By Wayne Allensworth
Donald Trump is a reality TV president. We have come to expect a lot of huffing and puffing and threats and empty boasts about a mythical “Golden Age” that exists only in the collective mind of MAGA and Trump’s narcissistic ego. We have also come to expect lots of big bucks for contractors, especially Trump donors and their allies.
So, I take it seriously when I hear voices other than the usual suspects warning that the massive $1.7 billion border-control project around Big Bend National Park is a boondoggle. A number of regional county sheriffs and former Border Patrol officers question the wisdom and the effectiveness of plans to build roads and install infrastructure, which would include watch towers and vehicle barriers, along some of the most rugged and pristine wilderness remaining in my native state. The Department of Homeland Security had apparently planned walls, but protests from locals, fearing access to the river would be cut off, and environmentalists, citing the destruction of habitat, made Customs and Border Patrol back off. There are also reportedly plans to install stadium lights along the perimeter, again, ruining the natural beauty of starlit night skies.
Criticisms from the likes of Terrill Country Sheriff and 26-year Border patrol veteran Thaddeus Cleveland should be taken seriously. Cleveland recently posted a piece on Facebook clearing up what the CBP said it would do and stating some concerns about the project. First, CBP had agreed that bollard wall barriers would halt before reaching the Big Bend area, including the Big Bend Ranch State Park and the National Park, and that access to the river would be accounted for with gates for livestock, wildlife, and rafting on the Rio Grande. CBP has claimed that no new paved patrol roads will be built. Only existing roads, supposedly, will be paved. Cleveland, however, has strongly questioned installing vehicle barriers extending through Brewster, Terrill, and Val Verde Counties. Cleveland insists that the clearing by bulldozers, disturbing the natural landscape for these, are unnecessary, as the rugged terrain is practically impassable for vehicles. He has stated that the current project is better than what CBP had planned but is still problematic. He supports surveillance systems. Still, he told Newsweek, “we can secure this sector effectively without unnecessarily bulldozing one of the most rugged and treasured landscapes in America. … Border security is too important for one-size-fits-all solutions developed from behind a desk. Big Bend requires a plan built around the realities on the ground.” Critics of the project have observed that desert, mountains, and canyons — natural barriers — make the CBP plans superfluous. To add context, the Big Bend sector of the border has the lowest number of “encounters” and apprehensions of any of the border regions, a few thousand annually in recent years. Some high traffic areas in Texas experience “encounters” with illegal aliens and smugglers at levels nearing 200,000 annually.
Yet the CBP has not addressed concerns about plans to build in some of the park’s most scenic border areas, including Mariscal Canyon. Has the original contract been altered to reflect what the CBP says will take place? Eyewitnesses report new roads being built. There have apparently not been any public hearings or discussions about what the great number of earth movers that have shown up in the area are doing. As The New York Times reported, Texans were “caught off guard” by the project’s pushing full steam ahead. Given the administration’s cavalier regard for the truth, as well as rampant cronyism, the suspicion and outrage about the potential destruction of some of the last remaining wilderness in the Southwest is understandable. I love the Big Bend area. My family used to make the long haul from Houston to camp in the basin of the Chisos mountains. Those trips were a memorable part of my formative years. Big Bend is a special place for a lot of us.
Suspicion of the administration, again, is well founded. The GOP does not have a great reputation for caring about the American landscape or environment. This administration waved current environmental restrictions to push ahead with the project and has shown that preserving America the Beautiful for future generations is not a top concern. Trump and his cronies are urban financial schemers whose closest interaction with nature is a golf course. Your observer’s experiences with the right in post-Communist Russia told a different story: protecting Russia’s land, water, and air was a big concern especially among those who had opposed the Soviet regime’s pollution and devastation of Russia’s natural environment. Conservation and environmental protections should come naturally to any real right wing. But America’s right has treated the country like a business enterprise seeking maximum profits — for its donors, anyway — and not as our homeland. But to get there, the nation itself cannot be treated as an abstraction, its people mere economic inputs and outputs.
What’s more, the Big Bend project looks suspiciously like another dog-and-pony show designed to convince the base that Trump is actually serious about immigration enforcement. The region, as noted, is not a high traffic area for illegal immigration. We can afford to pause this project and reassess what is happening there. But to think in terms of prioritization would mean formulating a comprehensive immigration policy aimed at protecting the national core, improving wages and salaries for the current population, and reversing some of the damage done by open borders. That would entail interior enforcement, employer sanctions, mass deportations that we have not seen, and removing economic incentives for would be illegal immigrants. Something must be done about birthright citizenship apropos of the most recent SCOTUS ruling. What’s the plan? There isn’t one. What about legal immigration? The administration laudably halted the illegal border rush under President Joe Biden. That was easy, and something Trump’s backers were willing to do. It was red meat for the base. Now comes the hard part. The pseudo-right has no intention of curbing the steady influx of foreigners, particularly those landing here on H-1B visas. The Great Replacement continues. The Trump wing of the Epstein party is offering theatrical gestures — like the haphazard, chaotic ICE raids — to divert the base’s attention for its continuing replacement. In the end, the Big Bend project alone won’t make any difference one way or the other. A sane and sensible border policy would prioritize physical barriers — walls — along high traffic areas and more boots on the ground combined with technology along the low traffic areas. If the Big Bend project is as relatively modest as CBP says, then what in the world are they going to spend $1.7 billion on? That and the rushed activity in the Big Bend sector rightfully arouse popular suspicion.
Yet environmentalists should acknowledge that mass immigration itself is a major element in the continued paving over and pollution of the American landscape. The natural areas along the border have been trampled over and trashed by hordes of illegals for decades. Where was the outrage about that? Did any environmental group take a stand against the open border tidal wave that Biden invited? I don’t recall hearing any. I, too, want to “Defend the Bend,” but some defenses against illegal migration there are called for. Hyperbole and exaggeration about the project — the CBP is not exactly “bulldozing through the park,” for instance — do not help matters. Unfortunately, the Democrat wing of the Epstein Party seems more interested in turning the Big Bend into a political football. Yes, the Trump administration and the Texas GOP leadership are culpable for what is happening there. But immigration restriction is absolutely necessary if preserving the natural environment, not merely scoring political points, is the priority. I doubt that will ever sink in, as the Epstein Party is ideologically globalist no matter which wing is in power.
National parks in the West have long been used as transit and even production areas for drug cartels. Viewing the Big Bend debate in isolation doesn’t tell the whole story. The administration should acknowledge that drug trafficking at the border is contingent on demand. And that demand for narcotics is also partly connected to the sense of hopelessness in large swaths of what used to be the industrial heartland of the United States. A seamless social, economic, immigration, and industrial policy is required. Illegal border crossings must not be isolated from the context that encourages them.
As of this writing, CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott has paused construction in the Big Bend sector until he can meet with concerned parties, including county sheriffs and other local officials, and evaluate the situation. Let’s hope a sensible approach comes out of it. It’s painful for a native Texan to contemplate the possible desecration of the Big Bend, but neither wing of the elite actually cares about it.
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Chronicles contributor Wayne Allensworth is the author of The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia, and a novel, Field of Blood. For thirty-two years, he worked as an analyst and Russia area expert in the US intelligence community.
