Monday Musings #58: The Big Bend Wall: A Big, Ugly Idea

If President Trump really wanted to help Texas, the massive sum of $46.5 billion allocated for border wall construction in Big Bend in the absurdly named Big, Beautiful Bill of 2025 could be spent on many other transformative initiatives.

Instead, the wall addresses a problem that does not exist in West Texas, a vast, desert landscape inhospitable to humans trekking long distances on foot and more easily monitored and policed with technology rather than a wall.

The bigcitysmalltown podcast’s latest episode features Brewster County Judge Greg Henington, a Republican, Big Bend outfitter Tara Shackelford, a seventh-generation resident and business owner, and Sam Stavinoha, a West Texas native and owner of the French Company Grocery in Marathon.

Stavinoha is also one of the principals at nobigbendwall.org, which has gathered 108,000 signatures of Texans who oppose the border wall project.

The petition grows by thousands of signatures each week, and protests were held on Sunday in Austin and in Big Bend National Park. It’s hard to find anyone in West Texas who supports the project. Opposition isn’t along partisan lines, either. The state’s Republicans, especially those in West Texas, are speaking out against the project.

Gov. Greg Abbott and U.S. Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz have heard from a lot of their party’s elected officials, oil and gas executives, ranch owners, and others whose economic livelihoods depend on the visitor economy to the Big Bend area, according to my Republican contacts. Many Texas Republicans are asking for meetings with administration officials in an effort to stop the project.

The Trump administration’s plans are already damaging the regional economy, business owners tell me, as would-be visitors conclude the border region must be unsafe, leading them to seek memorable outdoor experiences elsewhere.

As Judge Henington noted on the podcast, few people risk crossing in the Chihuahua Desert’s borderlands where water is scarce, and where temperatures can bake the landscape by day and then dip into the 30s at night. The few who do cross out there are more easily tracked via drones and sensors and dealt with by local law enforcement authorities.

For those of us with no direct economic interest, our focus is on the irreversible environmental damage a border wall would do to one of the most pristine wildscapes in the country. The wall would run roughshod over prehistoric encampment sites, block traditional animal migratory routes, and cut off U.S. access to stretches of the Rio Grande and other national and state parklands. The steel wall would be a 100-mile man-made scar. 

Meanwhile, the National Park Service is so resource-constrained by DOGE cuts and other administration budget maneuvers that it isn’t even staffing the Marathon entrance to Big Bend National Park. My wife Monika and I recently drove into the park with our lifetime pass in hand, only to experience, for the first time ever, a national park entrance with an unmanned entry point. That meant park officials had no record of who entered the park from this entrance, and failed to collect entry fees that most visitors would be charged.

Last week, park officials announced the cancellation of a long-planned rebuilding of the Chisos Mountains Lodge and the park’s water system, citing budget cuts and "unforeseen challenges,” as reported by the San Antonio Express-News. Readers wishing to get a closer look at community sentiment in the Big Bend region can access the nonprofit Big Bend Sentinel, which is publishing a Border Wall Stories series.

The tragedy here reaches beyond Big Bend. Texas is the fastest-growing state in the country with the most dynamic economy. That gives us bragging rights, which we exercise exceedingly, but Texas and Washington are doing way too little to prepare the state for what that growth will mean in the coming decades.

I joined former San Antonio Mayor and Housing & Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros and former Express-News columnist David Hendricks to author The Austin-San Antonio Megregion: Opportunity and Challenge in the Lone Star State, published in 2025 by Texas A&M University Press. The book is a call to action to state and local leaders to move more forcefully and collaboratively in addressing growth in the I-35 corridor.

It’s not enough to crow about how fast we are growing or how many billions of dollars in windfall revenue the Texas Legislature has at hand. A city the size of Chicago – three million people – will come into our two metro areas by 2050. If you think mobility, housing, water and energy, and climate change are serious issues now, give it a few more years. In every category, the quality of life for Texans will deteriorate if these mega-issues are left unaddressed.

Even if the Trump administration were to insist on using funds exclusively to improve border security, it could invest a fraction of that $46.5 billion and transform the congestion and gridlock that plagues border cities today. We would be much smarter to invest where all the people and challenges are, including illegal guns going south and drugs coming north, along the 204-mile stretch from Brownsville to Laredo. Mexico is the United States’ biggest trading partner and Laredo is now the country’s busiest inland port. Texas enjoys more benefits from that cross-border trade than any other state. More people cross, legally and illegally, in this zone than everywhere else in Texas put together. 

Trucks crossing the border spend hours and hours in miles-long lines waiting to cross, while understaffed immigration officials, Border Patrol officers, Drug Enforcement Agency agents and others struggle to keep up. Productivity would spike upwards in the state and along the impoverished border if there were sufficient crossing points, technology and staff to oversee this eternally busy stretch of the Texas-Mexico border.

I would urge anyone who has the ear of their state and congressional representatives to add their voices to those opposing the Big Bend Wall. Sign the petition. And if you are like me, plan a Big Bend sojourn and support the people there who have devoted their lives to protecting such sacred ground. Wandering the national park or the vast expanses beyond those two treasured places is a spiritual experience. We should leave it exactly as it was created, and work to make sure future generations enjoy the same opportunity we now enjoy. The Wall will only divide and destroy.