- Plans for a border wall in Big Bend National Park were announced and scrapped within a few weeks.
- There are 517 miles of border through the national park located in a remote part of Texas.
- Though several thousand people cross the border there, local law enforcement opposed the idea.
In late February, the Department of Homeland Security revealed plans to build a border wall running through Big Bend National Park in Texas.
“The Big Bend Sector is an area of high illegal entry where illegal aliens regularly attempt to enter the United States and smuggle illicit drugs,” wrote Kristi Noem, the then-secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. “Given my mandate to achieve and maintain operational control of the border, I must use my authority ... to install additional barriers and roads in the Big Bend Sector.”
Locals in the area had already gathered what Customs and Border Patrol was planning by the time the statement was published in the Federal Register on Feb. 17, according to the local paper, the Big Bend Sentinel. Some nearby landowners had been approached about leasing their property for various staging needs near the Rio Grande. One local sheriff, CBS reported, learned about the wall while making a traffic stop.
Locals were not pleased with the idea even before it was officially announced. As the news broke nationally, their unsupportive sentiment was expressed by Republican and Democrats alike.
The primary city to access the region, Alpine, Texas, is a purple town and it unanimously passed a resolution in opposition to the wall.
“The City Council expresses its deep concern regarding the proposed construction of a physical border wall within the Big Bend region,” council members wrote. “The City of Alpine recognizes the importance of effective border security while also acknowledging the need to consider local economic, environmental, and community impacts when federal infrastructure decisions are made.”
In the wake of that response, Customs and Border Patrol has changed its plans for that stretch of the more than 1,500-mile long border several times. But, for now at least, it appears the idea to build a large physical structure through a national park is no longer being considered.
Yet, “CBP continues to work to implement President Trump’s Executive Order 14165, ‘Securing our Borders’ and Proclamation 10142, ‘Declaring a National Emergency at the Southern Border of the United States,’ it continues to develop and finalize its execution plan for border barrier construction,” the agency wrote in a statement released earlier this month. “The Big Bend National Park and state park are still in the planning stages.”
How did locals respond to the idea?
“It’ll ruin this county,” Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson told NBC in late February. “If it’s a real wall, it will devastate us. We don’t have oil and gas, we have tourism.”
Big Bend National Park is in a remote part of Texas. The nearest major airport is Midlands, which is a three- to four-hour drive and the local economy is sustained by people visiting the national park and surrounding state parks.
“Big Bend is a staggeringly beautiful, one-of-a-kind desert landscape that draws visitors from Texas and around the world ... Visitors have a significant economic impact to the local communities, totaling more than $60 million in spending in 2024,” said Cary Dupuy, the Texas regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association. “Customs and Border Protection already maintains a presence in Big Bend ... Building a wall here makes no logistical sense and only serves to harm the region’s wild scenery and thriving community-based tourism economy.”
In early March, the sheriffs of five adjacent counties wrote a letter to CBP expressing their concerns about building a border wall.
“As elected law enforcement officials serving the Big Bend region of Texas, we share a commitment to strong, effective border security. Protecting our communities, supporting our federal partners, and upholding the rule of law are core responsibilities of our offices,” the joint statement says.
“Based on decades of combined experience working this terrain, we believe the construction of a continuous physical border wall in the Big Bend region would not represent the most practical or strategic approach to border security in this area.”
From their vantage, there are several issues with building a wall through important landscapes and ecosystems that already act like a natural barrier.
“Steep mountain ranges, deep canyons, expansive desert landscapes, and the Rio Grande itself create formidable natural barriers that significantly limit large-scale movement,” they wrote.
“We respectfully encourage federal and state policymakers to consult directly with local law enforcement leadership and stakeholders before advancing permanent infrastructure projects in the Big Bend area,” the five sheriffs wrote.
This local opposition and subsequent bipartisan pushback appear to have stalled DHS’s plans. On the CBP’s website, there is an interactive map that shows what technology the agency is using to monitor specific stretches of the southern border. For the 118 miles that run through Big Bend National Park the map used to show plans for a physical barrier, but now it reads “detection technology.”
By March 20, the CBP confirmed with the local Fox affiliate that the border wall through the national park plan was scrapped but there remains a plan to build a wall along a stretch of the border west of the national park in Big Bend Ranch State Park.
Is that section susceptible to border crossers?
According to CBP data from 2021 to 2025, the Border Patrol intercepted 89,000 people attempting to cross the border in the Big Bend region of Texas. That area includes the national park, but also extends through state parks and private land to the east and west.
The agency seized 87,574 pounds of marijuana, 867 pounds of cocaine, 1,156 pounds of methamphetamine, 12 pounds of heroin and over 94 pounds of fentanyl.
“Since the president took office, DHS has delivered the most secure border in history,” Noem wrote in the Federal Register. “More can and must be done.“
As such, the DHS stated that it would waive certain laws, regulations and other legal requirements in its efforts to secure the border.
That includes 28 federal environmental laws, according to an opposition group that formed after the announcement called “No Big Bend Wall,” such as the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.
This year, however, CBP published numbers that show the Big Bend sector had the fewest encounters of all the stretches of the Texas border with 832. Meanwhile, some stretches of the Texas border are still seeing as many as 7,000 encounters, with Arizona and New Mexico up to 6,000.
From that same data, CBP determined that the Big Bend segment of the southern border’s encounters are down 44% year-over-year from 2025. For context, however, those other stretches are down between 70% to 80%.