Where things stand on Big Bend border wall plans
U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s latest plans for the Big Bend area of West Texas call for physical border barriers along a large stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border, but CBP says it is not building a similar 30-foot-high wall inside Big Bend National Park. The plans, which have shifted without consistent formal updates, are now broken into multiple separate projects with different scopes and contractor lineups, CBP said.
CBP said the agency is planning 30-foot-high steel bollard walls for about a 175-mile stretch of the border across Hudspeth, Jeff Davis and Presidio counties. The work is divided into three projects: “Big Bend 1,” stretching from Sierra Blanca, Texas to near the Hudspeth-Jeff Davis County line; “Big Bend 2,” stretching from Ruidosa, Texas to near the Madera Canyon Campgrounds in Big Bend Ranch State Park; and “Big Bend 3,” stretching from the Hudspeth-Jeff Davis County line to Ruidosa.
Federal contracts were awarded in March for each of the three projects. CBP said a $1 billion contract for Big Bend 1 went to Barnard Construction, while a $1.2 billion contract for Big Bend 2 went to Fisher Sand and Gravel. CBP said Barnard Construction also won a $960.4 million contract for Big Bend 3.
In late April, CBP awarded a $4.4 million federal contract to Tierra Right of Way Services for “BB-3 Border Barrier Project Construction Monitoring Services.” CBP told Marfa Public Radio the award would cover “environmental and cultural monitors” for that stretch of wall work, according to the report. CBP also said CBP’s timeline for completion of the three projects is sometime in 2027.
Alongside the border-barrier projects, CBP said it plans a different approach inside Big Bend National Park. CBP told Marfa Public Radio it is not planning a 30-foot-high border wall in the park, but that the park will receive a combination of border vehicle barriers, surveillance technology and patrol roads under a single project labeled “Big Bend 4.” That project spans from near the Madera Canyon Campgrounds in Big Bend Ranch State Park along the Rio Grande across much of the national park to the “Lower Canyons” of the Rio Grande east of the park.
The boundary between “Big Bend 4” and a physical wall became a point of contention after a federal spending website listed the contract as being for “a border wall in Big Bend, Texas,” the report said. CBP denied that the contract is for a physical wall. Last week, the Department of Homeland Security awarded a $1.7 billion contract for the national-park project to an Albuquerque construction firm, according to the report.
Local officials met with CBP representatives last week for an update on the Big Bend area projects, according to the report. Brewster County Judge Greg Henington said the meeting covered plans for roads and barriers in and around the national park, adding that CBP plans to improve, but not pave, dirt roads including River Road and Black Gap Road. Henington said some existing paved roads would also be improved and that vehicle barriers in the form of concrete bollards would be installed at spots along the river near places such as Lajitas, Rio Grande Village and La Linda.
Henington said CBP representatives told local officials the agency plans to use cameras and infrared sensors to respect the area’s dark sky designation. He also said CBP was “vague on what electronic surveillance really entails,” according to the report. In parallel, landowners along the barrier stretches began receiving letters from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—the agency handling real estate acquisition for CBP—starting in February, the report said.
The timeline for actual construction remains fluid, CBP said it had previously told local officials in March that construction could begin as soon as June 1, but it has not since provided an updated schedule. Even so, contractors have started moving equipment, the report said, including heavy equipment staged earlier this month for the Hudspeth-Jeff Davis-Presidio County wall project after a dispute among contractor crews and county officials over “unauthorized” road work that began on a rural dirt road to the border in April.
In addition to barrier work, plans are also underway for housing for border wall workers, the report said. It described plans for a 500-person “man camp” facility south of Van Horn in Lobo, with construction activity starting on the land in recent weeks and the local groundwater district still considering whether an agricultural water well can be used as a commercial well for the project. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is also in active negotiations with local landowners over acquiring property, the report added.
Opposition has continued on the political and community fronts, the report said. It described widespread bipartisan resistance, including comments by five border county sheriffs, more than 2,000 people protesting at the Texas Capitol in April, and a letter from seven former superintendents of Big Bend National Park urging Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin not to waive federal environmental laws for the park’s border barriers. The report also said residents have raised concerns about wildlife impacts, dark skies, the region’s tourism-based economy and potential flooding along the river corridor, while local officials said they were kept in the dark about the wall plans for months. Henington said in the report, “None of this makes any of us happy, but I think it’s a positive that at least they seem to be moving away from this secret squirrel stuff and being more open about it,” as CBP has agreed to meet with local officials once every couple of weeks.