A judge on Friday slowed the Trump administration’s plans for a barrier or other construction work along part of the U.S.-Mexico border in the Big Bend region in Texas.
The order from U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone says the Department of Homeland Security must follow the slew of historical and environmental protection laws that the department had waived earlier this year throughout the region.
Friends of the Ruidosa Church, a Big Bend river guide and landowner named Danny William Miller and the environmental advocacy group the Center for Biological Diversity sued Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin earlier this year over the use of waivers to accelerate construction in the Big Bend region, which includes Big Bend Ranch State Park and Big Bend National Park.
The preliminary injunction Friday blocks the use of those waivers while the legal challenge is moving through the courts. It covers over 500 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border.
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“No administration has the right to destroy a crown-jewel national park for political theatre,” Laiken Jordahl, a national public lands advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity, wrote in a statement. “With a federal court ordering the bulldozers to stop, Big Bend gets to breathe. But this fight is far from over.”
The suit is one of multiple that have been brought against the Trump administration over its efforts to build a wall on the southern border, particularly in the Big Bend sector.
On Thursday, a judge denied a request for a temporary restraining order in a separate case specific to Big Bend National Park. The Trump administration had paused work in the national park through Sept. 30 following a visit by Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott, and said in court filings on Tuesday that it was considering reducing the scope of the project through the park. A final decision on the plans for the national park, the administration wrote in the filings, would be made in the first week of October.
Building a border wall was a central message of President Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns. Environmental advocates have argued that any changes to the region would be harmful to the area’s natural landscape.
Over the past year, the Trump administration has also doled out billions of dollars in federal contracts toward building the wall, including a $1.7 billion contract on May 11 for a “border wall in Big Bend, Texas,” that fueled speculation over the administration’s plans for the sector, and more specifically, the state and national parks.
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