Trump’s Other Walls Could Supply The Crossings His Big Bend Wall Needs

The Big Bend wall argument has a useful feature: if the crossings aren’t persuasive enough, the other walls might eventually provide some.

The Texas Tribune reports that the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to let construction resume across the Big Bend project area. The project combines walls, vehicle barriers and surveillance technology. Its legal shortcut is a set of Homeland Security waivers allowing construction to bypass environmental and other rules.

That shortcut has an entrance requirement. Opponents say Congress authorized these sweeping waivers for areas of high illegal entry. The government says Big Bend qualifies; ranchers, residents, business owners and environmentalists point to the remote region’s historically low crossings. An inconveniently quiet stretch of border can be a serious administrative problem when the paperwork calls for a busy one.

On October 2, Judge Kathleen Cardone halted construction across roughly 500 miles while the case proceeds. She found the challengers likely to succeed on their argument that the waivers exceeded the secretary’s authority. That is a preliminary ruling, not the final outcome, and the Supreme Court has now been asked to intervene.

The administration also has a forward-looking explanation. If other sections get walls and Big Bend remains without similar infrastructure, it argues, illegal crossings could be funneled there.

That is a prediction, not a count of existing crossings, and it does not settle what the waiver statute permits now. But follow the proposed sequence: build elsewhere, anticipate traffic moving toward the remaining gap, then cite that possible traffic in the argument for closing the gap.

The government says Big Bend already qualifies. Its backup explanation is remarkably industrious: if the border isn’t busy enough for the shortcut, perhaps the rest of the wall can get to work on that.