Trump administration asks Supreme Court to lift halt on Big Bend border wall

Emergency appeal to the Supreme Court

The Trump administration asked the US Supreme Court on Wednesday, 21 October 2026, to lift a lower-court injunction that has stopped construction of a border wall near Big Bend National Park in West Texas. The Justice Department filed the emergency application through Solicitor General John Sauer and asked the justices to pause or overturn the order while a lawsuit against the project continues. Sauer called the lower-court decision "baseless" and warned that halting the work would leave "a 300-plus-mile gap in border defenses." The Supreme Court has not yet responded to the appeal.

Waivers and the lawsuit

Three waivers issued this year by Homeland Security secretaries set aside environmental and historic-preservation laws, including the Endangered Species Act and the National Historic Preservation Act, so that barriers, patrol roads, lighting and detection technology could go up faster. Kristi Noem, the former secretary, signed the first waiver, and Markwayne Mullin, the current secretary, signed the other two between February and July. The administration has said it does not intend to erect a large wall inside the national park, but it keeps its plans for border infrastructure elsewhere in the region. Accounts of the project's length differ: some describe more than 300 miles (nearly 500 kilometres) of barriers and roads, while others describe a stretch of more than 500 miles within a $1.7 billion project. Plaintiffs, including the Center for Biological Diversity, an association that defends a historic church in Ruidosa, and a river guide, filed the lawsuit in April, arguing that the government violated the Constitution by waiving dozens of laws.

Injunction and a later opinion

Judge Kathleen Cardone, of the federal court in El Paso, halted the work on 2 October and ordered that it stay stopped until the government complies with all applicable laws. She said the government lacked clear congressional authorization to waive environmental laws in that specific area, and she pointed to lower illegal-entry levels in Big Bend than in other sectors of the southern border. In a later opinion, she found that the waivers exceeded the authority of Noem and Mullin.

In an opinion issued on 14 October, Cardone wrote that without an injunction, the plaintiffs and the public would lose protected land that supports tourism, farming and education.

As Plaintiffs have demonstrated, without an injunction, they and the public at large stand to permanently lose protected wilderness that benefits tourism, recreation, farming, ranching, spirituality, aesthetic sensibilities and education.

The administration had already paused construction in August, after bipartisan criticism of the project's possible effects on the park's landscape and wildlife.

The government's legal argument

The Justice Department calls the injunction "frivolous" and argues that the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act gives the homeland security secretary exclusive discretion to waive legal requirements that slow construction. Its filing argues that this waiver power applies even where the question carries vast economic and political significance.

Congress did clearly authorize the secretary both to build border barriers and to waive legal requirements in order to facilitate their expeditious construction.

The government also warns that stopping the work leaves a gap in border defenses and that migration flows blocked elsewhere could shift into Big Bend. Opponents, including ranchers, residents, local business owners and conservation groups, question whether the extension is needed and say the area accounts for about 1 percent of migrant arrests.