The idea of a border wall in Big Bend was once unthinkable.

The far West Texas region is one of the most remote, unpopulated places in the continental U.S.—a hot, arid landscape that defies human existence. Few migrants bother to cross the border here, for the same reason few people have ever called this part of the Chihuahuan Desert home. Summers are deadly hot, water is scarce, and any trek by foot will be long, arduous, and dangerous. Much of the Rio Grande is sheltered by steep, unscalable canyons—some as deep as 1,500 feet—that are far more effective in deterring illegal crossings that any man-made fence could ever be. The Big Bend sector of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which encompasses nearly a quarter of the U.S.-Mexico border, typically has the fewest crossings of any of the agency’s nine sectors. In fiscal year 2025, there were just 3,096 apprehensions of migrants across 517 miles. The border here has never been open, not really. 

Moreover, Big Bend holds a special place in the hearts of Texans, and of millions of visitors from other states and nations. Its remoteness, its wildness, its eternal stubbornness remain fragile tethers to an older, wilder world in an era of never-ending sprawl. At the heart of the region is Big Bend National Park, one of the crown jewels of the national parks system; it has soared in popularity despite being far away from any major city. One of the feature attractions of Big Bend is the Rio Grande, the muddy stream whose looping turn southward and then northward again gives the region its name. Soaking in the hot springs a stone’s throw from Mexico, taking the battered metal boat across the river to Boquillas del Carmen for enchiladas and cervezas, hiking into the shadows of Santa Elena Canyon—these are rites of passage for many who love Big Bend. 

To destroy all this with a steel wall? It seemed insane. It would be like building a power plant in front of Half Dome, in Yosemite, or constructing an Amazon distribution center at the rim of the Grand Canyon. A pointless desecration. And yet the Trump administration appears to be moving forward with plans for around 175 miles of what it calls a smart wall. 

Since The Big Bend Sentinel first reported rumblings of the plan earlier this month, residents in the region have grown increasingly alarmed as the administration has stealthily proceeded with plans for barriers. Last week, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem waived 28 laws—including the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Clean Water Act, the Migratory Bird Conservation Act, the Clean Air Act, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, and the Historic Sites, Buildings, and Antiquities Act—to speed the way for a physical barrier slated for a 175-mile stretch that includes a portion of Colorado Canyon in Big Bend Ranch State Park. And a recently updated map on the CBP site shows a “smart wall” along roughly half the river frontage in Big Bend National Park—basically anywhere the river doesn’t cut through a steep canyon. The wall then continues through the Lower Canyons of the Rio Grande, piledriving through the Lower Pecos region, with its concentration of prehistoric rock art, and bulldozing through Seminole Canyon State Park all the way to Lake Amistad and beyond. Meanwhile, residents are on edge over contractors swooping into the area, according to the Sentinel. The suddenness has stunned people.

“It’s been a big shock, and people are reeling,” said Bob Krumenaker, a former superintendent of Big Bend National Park and a member of Keep Big Bend Wild, a small advocacy group. “There’s nothing more destructive to the wildness of Big Bend National Park than a border wall.”

Adding to the unease is the dearth of information from CBP. “We don’t know s—, but the contractors making the money; they know everything,” said Charlie Angell, a river guide based in Redford, about 34 miles upstream of Lajitas. 

There is great uncertainty about CBP’s specific plans for the national park. Until a week or so ago, the CBP map indicated that only “detection technology”—cameras, radar balloons, et cetera—would be used in the park. Now the map also shows pieces of a “smart wall.” But what is that, exactly? According to the CBP site, it’s “a steel bollard wall or waterborne barrier, along with roads, detection technology, cameras and lighting and in some cases a secondary wall—creating an enforcement zone.” Krumenaker wonders whether there is a degree of “strategic ambiguity” on CBP’s part—the administration will see how much opposition a border wall engenders and then adjust accordingly. 

Brewster County Sheriff Ronny Dodson, a law-and-order Democrat who praises Trump for closing the border but opposes a border wall in Big Bend, says he can’t find out much from official channels. Instead, he’s resorted to pumping contractors he’s pulled over for speeding for information. “I asked them what the ‘smart wall’ was, and they said, ‘No, it’s a wall, but the wall has technology to where maybe they got gates where the rafters can go into the river and they can call a number, they open the gate.’ ”

Krumenaker and Angell are treating the plans as an existential threat to the region—its identity, economy, and environmental integrity. “I think [a wall] would destroy the park as we currently know and love it,” said Krumenaker. “I think a lot of people who come to the park regularly would stop coming because it would no longer be the wild place and the quiet place and the dark place and the place with more wildlife than anywhere else in Texas that they’ve come to know and love.” Lengthy wall segments could lead to the demise of Big Bend’s black bears, a population that only reestablished itself in the eighties due to migration from Mexico. It could also effectively eliminate access to the river, including at several of the most iconic places in Big Bend: Santa Elena Canyon, the hot springs, the Boquillas Overlook, and the campsites at Rio Grande Village. 

Angell’s life and livelihood depend on a wild Rio Grande. It’s how he’s made his living for almost two decades. He owns a guide company that offers canoe trips in and around Big Bend National Park, including quick day trips into Santa Elena Canyon, the sheer chasm that has been a rite of passage for thousands of park visitors, and ten-day adventure excursions into the Lower Canyons, a remote stretch of the river that plunges visitors into one of the last remaining wildernesses of the Lower 48. He spends 75 to 100 days a year on the water, and much of the rest of the time, he’s organizing or leading hikes and driving tours. By choking off access to key canoe put-ins and takeouts—like the Santa Elena Canyon takeout and the Talley Road access, which is used for Mariscal Canyon—CBP could cause his business to wither. Then there’s the spoilage that comes with a massive construction project. Hundreds of workers, heavy machinery, floodlights, power generators, not to mention the fruits of all this activity—new roads, razor wire, buoys in the river, a towering wall.

“Nobody wants to see industrial construction in the middle of nature,” Angell said. “It’d be like the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but you have eight thousand of them in a row.” Angell’s house is also in the crosshairs. His place in Redford, where he has lived since 2008, lies just two hundred feet from the Rio Grande. He watches the river from his porch the way some people watch cars driving by. Its levels, its moods, its clarity—all tell him how to plan the best trips for his clients. And, at sixty, Angell was already looking forward to living out the rest of his days here, one of the most remote spots in all of Texas. Now, his home lies smack-dab in the sacrifice zone for 175 miles of border barrier planned from Fort Quitman down through much of Big Bend Ranch State Park. “I’m in the danger zone,” he said. “I’m in the your-life-is-over zone.” 

There is virtually no support for a wall in the Big Bend region. Every local elected official—Republican or Democrat—who has spoken on the issue has rejected it. State leaders have been largely silent, though there is a trickle of dissent from Republican lawmakers. State Representative Wes Virdell, a right-wing Republican who represents a good chunk of the Hill Country, voiced his opposition to the wall online. He said he supports border barriers in the right places but that Big Bend isn’t one of them. “We’re supposed to be stewards of the land, and to go and permanently damage the land like that I think is a terrible idea, and that we need more conversations before we rush into this,” he told me. Virdell knows he’s taking a risk by speaking out, even though many of his conservative colleagues agree with him. “You still got to say what’s right regardless.”

Congressman Tony Gonzales, the Republican who represents the area in the U.S. House, has been quiet about his position. Gonzales, who is currently locked in a tight primary election, has been scarce lately, as a growing number of his colleagues call for his resignation amid revelations that he had an affair with an aide who later died after setting herself on fire. But Dodson, the Brewster County sheriff, said he texted with Gonzales on Saturday. He read the exchange to me over the phone. “Are they really considering putting a wall in the Big Bend area?” Dodson texted. According to Dodson, Gonzales responded, “175 miles of smart wall approved. I’m pushing back against a physical wall because we already have a natural one.”

Locals in this sparsely populated, politically weak region know they need a broad campaign to help head off decimation. “I think it’s absolutely winnable,” said Krumenaker. “If there’s enough outrage—they’ll never admit to defeat, but they may pull back. And we don’t care who gets the credit; we just want to succeed.” The issue goes far beyond just Big Bend. Decimating a beloved national park in the name of border security could have far-reaching effects on what Ken Burns called America’s best idea, its system of national parks. “This is the biggest incursion on the integrity of national parks since the construction of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park more than a century ago,” Krumenaker said. 

The Texas borderlands have long been a sort of sacrifice zone. In times of heavy migration, such as during the Biden years, locals bear the brunt of dealing with a humanitarian crisis—and the intense militarization that comes with it. Now that border crossings are at historic lows, they have little say in a destructive project that they believe won’t contribute much to border security. The wall, in Big Bend, at least, is not for the people of Big Bend—it’s for those who only know about the border from TV news. Angell has an invitation for those folks.

“Come take a hike, come take a river trip, find out, see for yourself what’s going on,” he said. “The federal government is lying about the problem here. We don’t have a [border-security] problem here, and it makes no sense to spend billions of dollars on something that’s just going to ruin this whole area forever.”