating for me. I’m almost 60 in August, so that’s almost at the end of my career. And I’ve faced all my life savings and everything into retiring right where I’m at,” he told ABC News.
The plans for Big Bend National Park initially included a physical wall, but after public outcry, the plans were changed to include only a combination of vehicle barriers, roads and surveillance technology.
In their petition to the Supreme Court, the government reiterated its claims that the Big Bend Sector, the largest along the southern U.S. border, is an area of “high illegal entry.” However, opponents of the administration’s plans have expressed doubt about those claims.
According to CBP statistics, only about 1% of encounters with migrants happen in the sector. The rugged, remote and dangerous terrain has long been thought to be one of its most deterring factors.
Plaintiffs challenging the construction in court argued in part that DHS exceeded its authority when it waived several environmental and conservation laws to expedite the construction.
On Monday, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that the Department of Homeland Security secretary has wide discretion to waive certain laws in the interest of border security and ruled that the preliminary injunction prevented the government from “advancing its ‘compelling interests’ in border security and integrity.”
The court also appeared swayed in part by the Trump administration’s claim that stalling construction was costing nearly half-a-million dollars a day.
Some residents of the Big Bend region worry that the construction will cut off access to the Rio Grande, destroy the natural habitats and beauty that draw thousands of people to the region, and would decimate their local economies, which reply heavily on tourism.
“The Trump administration and its contractors are hellbent on destroying one of America’s greatest national parks, and the Supreme Court just gave them the green light,” said Laiken Jordahl, national public lands advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This horrific decision clears the way for contractors to bulldoze pristine desert and dynamite canyon walls before the courts have even decided whether this destruction is legal. They’re signing off on the permanent destruction of the wildest place in Texas, and the theft of a great American river from all of us.”
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