The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for construction of the Trump administration’s border wall along the Big Bend sector of the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas.
The unsigned decision reverses a lower-court ruling that had ordered the Department of Homeland Security to follow the slew of historical and environmental protection laws that the department had waived this year throughout the region.
The Supreme Court ruling says the lower court’s injunction, which halted all associated construction, overstepped the judge’s legal authority. The high court also said the injunction “impedes the Government from advancing its ‘compelling interests’ in border security and integrity.”
And the justices said the government’s aims outweigh “any aesthetic, recreational, and environmental harm alleged by respondents.”
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Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only noted dissent.
At issue is Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s waivers of over a dozen environmental and historic preservation laws in order to expedite construction in the Big Bend sector, which includes a 607-mile stretch of land at the border, including through state and national parks.
In October, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone denied DHS’s appeal to reverse her earlier ruling.
The Justice Department then appealed to the Supreme Court in an emergency application that called Cardone’s ruling “baseless.” In an October filing, the Trump administration said the district court ruling “understated the harms” that the government would face if construction were not allowed to continue with the laws waived.
The government wrote that the construction is aimed at mitigating border crossings in the Big Bend sector. Lower courts and the plaintiffs say the sector experiences some of the lowest crossing rates across any U.S. border, and the lowest ones along the entire Southern border.
Big Bend-area advocates, including the river boat guide, church preservation and environmental organization that brought the lawsuit against the government, have also said construction in the region would harm local livelihoods that depend on the natural landscape to survive.
The waivers, they wrote in an October filing to the Supreme Court, mark “a truly ‘extraordinary’ assertion of power.”
“Once habitat is destroyed, vegetation cleared, historic resources damaged, livelihoods and private property destroyed, and wilderness landscapes fragmented by roads, barriers, and associated infrastructure, no final judgment can restore the status quo,” the group opposing the construction said in a filing.
“The Waivers authorize construction across hundreds of miles of landscape rich with cultural, historical, and archaeological resources that cannot be restored once destroyed,” the filing says.
The government, in its Friday response, called the waivers, “merely a recent example of the Secretary using a well-worn tool in his border-security toolkit.”
The Trump administration campaigned on building a wall against the Southern border, and has awarded billions of dollars in contracts to do so. But that is not without opposition, especially in the Big Bend sector, where the outcry against construction has often been bipartisan, particularly relating to the administration’s efforts in Big Bend National Park and a nearby state park.
This year, Customs and Border Patrol Commissioner Rodney Scott visited the parks following widespread concern over the construction taking place in the area. While there, he announced a voluntary temporary pause in the agency’s plans. The pause expired Sept. 30.
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