In recent days, government contractors have started to bulldoze sensitive areas of Texas's scenic Big Bend National Park as part of the Trump administration's $46.5 billion push to build a massive wall along the U.S.-Mexico border — a move that has triggered bipartisan opposition.
"I believe in border security 100%," Terrell County Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland, a Republican and former Border Patrol agent, told Fox San Antonio. "Believe in even installation of barriers where they're needed. But I can tell you that specific area ... even just what they've done, unnecessary."
Last week, Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin relaying his constituents' concerns.
"My constituents believe that the 1,000-foot riverbank cliffs and remote Big Bend terrain offers its own source of deterrence for any illegal migrants crossing into the United States," Cornyn wrote. "Many residents that live and work around the parks are also concerned that a physical wall, which would be accompanied by lighting systems, access roads, and maintenance corridors, would (1) ruin the beauty, landscape, and wildlife of the park, (2) threaten culturally significant Native American sites, (3) disrupt wildlife migration, (4) limit access to the Rio Grande River, and (5) significantly harm the local economy as tourism is a major economic driver for the region."
Since returning to office in January 2025, President Trump has taken action to remove protections from more than 86 million acres of public lands, according to a recent analysis by the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank.
Here's everything you need to know about what's happening in Big Bend — and how it connects to Trump's broader agenda.
Established in 1944, Big Bend encompasses more than 800,000 acres of scorching Chihuahuan desert, cool, craggy peaks and fertile Rio Grande valley. It's located in a remote pocket of the Lone Star State formed by a huge southward dip in the river, and it contains within its boundaries 517 miles of U.S.-Mexico border. The park's diverse landscape is home to 56 species of reptiles, 75 species of mammals, more than 450 species of birds and more than 1,200 species of plants. Sea fossils, dinosaur bones and volcanic dikes have also been found there.
The National Park Service describes Big Bend as a "hiker's paradise," with more than 150 miles of desert and mountain trails — including the 1,500-foot vertical limestone walls of Santa Elena Canyon and Lost Mine's sweeping valley views. Designated a Gold Tier International Dark Sky Park in 2012, Big Bend is one of the best places in the U.S. to see the Milky Way at night.
"Easily top 10 park for me," one Reddit commenter recently wrote. "Borderline top 5."
"It's so far out there — really remote — which helps make it feel more magical," another added.
Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill — which passed in July 2025 over unanimous Democratic opposition — included $46.5 billion in funding for hundreds of miles of new border barriers, and early U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) maps showed "a bold line of wall structure along the floodplain of most of the Rio Grande in the high desert region of Far West Texas," according to the Washington Post.
But after residents and local officials objected, the administration quietly altered its plans, nixing its usual 30-foot steel bollard fence in favor of 17 miles of "vehicle barriers" — interconnected steel X's, 4 to 6 feet in height — along with surveillance cameras, lights, sensors and a new patrol road that will run the length of the park, at a cost of $1.7 billion.
Bulldozers belonging to Southwest Valley Constructors have already started work on the patrol road. According to the Post, "images show vehicle treads left behind on the dusty terrain as animals such as hoofed javelinas wander past. Construction crews were spotted surveying the land and marking the road's planned route."
"Early construction activities such as clearing and grubbing have begun," a CBP spokesman confirmed in a statement to the outlet.
The question is what comes next. CBP has denied that its contractors will have to dynamite the mountainside to complete the road — but advocates insist that "if they're going to build on that [rock], there is no alternative to blasting," as Bob Krumenaker, former Big Bend superintendent for the National Park Service, told the Post. Krumenaker predicted that blasting would alter the view, disturb nesting falcons and send debris spilling into the Rio Grande.
Earlier this week, the Daily Mail reported that "demolition crews have already begun blowing craters into the bedrock" with "sticks of TNT" just outside the park.
"'They've been blowing things up for about the last two weeks," one border agent told the paper. "Underneath the surface is rock, not dirt. They have to blow it up in order to build the wall. No one knows about it because there's no one out here to see it, but the project is moving ahead."
In response, a CBP spokesman told the Daily Mail that "construction crews are onsite re-grading roads that were damaged by recent storms that are required for access to conduct surveys."
In order to speed construction of the border wall — which slowed to a crawl during Trump's first term amid lawsuits and property ownership disputes — the Department of Homeland Security has waived its contractors from complying with dozens of laws, including the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. This means CBP can disregard the project's impact on certain plants and animals while skipping lengthy reviews and avoiding public input. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, "the move marks the first time in American history that the federal government has cast aside a broad slate of environmental laws … in a national park."
In his letter, Cornyn complained about the administration's lack of "coordination and communication" with "Texas stakeholders," saying it "has not been as fulsome as in prior years."
"On April 16, fourteen Texas-Mexico Border County Judges wrote to you asking for DHS to engage with the communities they serve and have open communication about the upcoming installation of border security measures," Cornyn wrote. "To my knowledge, the county judges have not received a response to their April 16 letter."
The administration's approach to Big Bend is part of a larger pattern.
In March 2025, Trump signed an executive order designed to expand logging and reduce oversight across about 250 million acres of national forests and protected public lands — a move that could damage fragile ecosystems, threaten old-growth forests, increase pollution and even worsen wildfires, according to environmentalists.
In April, a border wall contractor partially bulldozed — or "inadvertently disturbed," as CBP later put it — a giant, ancient Native American etching in the floor of the Arizona desert.
Last month, the president signed proclamations to shrink two major national monuments in southern Utah — Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument — by roughly 91% in order to open previously protected land to uranium and coal mining. Similar rollbacks have also occurred in Alaska, where the administration has opened new sites to oil drilling.
All told, the Trump administration has "cumulatively removed or initiated removal of protections for more than 100 million acres of public lands across both terms," according to CAP — more than one-third of the amount of land that President Theodore Roosevelt initially protected during his time in office.
According to the Post, Big Bend "community members have sued the federal government in court, filed complaints with environmental protection agencies, opposed permits for contractors seeking use of local roads and wells, and demanded accountability in public meetings."
Protesters again gathered at the park on Wednesday to voice their opposition, and public officials from both parties have called the administration's project disruptive and redundant, noting that "near zero" crossings occur within the park itself.
"God already built a wall through Big Bend — it's called the Chisos Mountains," Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico wrote on X. "We don't need to give billions of our tax dollars to out of state vendors. We don't need to desecrate this sacred land. We don't need this useless, disgraceful, corrupt Big Bend border wall."
"The potential destruction from road construction over the rugged terrain of Mariscal Mountain is extreme," Texas Rep. Lloyd Doggett, also a Democrat, said in a July 31 news release. "Tons of rock blasted away could end up impacting Mariscal Canyon, the Rio Grande, and Mexico. An incredible waste of both taxpayer money and an invaluable place of spectacular beauty!"
"Major permanent infrastructure, accompanied by lighting systems, access roads, and maintenance corridors would permanently alter one of the most remote and ecologically significant border landscapes in the United States," five border sheriffs, including Cleveland, wrote in a March statement. "Border security is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. Strategies that may be appropriate in high-traffic urban sectors are not necessarily appropriate in geographically remote regions such as ours."
"We are killing a gnat with a sledgehammer and wasting a colossal amount of money," Brewster County, Texas, Judge Greg Henington said at the time. Henington is a Republican.
On Wednesday, U.S. House candidate Brandon Herrera — a Republican running to represent the Big Bend area in Congress — said in a statement that he opposes "any construction in the Big Bend area that disturbs the natural landscape and threatens the jobs that tourism brings where non-intrusive technology would do the job."
GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson acknowledged last month that the administration should "take into account the local community's concerns." But he also argued that Trump's "border wall" won't always look like a literal wall.
"When we say build a wall, in some respects, it's a metaphor," Johnson told reporters. "It means we have to have a border that is secure."