U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin had invited border county judges to a Wednesday meeting to discuss border wall projects, but he didn’t show up, instead leaving staff members to have the discussion.
“It was the same old same old,” Brewster County Judge Greg Henington said Thursday about the call, which he said resulted in no new information. However, he said he was cautiously optimistic, because the border wall project manager for Customs and Border Protection noted in the meeting that federal officials had meetings to talk about the concerns communicated to them in a meeting with local officials two weeks ago. “He did give me a little bit of a ray of hope, that they had some meetings and had taken what we had told them to heart, but he didn’t have anything like news,” Henington said.
“I just reiterated to him that our message back to Washington is the same as it was two weeks ago,” Henington said. “Our three points were: Number one, get your message straight and stick to it. Do what you say and say what you do. Two, use existing infrastructure. And three, try to find a way to not just build a road and abandon it, and repair what you tore up.”
Presidio County Judge Joe Portillo confirmed by text that Mullin did not attend, and said there was nothing of substance to report from the meeting, but that he hoped DHS would reschedule with the secretary present.
On September 2, Customs and Border Protection agreed to a pause in construction until September 30 for projects in BBT-2 and BBT-4 for additional “public engagement” to evaluate potential impacts, according to a federal judge in a lawsuit filed by the People of La Junta Preservation and Far Flung Outdoor Center.
BBT 2 runs from Ruidosa to Madera Canyon in Big Bend Ranch State Park. BBT-4 includes Big Bend National Park and continues east into the Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River / Lower Canyons region.
