A coalition of landowners from the Big Bend region and the advocacy group Conserve Big Bend filed a lawsuit Sept. 14 in federal court in Washington, D.C., seeking to stop about 600 miles of planned border barrier work in five West Texas project areas inside Big Bend National Park.
The complaint names as defendants the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott. The plaintiffs include Conserve Big Bend and six property owners from the Texas communities of Presidio and Redford, represented by K&L Gates LLP.
Scott said in an email to ENR that Customs and Border Patrol is reviewing the lawsuit with the US Department of Justice. “We have confidence in our legal authorities and are committed to securing the entire border while preserving the unique landscape of the Big Bend region,” he said.
Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.
Announcing the filing at a press conference outside the Presidio County Courthouse in Marfa, Texas, Clara Bensen, a Conserve Big Bend board member and director of communications for the group’s No Big Bend Wall initiative, said the case is based on a threshold that Congress wrote into a nearly 30-year-old statute.
Coalition of opponents of the construction of the federal border wall in the Big Bend National Park in Texas at the press conference on September 14 outside the Presidio County Courthouse in Marfa, Texas, to announce a federal lawsuit against the US agencies.
Photo courtesy of No Big Bend Wall Coalition/YouTube
“The Secretary of Homeland Security is granted extraordinary and expedited powers to build border barriers and eliminate dozens of federal protections, environmental laws and ordinary due process,” Bensen said, “but Congress explicitly established a strict legal prerequisite for this extraordinary power: It can only be invoked in areas designated as ‘high illegal entry.’
The dress does not challenge the design of the wall; challenges the legal trigger that Customs and Border Patrol used to speed up the work, which is already under construction along part of the route.
Five projects, one legal trigger
The complaint cites an agency statement, filed in a related federal lawsuit in the Eastern District of Texas, that divides the work into five projects in Hudspeth, Presidio and Val Verde counties, plus the Del Rio sector to Lake Amistad. Three segments, awarded March 5, call for a 30-foot bollard-style pedestrian barrier; a fourth, a 160-mile vehicle barrier segment, was awarded on June 2.
The fifth and most contested segment passes through Big Bend Ranch State Park, Big Bend National Park, and adjacent private lands.
Awarded in May to Southwest Valley Constructors Co., a unit of Kiewit Corp., under a $1.72 billion task order, it calls for 17 miles of non-contiguous, low-profile vehicle barrier intended to restrict vehicle access while using park land as a natural barrier, in addition to about 205 miles of road improvements.
Crews began soil evaluation work inside the park in early August, which Border and Customs Patrol says does not mark the formal start of construction. Field work is already underway on the Hudspeth County and northwest Presidio segments, and the agency told the Texas court in an Aug. 24 filing that work on the Presidio County segment through the city of Presidio would begin in a few weeks.
According to Conserve Big Bend, about 65 percent of the project’s footprint is privately owned. But work going through Big Bend National Park has garnered more headlines, as has virulent, bipartisan opposition from Democratic and Republican lawmakers, environmental and indigenous advocacy groups and local landowners.
The Customs and Border Patrol announced on August 17 that it would pause construction inside the park for two weeks while Scott conducted an on-site inspection, and the agency later extended the pause until September 30.
The “high illegal entry” threshold.
The lawsuit challenges Section 102(a) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which allows the Homeland Security secretary to waive dozens of federal laws to speed up the construction of barriers, but only in areas formally designated as “high illegal entry.”
The plaintiffs argue that the Big Bend sector (517 miles, about a quarter of the southwest border) does not meet that limit, citing Customs and Border Patrol figures that show the fewest apprehensions of any sector in the Southwest each year since fiscal year 1973, including just 3,096 in fiscal year 2025, a total drop of 724% from the sector’s 724% southwest33. since fiscal year 1967.
Then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem first designated the sector as illegal high entry on October 15, 2025, Federal Register notice, then issued a second determination in February 2026. Mullin, who succeeded her, issued four more determinations between May and July that revised and expanded the limits, for a total of six, which the complaint says collectively cover the entire industry.
The determinations waived more than two dozen federal laws, according to the complaint, including several that specifically protect Big Bend National Park, and are based on the same waiver authority that the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Ruidosa Church and a Big Bend area landowner are separately challenging in federal court.
Owners’ claims and accounts
The suit raises five claims: two under the Administrative Procedure Act, one ultra vires claim, and Fifth Amendment due process and care clause claims, and asks the court to vacate the determinations and issue a preliminary and permanent injunction. Bensen said the defendants have 60 days to respond, and the plaintiffs intend to seek a temporary industry-wide restraining order.
The complaint also details Customs and Border Patrol’s communication with the individual owners. Nadine Pineda Mata, Joe Pineda and Leo Nunez Pineda, who together own about 270 acres near Redford, received a February notice requesting access for surveys and assessments; the family says the agency later told them it would have to start sentencing proceedings within 90 days.
David Keller, an archaeologist and Conserve Big Bend board member, said CBP applied for a right of entry in April to do survey work on his 10-acre farm near Redford. Laura Allen, a rancher near Amistad Lake and a former Val Verde County judge, said the route would go more than eight miles through her property, and she declined a right-of-entry payment offered by Customs and Border Patrol.
Speaking at the same event, Keller said the Conserve Big Bend landowner coalition has grown to 230 members, more than 70 of whom were willing to act as plaintiffs. “Landowner resistance has slowed this project to a crawl,” he said. “People have been denied access agreements. Survey and construction schedules have been delayed by months. Contractors have been sent home.”
