The United States Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for the Trump administration to resume building border barriers in the Big Bend region of West Texas, setting aside for now a federal judge's order that had stopped the work in October. In an unsigned order in the case known as Mullin v. Friends of the Ruidosa Church, the justices granted the government's request to stay a preliminary injunction issued by US District Judge Kathleen Cardone of the Western District of Texas.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only member of the court who noted publicly that she would have denied the request. The court declined the administration's separate request to summarily reverse Judge Cardone's ruling outright, meaning the stay remains in place while the government pursues a full appeal, and ends automatically if the justices decline to take up the case.
The dispute turns on a 1996 law, Section 102 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which allows the government to waive a range of legal requirements to speed up border barrier construction. The administration said the law sharply limits judges' power to intervene when the federal government decides that speedy construction is necessary, and the majority agreed that the government's interests outweighed the harm alleged by the challengers.
In its brief ruling, the court said the government's interest outweighed any "aesthetic, recreational and environmental harm" alleged by the respondents. The lawsuit was brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, a Big Bend-area river guide and a group seeking to preserve a historic church in Ruidosa, Texas, which says its fragile adobe structure is threatened by the construction.
The waivers at the centre of the case were issued between February and July by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and his predecessor Kristi Noem, both Trump appointees, who found the region to be an area of high illegal entry. The administration's plans call for a combination of physical walls, access roads and vehicle barriers across the Big Bend sector, which stretches for more than 300 miles along the border.
Most of the construction in the sector will take place on privately owned land, according to the administration. Big Bend National Park itself would get a 17-mile noncontiguous vehicle barrier system, rather than the 30-foot pedestrian barrier planned for other areas of the border. The distinction matters to critics, who argue that even vehicle barriers would damage one of America's most remote and ecologically distinctive landscapes.
Construction in the region was paused in August after the project drew bipartisan criticism over its potential impact on the park's landscape and wildlife. In October, Judge Cardone blocked the project, ruling that the administration had not demonstrated clear congressional authorisation for the waivers. Monday's order reverses that pause, at least for now.
The border wall has long been a signature project of President Donald Trump, who has vowed to build a barrier from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Republicans in Congress funded the wider effort with $46 billion last summer, and Customs and Border Protection has been erecting about 12 miles of barriers a week across the entire border, with a goal of eventually covering the 2,000-mile frontier with a mixture of 30-foot steel walls, vehicle barriers and surveillance technology.
Environmental groups and local opponents say the Big Bend section is a particularly poor place for construction. The region is home to fragile desert ecosystems, and the park draws visitors precisely because of its remoteness and unspoiled terrain. Supporters of the project counter that the area is a corridor for illegal crossings and drug smuggling, and that barriers and patrol roads are needed to give Border Patrol agents access to difficult terrain.
Customs and Border Protection did not immediately say how quickly work could resume in the sector. The legal fight is far from over: the underlying lawsuit continues, and the stay will lapse if the Supreme Court ultimately declines to hear the case. For now, though, the administration has won an important procedural victory, and construction crews can return to one of the most contested stretches of the southern border.
The ruling also fits a broader pattern in which the current Supreme Court has repeatedly sided with the administration on emergency requests, allowing policies to proceed while lower courts consider the merits. Critics of that approach say it gives the government the practical benefit of victory before a case is fully argued; supporters say it prevents individual judges from blocking national policy on the basis of contested readings of the law.
