A federal judge has halted Trump administration border barrier construction across Texas’s Big Bend sector, handing activists a pause that puts scenery ahead of enforcement.
On Friday in El Paso, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone issued a two-page injunction that stops the federal government from building border barriers or related infrastructure throughout the Big Bend sector, including Big Bend National Park.
Breitbart reported the order also bars any construction or ground-disturbing work in the sector while the lawsuit proceeds.
Cardone’s written command is plain. The government “shall not build border barrier or related infrastructure, or engage in any construction or ground disturbing activities, in the Big Bend sector.”
She also blocked the government from relying on the waivers of environmental and other laws it had issued to speed the project. Officials, she wrote, “must comply with all applicable laws.” The judge found the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on at least one of their claims.
Local residents and preservation advocates filed the suit after months of opposition and repeated stops and starts in construction. Plaintiffs include Billy Miller, a river guide from Terlingua, Texas, and a church preservation group.
River guides and environmental advocates celebrated outside the El Paso courthouse after the ruling. Miller made his priorities clear.
He told reporters:
“We dodged a bullet today.”
And he added:
“It means that we can continue to introduce people to the wildness. Their plan was going to ruin the experience of anybody going out there.”
That is the frame the plaintiffs brought to court: keep the remote stretch wild for visitors. The administration’s project was treated as a threat to the experience, not as a tool to control who crosses the border.
The Big Bend sector already records substantially fewer illegal crossings than other stretches of the Texas-Mexico border. Opponents of the barrier argue the remote, rugged terrain itself discourages illegal traffic.
Federal officials have warned of a different risk. Barriers built elsewhere can push illegal crossings into sectors that remain open. Big Bend was one of those pressure points the administration moved to close.
Cardone’s injunction freezes that work anyway. No barrier. No related infrastructure. No ground-disturbing activity across the sector, national park included, for as long as the case continues.
The government had used legal waivers to move faster on construction. Those waivers are now off-limits under the order. Every applicable environmental and related statute is back in force as a brake on the project.
The ruling does not end the lawsuit. It locks the status quo in place while the claims move forward. For now, the Trump administration cannot build in Big Bend, and it cannot lean on the speed-up tools it had already put in place.
Miller and the preservation side got what they came for: a halt, a celebration on the courthouse steps, and more time for river trips through country they want left alone. The border remains without the barrier the administration sought in that sector.
A river guide’s wilderness tour is now the protected interest. Closing a soft spot on the border is the one on hold.
