Last week, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) gave its largest-ever up-front award for first-time border wall construction to a segment of barrier that will span the entirety of Big Bend National Park and extend down into the Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande. Southwest Valley Constructors of Albuquerque, NM was awarded $1.72 billion for the project after months of confusion about what kind of border security would be constructed in the park.
Southwest Valley Constructors was founded during Trump’s first term as a subsidiary of Nebraska-based Kiewit, one of the world’s largest construction and civil engineering firms. The company has tackled a number of large projects along the southwest border for the federal government, including a series of “barrier wall replacement” projects across the agency’s Tucson sector that wound up costing a whopping $1.86 billion.
According to the agency’s website, the company’s latest contract for a chunk of the Big Bend sector border wall project begins near the Madera Campgrounds in Big Bend Ranch State Park and extends down into the Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River. CBP’s “smart wall” program map shows a mix of infrastructure planned for this stretch, namely a “technology and patrol road” and vehicle barriers marked with the caveat “No 30’ Wall.”
That caveat is likely a response to public outcry over the prospect of a border wall through the park, which drives the economy of local communities in the Big Bend and represents just a fraction of all immigration-related arrests made in the CBP sector that shares its name.
While parent company Kiewit has garnered international attention for its environmental stewardship—the company was honored by the Engineering News Record in 2025 for a historic dam removal project in Oregon that restored the Klamath River to its natural state—activists have raised the alarm about the impact of any kind of massive infrastructure project could have on wilderness as pristine as Big Bend.
On the border, Kiewit subsidiary Southwest Valley Constructors has been the subject of a handful of lawsuits since 2020, including a wrongful death lawsuit filed in Arizona and a pair of personal injury lawsuits in Texas—all involving contractors in marked trucks and all requiring the company to settle with the injured parties.
In September 2020, a group of descendants of people interred a private cemetery in Hidalgo County, Texas, also sued Southwest Valley Construction, alleging that the border wall project would leave the cemetery in a “no man’s land” inaccessible to mourners and that construction activity had caused graves to sink “due to excessive physical shaking movements and vibrations caused by the heavy machinery.” A temporary restraining order blocking wall construction was granted by a judge and a settlement was later reached reimbursing the family for damage to the cemetery.
While CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott told a reporter earlier this month that the agency would be prioritizing road upgrades in the national park, the hefty price tag represents an unprecedented investment in park infrastructure—after a $22.6 million construction project in the Chisos Basin was cancelled with little explanation in April, the largest outstanding contract in the park is a $17.9 million water system overhaul, both figures closer in price to just a single mile of border wall. The wall project in Big Bend National Park alone is slated to cost just under half of the 2025 operating budget for the entire National Park Service, which rang in at $3.337 billion.
In a written statement to the Sentinel, CBP reiterated that there were no plans for 30-foot steel walls in Big Bend Ranch State Park, Big Bend National Park or Black Gap Wildlife Management Area. Instead, the agency would be prioritizing road upgrades, surveillance equipment and “limited, low-profile, post-on-rail barriers in strategic areas designed to restrict vehicle access while leveraging the natural barriers that already exist in the area.”
Southwest Valley Constructors did not respond to a request for comment for this story.