Trump border chief defends Big Bend wall plans as court battle delays construction

The head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection has insisted that the Trump administration’s plans to add border wall infrastructure across the Big Bend region of Texas will not bend despite pushback from local communities and even some Republicans.CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott said the government’s resolution to finish hundreds more miles of border wall system up and down the U.S.-Mexico border, including in and around Big Bend National Park, was “non-negotiable.”Scott told the Associated Press in an interview this week that if the wall, technology, and other projects in the Big Bend region of south-central Texas were not completed. “I am 100% convinced it will be completely overrun and destroyed,” he said.The Trump administration has devoted $46 billion to building up infrastructure on the southern border, including $1.7 billion specifically for the Big Bend region. Although numerous projects along the 1,950-mile border have faced legal challenges and court delays, this particular undertaking has received the most national attention.It is one of the most remote parts of the country, with a roughly five-hour drive from El Paso or Midway, Texas, to the border past the national park. This region is known by the Border Patrol as the Big Bend Sector, and for years, it has seen the least number of illegal immigrants attempting to cross compared to eight other regions along the U.S.-Mexico border. That is because the terrain not only ranges in elevation by thousands of feet, making it a difficult trek, but it is a three- to four-day walk to the closest highway.That all changed nearly overnight last winter, when former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced plans to build a border wall in the Big Bend region.Sources told the Washington Examiner earlier this year that Noem and her team chose, at a time when she was embroiled in a scandal over spending more than $200 million in federal money on an advertising campaign, to move forward with building a 30-foot-tall border wall in the remote area, a move that even federal border agents and local law enforcement said bucked decades of strategy for how to handle illegal immigration in the area.The park runs along approximately 120 miles of the international border. The remoteness of the Big Bend area makes it a suboptimal place to cross, which serves as its own deterrent. Those who choose to cross in the area must walk for several days to reach the nearest major highway.Following outcry from Democrats and Republicans in the red state, as well as more than 130 conservation groups, CBP quietly shifted plans this month to use technology to monitor the U.S.-Mexico border in and around the national park instead of a 30-foot steel wall to deter illegal immigration.However, Scott told the Associated Press that he could not reveal what the project would look like moving forward due to legal action surrounding it.“We’re talking through and figuring out what is the right solution for that area,” Scott said.DOJ CHARGES 48 NONCITIZENS WITH FEDERAL VOTING CRIMES, INCLUDING 28 IN CALIFORNIAIn July, construction crews began installing a 30-foot border wall, paved roads, vehicle barriers, and technology in and around Big Bend National Park as the Trump administration expands upon the 450 miles of wall installed at the U.S.-Mexico border during President Donald Trump’s first term.Last week, the Trump administration filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court seeking to lift a lower court’s injunction halting construction in Big Bend.