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WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for the Trump administration to resume building a border wall and related roads and barriers in the Big Bend region of Texas while the lawsuit over the project continues. In an unsigned decision, the court lifted a district court injunction that had halted the work. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she would have denied the Justice Department’s request.
The court said the lower court’s order delayed construction and “impedes the Government from advancing its ‘compelling interests’ in border security and integrity.” It said the challengers’ concerns about using and enjoying the area were outweighed by Congress’s choice, in immigration law, to let the Homeland Security secretary waive environmental and conservation laws to speed border construction. The decision applies while the case proceeds. It is not a final ruling on the project.
The challengers are an environmental nonprofit, a professional riverboat guide and a religious organization. They argued the wall and roads would permanently alter a landscape that includes Big Bend National Park, Big Bend Ranch State Park and nearly 200 miles of the Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River corridor. The administration, through Solicitor General D. John Sauer, argued a halt would leave a “massive vulnerability” in border security across a quarter of the southern border.
Context: Homeland Security issued three waivers for the Big Bend region starting in February. Work on a 47-mile wall stretch in Hudspeth County began in September, according to immigration agencies. The plan has drawn pushback from lawmakers of both parties, ranchers and local law enforcement in Texas.
Why it matters: the ruling lets one of the president’s signature projects move ahead in a sensitive stretch of the border while the courts keep looking at it. Still unknown: when construction restarts, how much work remains, and how the lower court will proceed.
File photo: Santa Elena Canyon on the Rio Grande in Big Bend National Park, Texas, where the border runs along the river. It does not show the construction site.
JBizNews Desk | Washington
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