Justice Department asks Supreme Court to restart Big Bend border barrier work

The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to lift a lower-court block on border wall and infrastructure work in West Texas’s Big Bend region, arguing the injunction leaves a high-traffic stretch open to illegal crossings and drug smuggling.

The Justice Department filed an emergency request on Wednesday urging the high court to let construction resume for now in the Big Bend Sector, a remote stretch of the southern border that includes Big Bend National Park.

CBS News reported that Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices the district court’s order “significantly frustrates the government’s ability to stop the flow of illegal aliens and drugs across the southern border.”

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone earlier this month issued a preliminary injunction barring the Department of Homeland Security from building barriers or related infrastructure, or engaging in “any construction or ground disturbing activities,” across the Big Bend Sector. The judge rejected the administration’s bid to pause that order just before the emergency appeal.

The sector covers more than 500 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border and 77 counties in Texas. The government says the project areas were chosen because of high rates of illegal-alien crossings and drug smuggling over several years.

Sauer ties the project to crossings and drugs

In the request for emergency relief, Sauer laid out the administration’s core case in plain terms.

"The district court's injunction significantly frustrates the government's ability to stop the flow of illegal aliens and drugs across the southern border."

He added that the Homeland Security secretary “identified the Big Bend project areas at issue because of the high rates of illegal-alien crossings and drug smuggling in the region over the past several years.”

Federal figures cited by the government put more than 89,000 people apprehended trying to cross illegally in the Big Bend Sector between 2021 and 2025. Officials describe 30-foot bollard walls running from Fort Quitman, Texas, to Closed Canyon in Big Bend Ranch State Park, with barriers and roads spanning more than 300 miles in the broader plan.

Customs and Border Protection said construction of a 47-mile stretch in the region began last month, and contracts have been awarded for five border-barrier projects there. The agency has also said the proposed wall itself will not cut through Big Bend National Park, though other infrastructure would.

That enforcement focus fits a wider pattern of Trump administration moves on illegal immigration, including a nearly $1 billion clawback aimed at illegal immigrant programs.

Judge Cardone blocked the waivers

Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the Big Bend barriers-and-roads plan in February and invoked waiver authority under a 1996 federal immigration law. That statute lets the secretary set aside legal requirements judged necessary for quick construction of physical barriers and roads near the southern border to deter illegal crossings in areas of high illegal entry.

Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who succeeded Noem after her firing, issued two more waivers so CBP could build barrier systems. Cardone found that Noem and Mullin exceeded their authorities when they issued the waivers between February and July.

CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott had already paused construction inside the park until the end of September after photos and videos of bulldozers at Big Bend National Park drew pushback earlier this year from lawmakers in both parties, cattle ranchers, and local law enforcement in Texas.

The Justice Department’s turn to the high court mirrors other recent Trump-era appeals, such as when the department asked the Supreme Court to revive a prison ban on taxpayer-funded transgender treatments.

Environmental challengers call the landscape irreplaceable

Plaintiffs, an environmental nonprofit, a professional riverboat guide, and a religious organization dedicated to preserving the Sacred Heart of the Church of Jesus along the Rio Grande, sued in April to stop the project. The Center for Biological Diversity is among the groups fighting the work.

Senior attorney Zeynep Graves issued a sharp response after the emergency filing.

"We're deeply disappointed that the Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court for a green light to bulldoze one of America's wildest, most extraordinary landscapes."

Graves went further on the stakes and the legal theory the challengers are pressing.

"Once Big Bend's canyons, cultural treasures and wild ecosystems are destroyed, they'll be lost forever. We're confident the law is on our side and that only Congress can authorize something as consequential as walling off the entire U.S.-Mexico border."

The center pledged to keep fighting so the park stays protected.

Court filings cited by the challengers paint a different picture of traffic volume. Annual apprehensions in the Big Bend Sector ranged between 0.3% and 2.2% of total border-wide apprehensions, they argued, and the sector ranks last among the seven sectors along the southern border. Plaintiffs also said the sector covers more than 25% of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Those dueling numbers sit at the center of the fight: the administration points to tens of thousands of illegal crossings and drug smuggling over four years; the challengers call the sector a low-share slice of the overall border problem and treat the landscape as permanently at risk.

Wall promise meets another courtroom test

Building a wall along the southern border has been a hallmark of President Trump’s immigration agenda for more than a decade. The Big Bend plan is the latest piece of that effort to face a district-court injunction and an immediate push to the Supreme Court.

Similar high-court fights have marked the administration’s legal strategy in other arenas, including when Trump asked the Supreme Court to revive a Clinton Russia lawsuit after heavy sanctions.

Roughly 17 miles of vehicle barriers and related infrastructure were described as running through park-area terrain under the agency’s earlier outline. The broader government description still puts barriers and roads at more than 300 miles.

Cardone’s order stops not only wall segments but any ground-disturbing work across the sector until the courts sort out the waiver fight. The administration wants that bar lifted now so construction can move while the underlying case proceeds.

Border security remains a live political flashpoint beyond Texas, as when Trump vowed jail time for California officials who count suspected noncitizen ballots.

The emergency application leaves the justices with a familiar choice in immigration cases: keep a single district judge’s pause in place across a vast border sector, or let the executive branch resume barrier work it says is needed to slow illegal entries and drug traffic.

State-level maneuvers on immigration enforcement have also reached the high court recently, including when Hochul pardoned a convicted felon in a bid tied to a Supreme Court deportation case.

For now, the injunction holds. The government says every day it remains in force undercuts the ability to control a sector already linked to tens of thousands of illegal crossings. The challengers say once the canyons and ecosystems are torn up, no court order can put them back.

Secure borders are not a scenic preference. They are a basic duty of government, and a remote stretch of Texas should not be left open by judicial fiat while illegal crossings and drug loads keep moving.