COMSTOCK, Texas – The Trump administration has begun constructing border wall infrastructure in a west Texas section of the Big Bend region, the first significant building effort in a part of the U.S.-Mexico border where the plans have drawn fierce resistance.
The construction start is a notable step in the administration’s $46 billion initiative to build walls, barriers, roads and technology along the border. The effort is intended to fulfill President Donald Trump’s central campaign pledge to complete the border wall, as Customs and Border Protection says it has doubled the rate of wall construction across the U.S.-Mexico border.
Customs and Border Protection told The Associated Press that “border wall panel installation is underway” along a 47-mile portion of Hudspeth County in west Texas known as Big Bend 1. The wider Big Bend region, which extends from an area of Hudspeth County south of El Paso to Lake Amistad, includes five separate project areas and spans roughly 500 miles.
The agency did not specify when installation began. However, CBP’s online map tracking construction across the southern border included a photo of a crane hoisting a 30-foot steel wall panel into position as workers watched.
The work is separate from a nearby border infrastructure project in Big Bend National Park, where the administration has temporarily halted construction in an effort to engage opponents.
Across the larger Big Bend area, CBP has encountered organized resistance from property owners, environmental advocates, business operators and ranchers. They argue that the isolated region does not see heavy levels of illegal immigration.
Activists said Friday that the installation of wall panels would not change their opposition to other border infrastructure projects planned for the Big Bend region.
Clara Benson, a founder of the No Big Bend Wall Coalition, said in an interview Friday that her group had received reports of trucks delivering supplies to the remote Rio Grande area. Contractors, she said, had also been clearing yards to create staging areas for materials.
Speaking from Washington, D.C., where she and other coalition members were meeting with lawmakers, Benson said the organization and its allies would keep challenging wall construction throughout the region.
“We will continue to fight for this land no matter what the outcome is. We will continue fighting to the end,” Benson said. “You talk to people in west Texas and they say even if they put it up, we’ll fight for them to take it down. So this fight is not over.”
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The news comes as the administration is speeding forward with a plan to line the entire border with a combination of 30-foot tall steel bollard walls, barriers designed to stop vehicles from crossing the border, new patrol roads and various technologies to deter and detect migrants or smugglers from crossing the border.
Customs and Border Protection said that they are building an average of 12 miles of barriers a week across the 2,000-mile border with Mexico and recently hit a milestone of 200 miles of new barriers built since the second Trump administration took office.
The 12-miles a week average is double the pace that the agency’s head, Rodney Scott, cited earlier this year.
The agency has faced opposition from environmental groups, a small town that worries the wall will cause flooding in its area, Native Americans who say the construction is disturbing sacred sites and landowners who say the construction will infringe on their land.
In Texas much of the opposition has centered on the agency’s plans for Big Bend National Park, in the state’s southwest on the Rio Grande that is a draw for tourists from around the world. But up and down river outside the park, much of the land is owned by private landowners, many of whom have pushed back against the government’s efforts.
Earlier this week, landowners, ranchers and business owners in the Big Bend region along with a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the region’s landscape and heritage sued to stop the administration’s plans.
Activists and landowners have also shown up at county meetings to push their elected officials not to cooperate with contractors hired by CBP to build the wall, and many landowners have refused to allow government officials or contractors onto their land to survey it.
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