PRESIDIO COUNTY — Over 500 active-duty military personnel could be headed to the Big Bend in the next few weeks as part of the Trump administration’s push to bolster border security. The largest concentration of servicemembers would be in Marfa, per multiple sources familiar with the matter, but Presidio, Big Bend National Park, Van Horn and Sanderson could also see large encampments, joining around 80 soldiers already deputized to serve as law enforcement in Alpine.
On Friday, representatives from Brewster County and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) gathered in Alpine to hear from Department of Defense (DOD) officials on the matter. A reporter from The Big Bend Sentinel was removed from the meeting by CBP staff who said that the presentation was closed to the media.
Presidio County Precinct 4 Commissioner David Beebe said that 320 soldiers are slated to take up residence near the Marfa Airport, and around 100 at Presidio-Lely Airport, acting in roles that the agency hopes will support existing border security infrastructure. These troops would join thousands of others on the border from San Diego to Brownsville — in his first week in office, Trump authorized 1,500, and 2,500-3,000 were authorized at the beginning of March.
Around a month ago, Presidio County Airport Manager Chase Snodgrass was contacted out of the blue by DOD personnel who had gone to the Marfa Airport to look for him.
The small airport is made up of roughly 30 hangars owned by the county that are rented out via ground leases to various stakeholders. Both CBP and the Department of Public Safety (DPS) currently utilize hangars at the Alpine Casparis Municipal Airport. Alpine City Manager Megan Antrim said she has not been contacted about potential military use of the Alpine airport.
DOD personnel explained to Snodgrass that the agency had used local airports before, preferring to work with small governments rather than trying to find a willing private landowner. In an ideal world, he said, they’d have space to create an encampment with the facilities needed to serve out an initial seven-month deployment that could be renewed on an open-ended basis.
Despite its name, the Marfa Municipal Airport and surrounding 816 acres is owned by Presidio County — plenty of space, Snodgrass said, for the modular facilities the DOD described. They wanted five acres in Marfa and two acres in Presidio to set up shop, he said.
A former Border Patrolman himself, Snodgrass has seen agencies come together to work toward border security objectives before. That said, he is awaiting more details before forming an official recommendation to give to the Presidio County Commissioners Court, who hold some say in how a potential agreement with the DOD over land use could be drafted.
His primary concern is the airport’s safety and functionality for the folks who use it, whether to fly private hobby planes or to bring VIP guests into town for high-dollar events. “The only way we can do it is if there’s no interference with aviation safety,” Snodgrass said.
The Marfa Airport is unique among county services in that it pays for itself, using grants and fuel profits to maintain facilities. Snodgrass takes that financial independence very seriously and would need to ensure that the encampment doesn’t do anything to impede it. “I view [the Department of Defense] as a potential revenue source,” he said. “We are financially self-sustaining, and that’s because we’ve developed revenue sources, and we’re very careful about our expenses.”
The Marfa Airport has carved out areas for other entities to use before — there’s a Village Farms greenhouse growing hydroponic tomatoes on the land, and the county also maintains a 42-acre firing range leased to CBP for a current rate of $14,700 a year. The firing range — accessible by its own road — is just west of the airport. On it sits a few portable restrooms, some prefabricated buildings, an old rappelling tower and small helicopter.
County Attorney Blair Park said she is reviewing the firing range contract. The contract includes a permitted uses clause that states: “Lessee shall have exclusive right to use the Premises for a U.S. Border Patrol Firearms Shooting Range, Training Facility, and purposes incidental thereto, in support of the Big Bend Sector. The Lessee shall have the right to make alterations, attach fixtures, and erect additions, Structures, or signs, in or upon the Premises hereby leased. Unless otherwise agreed to by the parties, any and all alterations, fixtures, additions, structures, signs, improvements, equipment, or other property placed upon the Site by Lessee shall remain the property of the Lessee.”
Park said it’s possible that the Army will eventually create a new agreement with the county. “We just don’t know anything because they haven’t actually contacted us,” she said Monday.
The headquarters of the Marfa Airport, so to speak, is the Fixed Base Operator (FBO), an old prefabricated structure where the airport staff office and guests and pilots spend time before and after flights. In recent years there has been talk at the county level about improving and updating airport operations.
The Sentinel braved Tuesday’s dust storm to tour the FBO and airport grounds. Mark Morrison flies for recreation and travel and has rented a hangar at the Marfa Airport since 2018. A member of Marfa City Council, he said he was not notified about last week’s Department of Defense briefing in Alpine. But, he is supportive of military presence at the airport “if they’ll pay the county handsomely for use.” More ground leases and jet fuel sales could help bolster the county’s struggling budget, he said. (Snodgrass said that the DOD did not mention bringing aircraft into and out of the airport as a part of their preliminary discussions.)
“I’m all about having the government lease space at the airport so that it could be enterprise money for the county,” Morrison said. “That would be fine, as long as it doesn’t hamper any other free use of the citizens that actually have a stakeholder interest there.”
Morrison, who used to serve in the Navy, said Border Patrol has been “a good neighbor to the town.” However he wasn’t sure there would be a whole lot for the service members to do, on and off duty. “It doesn’t seem like there’s a whole bunch going on. It’s not a warzone out here,” Morrison said. “The Big Bend sector, while it’s huge, our border is relatively hard to get across because of geography.”
County Emergency Management Coordinator Gary Mitschke said he has been in communication with Presidio County Commissioner David Beebe, but so far little is known about potential military operations in the county.
“I know very little about what’s going on,” Mitschke said. “That being said, we’ve got a lot of space out at the airport.”
Mitschke, echoing Morrison’s sentiments, said the military presence could be advantageous in terms of improving county infrastructure at the airport. There is an established “emergency management area” at the north end of the airport that can be used as a staging area for helicopter take off and landing that Mitschke hopes the military will utilize.
“It’s been like pulling teeth to get anything done out there, developed for it,” he said. “So maybe this might be an opportunity for them to use it and improve some things. And then when they leave, they leave us with something nicer than it was.”
Mitschke agreed there might not be a lot for them to do, and he could potentially recruit mechanics to help fix up fire department brush trucks, which are all ex-military. He said open communication and coordination between county officials and military officers will be key moving forward.
Precinct 1 Commissioner Deirdre Hisler was so far not impressed with the level of communication between the DOD and county officials, given the scale of the operation — a nearly 20% jump in Marfa’s population, with no firm details about how that jump could affect local tourism, safety and civil rights protections. She was upset that officials from Alpine were all present at Friday’s meeting — including the city, Alpine ISD, Sul Ross State University and Brewster County — but that public servants in Presidio County, with the exception of County Judge Joe Portillo, where the majority of troops would be housed, were left in the dark.Â
Hisler worries that the negatives could outweigh any money the cash-strapped county could bring in. DOD officials have said that the soldiers would be staying in local hotels until housing in Marfa and Presidio could be built, but so far have only booked rooms in Alpine. “I’m definitely pro economic development, but I don’t know yet that this is truly economic development,” she said.Â
Hisler is the daughter of a Marine and said she wasn’t opposed to the presence of the military in Marfa on its face, but wondered why so many resources were being pushed toward border security during what could turn out to be the quietest March for CBP in a decade.
The history of Presidio County is forever tied with the U.S. military — the sleepy railroad water stop of Marfa got a second wind in the 1910s when the military campus that would later become the Chinati Foundation was established to keep an eye on the border. But that was during the Mexican Revolution, when lines of refugees headed to Marfa stretched miles long and everyday citizens of Presidio County had real reason to fear roving mobs of bandits who murdered children and held people for ransom.
Hisler is not convinced that current conditions along the border warrant military force and worries that the presence of the military will make folks think that the reality is more dire than it is. She would like the DOD to host town halls in Marfa and Presidio to answer constituent concerns directly. “We as a nation are very fearful right now, why are we exacerbating that?” she asked. “This is where we get into trouble — when we don’t speak freely or share, people think the worst.”Â
A spokesperson for the DOD was expected to reach out to The Big Bend Sentinel but did not as of press time. CBP representatives declined to comment for this story but said there will likely be a press conference later in the week.