Planned projects could also include Big Bend National Park
by SAM KARAS
Late last week, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem gave physical border wall construction in the Big Bend the green light. In the interest of speeding things up, the posting in the Federal Register also waives 28 laws aimed at protecting environmental and cultural resources, including the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
Secretary Noem explains in the posting that there is “an acute and immediate need to construct additional physical barriers and roads” along the U.S.-Mexico border. She describes the Big Bend as an “area of high illegal entry,” citing 89,000 illegal entry arrests within a four-year period in an area that stretches from Sierra Blanca to Sanderson. “Since the President took office, DHS has delivered the most secure border in history,” she boasted. “More can and must be done, however.”
The waiver also gives coordinates for the “project area,” which stretches from an arroyo downstream of Fort Quitman outside of Sierra Blanca to about a half mile upstream from Closed Canyon in Big Bend Ranch State Park. That area spans approximately 175 miles of the Rio Grande, including riverfront in the State Park and some of the region’s most popular views, trails and river runs.
While the area did share in the large influx in migrant traffic that peaked in 2021, the Big Bend is the largest Border Patrol sector by area and historically the quietest. CBP has released data for the sector as recently as December 2025, when 178 people were caught crossing the border illegally in the Big Bend. In the Rio Grande Valley, also due for wall construction, that figure was 1,371—.a far cry from the numbers Noem cites.
Marfa Public Radio broke the story last Thursday after a provisional draft of the waiver was released online, noting that officials have so far been vague about where a physical steel-bollard wall will be placed and where “Smart Wall” technology including sensors and lights will instead keep watch. “Depending on terrain and operational requirements, each area may receive any combination of barrier installation, technology deployment, and road improvements,” spokesperson Landon Hutchens wrote in a statement.
Gov. Greg Abbott, who appoints members to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission in his role as governor, also told Marfa Public Radio that he “fully supports using every tool and strategy to aid in the Trump administration’s deterrence of illegal immigrants.”
Messaging coming from D.C. and Austin isn’t doing much to convince the vast majority of Big Bend locals that the project is necessary or desirable. Denisse Carrera, who has lived in Presidio for most of her life and has family on both sides of the border, was passionate about the history in and around her hometown, which has been continuously settled and farmed for thousands of years and could be threatened by a major construction project. It’s also the only place in the world where she feels truly comfortable as a young woman going for a run late at night or in the early morning. “We do not need a wall!” she wrote in a post on Instagram. “I feel safe, and I know a lot of others do as well.”
In response, a coalition of locals have taken to social media to share pictures, videos and other mementos of their favorite wild places. “Our core message is clear: no walls through our parks,” wilderness guide Tyler Priest of Fort Davis posted. (For more from Priest, see his column on page 7).
DHS’s wall projects in the Big Bend were a notable side character this week in a different corner of the social media world—namely, conservative media circles on X. Last week, Secretary Noem’s chief of staff and longtime alleged affair partner Corey Lewandowski threatened that a leaker would be “buried” and lashed out against journalist Anna Giaritelli for reporting on complaints within DHS that over 100 miles of wall in the Laredo, Del Rio and Big Bend sectors had been delayed by Noem’s alleged inability to sign contracts promptly. (A source told the Wall Street Journal that a contract for border wall steel sat on Noem’s desk for so long that the price of the order ballooned by $100 million due to inflation.)
All the gossip in D.C. doesn’t seem to be slowing down the wall—in mid-December, Customs and Border Protection was averaging two miles of wall construction per week, but hopes to pick up the pace to 10 miles a week, per the Washington Examiner.
Here in the Big Bend, calls to local landowners seem to have intensified, with folks across Presidio County receiving calls from contractors and engineers about easements and long term housing for large groups of workers.
As Big Bend Sentinel went to press, plans for a new wall project—named “Big Bend 4”—were added to an interactive online map maintained by DHS. That project is slated to stretch over 111 miles and encompass much of the riverfront in Big Bend National Park, with the exclusion of Santa Elena, Mariscal and Boquillas canyons. The wall could potentially cut off Cottonwood and Rio Grande Village campgrounds from river access, as well as the popular Hot Springs Historic District. (Spokespeople for DHS and the National Park Service were not immediately available for comment, but the Sentinel will provide updates as information becomes available.)
