Justice Department Asks Supreme Court to Allow Border-Wall Work in Big Bend

The Justice Department on Wednesday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to let border-wall construction resume in Texas’ Big Bend region, escalating a fight over presidential border security powers, environmental-law waivers and building in a national-park landscape.

In an emergency application filed Oct. 21, the administration asked the justices to lift a lower-court order that halted work earlier this month. The filing puts an immediate and unusually high-stakes dispute before the Supreme Court because the challenged project runs through a remote stretch of the Texas-Mexico border that includes Big Bend National Park, Big Bend Ranch State Park and nearby public and private land.

The order the administration wants lifted is a preliminary injunction issued Oct. 2 by U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone in the Western District of Texas. Her ruling stopped construction and other “ground-disturbing activities” in the Border Patrol’s Big Bend Sector until the government complies with applicable laws.

“Effective immediately and until the Court orders otherwise, Defendants shall not build border barrier or related infrastructure, or engage in any construction or ground disturbing activities, in the Big Bend Sector until and unless Defendants comply with all applicable laws,” Cardone wrote.

The plaintiffs who won that injunction are the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Ruidosa Church and Danny William Miller Jr. They sued the Department of Homeland Security and its officials, challenging the legal basis for the construction.

The project area at issue is the Border Patrol’s Big Bend Sector, described in court filings as a roughly 500- to 517-mile stretch along the border. Because it includes a national park and a state park, the case is not simply about border infrastructure. It also centers on whether the federal government can bypass environmental and other legal requirements in one of the country’s most distinctive protected landscapes.

The administration says it can. The construction is proceeding under waivers issued by Homeland Security under Section 102(c) of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. That provision has long been used as the statutory basis for border-barrier construction and for waiving other legal requirements to speed work. In court filings, the administration said the Big Bend Sector is an “area of high illegal entry” and argued that federal law authorizes the waivers at issue here.

Cardone’s opinion identified three relevant 2026 waivers: the West Waiver, the National Park Waiver and the Lower Canyons Waiver. Her ruling said the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on at least one of their claims challenging the scope and legality of those waivers, including arguments tied to separation of powers, the major-questions doctrine and limits on the Homeland Security secretary’s authority.

That finding is what now makes the Supreme Court filing so significant. The administration is not just seeking permission to restart a construction project. It is asking the justices to intervene quickly in a case testing how broad the executive branch’s waiver power is under the 1996 immigration law.

The government had already asked Cardone to suspend her injunction while it sought Supreme Court review, and reporting indicated it warned it would go to the justices if she did not grant a stay by Oct. 21. According to Inside Climate News, Customs and Border Protection estimated the pause would cost at least about $462,800 a day.

As of Wednesday, the Supreme Court had received the application but had not acted.