SOUTH BREWSTER COUNTY — Active-duty military personnel could return to patrol Big Bend National Park for the first time in nearly three decades following a surge of troops sent to the border by President Donald Trump his first week in office. Negotiations between park leadership and U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) began in earnest last week, sparking anxiety in a region still scarred by its last armed occupation.
The park declined to comment on the matter, which was relayed to the The Big Bend Sentinel by numerous sources who wished to remain anonymous amid a wave of layoffs.
Troops arrived in El Paso for training ahead of military exercises the last week of January to bolster local Customs and Border Protection (CBP) operations, but have yet to reach the Big Bend country. “National security cannot exist without border security and border security is the reason why the U.S. Border Patrol exists,” a spokesperson for Big Bend Sector Border Patrol wrote to The Sentinel. “[We have] a longstanding history of working closely with federal, state, and local agencies to enhance border security, including collaboration with the Department of Defense.”
On January 24, USNORTHCOM announced that 1,500 active-duty Army and Marine Corps servicemembers would be headed to the border in the coming weeks to supplement 2,500 already working with CBP. Numbers and details are still in flux. “The exact number of personnel will fluctuate as units rotate personnel and as additional forces are tasked to deploy once planning efforts are finalized,” the agency wrote in a press release. “These military forces will support enhanced detection and monitoring efforts and repair and emplace physical barriers.”
The U.S. Cavalry had a strong presence in the lower Big Bend before the creation of the national park — perhaps most infamously at Glenn Springs, the site of a Villista raid on an Army encampment that resulted in the deaths of three soldiers and the taking of two American captives.
During World War II, rancher Elmo Johnson allowed the military use of his airstrip, which was notable as the only civilian-operated military airfield in the United States. The remote ranch was an oasis for military pilots, many of whom enjoyed whiling away precious off-duty hours on the porch with Mr. Johnson and a colorful cast of characters from both sides of the river.
But once the park was established in 1944, active duty military all but vanished from within the protected area’s boundaries — only to return in the mid-1990s to kick up dust along the River Road.
In 1989, President George H.W. Bush created Joint Task Force 6 (JTF-6) as part of his National Drug Control Strategy. JTF-6 brought different branches of the military together to conduct training along the border — a location chosen in part to support Border Patrol operations and in part because leadership thought it physically resembled the Middle East, where the Gulf War was about to bubble over.
About 20% of JTF-6’s budget and manpower was allocated toward engineering projects. In the Big Bend, most of these improvements were made to roads used by Border Patrol through private ranches and the rugged River Road through the interior of the national park.
While some local leaders were grateful for help with infrastructure projects that otherwise wouldn’t have gotten done, JTF-6’s presence in the region was fraught with controversy from the start, sparking town halls and spirited letters to the editor in local newspapers. Local ranchers felt duped, alleging that the military had not been clear that the “free” road improvements they’d been promised in exchange for property access would require an extensive environmental review before they could even begin. “Some Big Bend residents wonder what price they’re paying for a well-prepared armed forces and minor interruptions in the interminable flow of drugs into this country,” Orlando Segura reported in The Sentinel on September 16, 1993. “Many feel that the involvement of the military in ‘support’ roles is just one step away from undeclared martial law.”
In October of that year, under pressure from constituents, the Jeff Davis County Commissioners Court rescinded their permission for the military to access county-owned land in a show of solidarity with the ranchers. Folks in other counties pressured their local officials to follow suit. “Why fix up a road to help stop the flow of drugs?” Terrell County rancher Pinkie Carruthers wondered aloud at a town hall. “They want to improve private roads, but I can’t see how that will help stop the flow of drugs. It looks like they’re promoting drugs.”
The controversy faded as the road grading crews migrated south, and JTF-6 would only face public backlash again in a freak accident in February 1996, when a surprise windstorm forced two Cobra helicopters on training exercises to emergency land in Marfa — one touching down in a pasture in a residential neighborhood. (The Sentinel reported that — in a display of true Big Bend hospitality — the landowner’s wife brought the traumatized trainees cookies, and then-Sheriff Abe Gonzalez invited them over for breakfast.)
But whatever mild irritation towards JTF-6 some locals harbored turned into out-and-out hostility on May 20, 1997, when Presidio High School senior Esequiel Hernandez was shot and killed by Corporal Clemente Bañuelos, a U.S. Marine on drug patrol in Hernandez’s hometown of Redford.
A grand jury declined to indict any of the four Marines on patrol that day, and the federal government dropped its investigation soon after, but the damage to public relations was done. “This past week an event took place that, for the citizens of Presidio County, makes crystalline clear the absolute power and intrusive nature of our federal government,” Mark Davis of Marfa wrote to The Sentinel. “This was not the usual slow erosion of our individual rights to which we have become so accustomed. It was a covert, hostile act, which breaks the back of the Constitution and breaks the trust with all of the citizens.”
In January 1998, the Pentagon recommended that a temporary halt on military drug patrols along the border become permanent. “It’s not worth the legal liability for our soldiers, and the actual amount of drugs seized throughout the performance of those missions proved to be modest,” an anonymous senior official told the Scripps-Howard News Service.
As of 2021, all branches of the military — with the exception of the Coast Guard — are subject to the Posse Comitatus Act. Originally signed by President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1878, the act limits the power of the armed forces to enforce domestic law. (At the time of Hernandez’s death, the Marines were not explicitly included in the law but were functionally subject to the same restrictions.)
This year’s troop surge to the border will be matched by 10,000 Mexican active duty service members deployed to the other side of the border, which both the Sheinbaum and Trump administrations hope will curb migration and drug trafficking between the two countries. “The ability to control every portion of the border — underneath, above ground, [by air] and by sea is something we take very seriously, and we will ensure [that happens] as rapidly as possible,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the Department of Defense’s internal news service.