West Texans Travel to Austin to Protest Big Bend Border Construction

Hundreds of people gathered outside of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department headquarters in Southeast Austin last Wednesday, Aug. 19. As they do just once a year, the state commission that oversees Texas’ national and state parks was about to open a hearing for public comment.

This year, Texans traveled to Austin from border towns and across the state to oppose the construction of the border wall through the Chihuahuan Desert – a swath that includes Big Bend National Park, Big Bend Ranch State Park, and the Black Gap wildlife area – announced by the Trump administration earlier this year.

“I woke up at 2:30[am] to drive up here,” Scott Whitener, a former Big Bend Ranch State Park employee, told us. He said he has owned 20 acres in Terlingua, which directly borders Big Bend, for the last 15 years. “We’re all gateway communities to Big Bend, and we’re all very passionate about where we live,” he continued. “And we’re here to stand up for what we believe is right, and what we believe the government is doing wrong.” 

The bulldozing and blading of the park’s desert wildlands began in early August – using billions of dollars in funds approved when Congress passed Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill – despite the spring’s heavy opposition to the physical border wall from five West Texas sheriffs, county judges representing the entire Texas-Mexico border, and thousands of Texans who marched in Austin and across the state.

Last Monday, Aug. 17, Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Rodney Scott announced a temporary pause for construction, pending his “personal, on-the-ground evaluation” of the border wall project. He then met with local officials. It’s unclear if or when the pause will be lifted.

The construction pause was stated to apply only to Big Bend National Park, Grahame Jones, executive director of the Texas Conservation Alliance and TPWD’s former director of law enforcement, reminded us. “And the plans have changed so many times.”

While Scott clarified on Aug. 13 that CBP doesn’t plan to build a 30-foot wall through the Big Bend parks, he defended the agency’s plans to build an access road and “vehicle barriers.” CBP had originally announced it would build a 175-mile-long, 30-foot-tall steel wall in the Big Bend region, leaving advocates unsure if that plan would resume outside of the park itself.

And while construction in the national park has been paused for now, “It’s heartbreaking to see what they’ve already done,” Whitener told us on Wednesday. The pristine foothills around Mariscal Mine, for instance – an emotionally significant place for Whitener’s family – have already been cleared and excavated.

On Aug. 18, a San Antonio federal court granted a hearing for a temporary restraining order on construction in Big Bend National Park, following a lawsuit filed by Indigenous nonprofit the People of La Junta for Preservation, Far Flung Outdoor Center, and two members of the Lipan Apache community against DHS and CBP, arguing the destruction of ancestral sites threatens the community’s right to practice religion.

Back in February, former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem had waived over two dozen environmental and archaeological protections in the Big Bend area in order to expedite border wall construction, including the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. On Aug. 24, DHS and CBP opposed the plaintiffs’ motion for the restraining order. The hearing is scheduled for this Friday, Aug. 28, in San Antonio. 

Noem and current DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin overrode those protections while claiming the Big Bend region is an “area of high illegal entry,” though the section of the border only accounted for 1.3% of CBP’s arrests in 2025.

The construction sites have also lit up Big Bend, which is globally recognized as the largest dark sky reserve in the world, Whitener said. “You can see a bubble of light coming from these man camps being built all around the Big Bend region, as far out as Valentine,” he continued.

He added that CBP’s man camps and construction contractors are not being held to the same environmental and dark sky regulations that the local communities have long been held to. “They’re basically ruining our night skies right now, as we speak,” Whitener continued.

After nearly three decades as TPWD’s director of law enforcement, Jones emphasized that physical barriers are completely unneeded toward CBP’s stated goal of “securing the border.”

“I oversaw our border security operations,” Jones said. “There’s ground sensors. There’s two blimps in Sanderson and Valentine. There’s dozens of camera towers. There’s trail cams. So this technology is already there.”

Jones added that CBP’s construction has already infringed on local ranchers’ property rights in the region, even blocking some families’ access to their nearest river or water source. “Some of these families have been ranching down there for 125 years or more,” he emphasized.

Since the bulldozing began, Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham is the only state official to actually use her office to force CBP’s contractors to restore destroyed land, while Gov. Greg Abbott, U.S. Rep. John Cornyn, and Attorney General Ken Paxton have yet to fully condemn the project. Whitener hopes that the arguments the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission heard from Texans on Wednesday leads them to pressure their federal counterparts to end it.

“Lawmakers need to speak and stand for what they know they believe in,” Whitener said, “and stop letting politics get in the way.”

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