The Excavators in Big Bend Are Standing Still Because a Court Has Reined Trump In Again

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone in the Western District of Texas read a brief ruling from the bench and stopped construction of the border wall across the entire Big Bend sector. More than 500 miles through West Texas, including national and state parks, cannot be built up any further for now until the government complies with all applicable laws. Trump starts tearing something up again, a court stops him again. You can barely keep count anymore. Cardone ruled only after more than 4 hours of testimony from conservation groups and local residents. The plaintiffs would likely succeed on at least 1 claim, she found, and would suffer irreparable harm if the excavators kept moving. Her preliminary injunction applies to Big Bend National Park and Big Bend Ranch State Park. The border along the Rio Grande throughout the rest of the sector is covered as well, until the lawsuit filed in April is decided.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone has stopped construction of border barriers across the entire Big Bend sector of Texas, effective immediately. She found that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on at least 1 of their claims and that continued construction threatens irreparable harm. For now, the government may neither build new barriers there nor continue the related earthwork unless it complies with all applicable laws. At the same time, the court suspended the effect of the sweeping waivers that had been used to bypass numerous environmental and historic preservation laws.

Everything hinges on the waivers. To drive the wall through one of the darkest and most biodiverse landscapes in the country, with its rugged river canyons, the government had waived dozens of laws, including environmental protections and protections for historic sites. A government that exempts itself from its own laws so it can pour concrete into a national park calls that border security. Cardone suspended the effect of those waivers for now.

The government's justification was already falling apart in the courtroom. The Big Bend area was supposedly a place of "high illegal entry," according to the waivers. Only nobody proved it. Analyst Adam Isaacson presented figures showing that the sector ranks dead last by a wide margin in unauthorized crossings among the 9 sectors along the southern border. The plaintiffs had wanted to know how many people were actually being apprehended inside the national park itself. The government never produced that number. The emergency gets declared where the least is happening. 8 witnesses testified for the plaintiffs. Danny Miller Jr., a Rio Grande river guide whose business depends on access to the river, called the wall a "visible scar that will never go away." Several people broke down in tears when asked how a wall would change their relationship with the river. Outside the courthouse in El Paso afterward, the plaintiffs embraced, many of them having traveled hundreds of miles from places like Terlingua and Marfa.

The other side gave a picture of indifference. Justice Department attorneys offered barely any counterarguments and did not call a single witness. The White House pushed the questions over to the Department of Homeland Security, which stayed silent. Customs and Border Protection put out a statement saying it stood by its assessment and was working with the Justice Department on next steps. A side that shows up to a hearing without a single witness has already mentally written off what it is still selling to the public as determination. The Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Ruidosa Church filed the lawsuit, represented by the Texas Civil Rights Project. Miller joined them in court against the Department of Homeland Security and Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

A court ruling stops the construction, not the urge driving it. Everyone here knows that. Since February, the agency has changed its plans several times, sometimes vehicle barriers and access roads inside the parks, sometimes a 30-foot steel wall on private land. It had imposed an initial construction pause in the park itself in August, and that pause expired this week. In Hudspeth County east of El Paso, the machinery is not standing still anyway, a new steel wall is already going up there. Concrete does not wait for rulings.

Against a man who treats entire landscapes as his kingdom, a court order is a small comfort. And yet the line of people standing in his way grows longer with every passing week, from the judges' benches to the people driving out of the desert to El Paso to cry and win. The scar Miller warned about has not been cut yet. The law is still holding here.