The Supreme Court lets Trump’s border builders back into Big Bend, with only one justice saying no

Construction crews can go back to work on the border in Big Bend. The US Supreme Court on Monday lifted a lower-court order that had frozen the Trump administration’s barrier building across the remote West Texas region, including inside Big Bend National Park, where the Rio Grande cuts through some of the most dramatic desert canyon country in North America.

The vote was 8-1, in an unsigned order. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented without a written explanation.

“The Government’s interest therefore outweighs any aesthetic, recreational, and environmental harm alleged by respondents,” the order said.

What did the court actually decide?

Not the case itself. The order stays a preliminary injunction that Judge Kathleen Cardone issued on 2 October, which barred new barrier and road construction across the Big Bend Sector while a lawsuit by the Center for Biological Diversity and other groups is heard.

The stay lasts until the Supreme Court decides whether to take up the case or the court in El Paso resolves the lawsuit. In practical terms, that can be a long time, and the work can proceed in the meantime.

The court also pointed to the wide power Congress has given the Homeland Security secretary to waive environmental and other laws to speed up border construction, a power successive administrations have used to push projects past legal challenges.

What is being built?

The Big Bend Sector stretches for more than 500 miles of the border, and the plans include more than 300 miles of barriers, patrol roads and surveillance equipment. Reports of the exact length of the stretch that had been halted differ.

The administration has said it will not build a large wall inside the national park itself. The groups that sued argue that the roads, lighting and barriers planned for the area would still damage wildlife corridors and a landscape that has been protected for decades. One plaintiff called the decision “horrific”.

Why does Big Bend matter?

Big Bend is one of the most isolated stretches of the US-Mexico border, where the river, mountains and canyons have long done much of the work that walls do elsewhere. That is why it became a test case: if barrier work can go ahead here, under a waiver of the usual environmental rules, there are few places along the border where it cannot.

For the Trump administration, the ruling is a win for a signature promise at a politically awkward moment. Democrats take control of Congress in January after this month’s midterm elections, and border construction depends on the money Congress provides.

What does it mean for the rest of the border?

The order does not settle whether the waiver was lawful here, but it signals that a majority of the court is unwilling to let environmental and recreational objections stop border work while the arguments are heard. Groups challenging other stretches of planned barrier will read it that way, and so will the administration.