Trump Made It Easier to Build a Wall Through Big Bend

‘We already lost it once’: Eminent domain returns to the Big Bend

When Everett Ewing Townsend, a 23-year-old customs inspector stationed on the border in the Big Bend, saw the South Rim of the Chisos Mountains for the first time, he knew his life was about to change. The vista — a hundred-mile panorama of lush green piñon forests giving way to forbidding desert and finally to […]

Trump Made It Easier to Build a Wall Through Big Bend

The park does not have a congressional representative, as it’s part of Texas’ 23rd District, which is currently vacant. Jon G. Fuller / VWPics/VWPics via AP ImagesThe Trump administration is rolling back environmental protections that would allow it to quickly construct a physical barrier across Big Bend National Park.The administration has said that the president’s long-promised border wall would not include a physical wall in Big Bend National…

Rural Newsrooms at the Frontlines of the Big Bend Wall

By Madeline de Figueiredo and Anya Petrone Slepyan In early 2026, the Trump administration quietly advanced plans to build more than 100 miles of steel border wall through the remote Big Bend region, a rural area in Far West Texas stretching down to the Rio Grande River. The administration waived dozens of environmental protections to expedite construction through protected areas like Big Bend State Ranch Park. When Charlie Angell, owner of Ange…