Texans opposing plans to extend President Donald Trump’s border wall near Big Bend National Park say they were caught off guard after learning that demolition crews have already started blasting craters into the area’s bedrock, Daily Mail can reveal.
‘It’s an ambush. There are going to be a lot of tears,’ Alaine Berg, who runs Eve’s Garden Bed and Breakfast in Marathon, told Our News Outlet on Monday.
For the past two weeks, crews have been using sticks of TNT to break up land near Big Bend National Park where Trump’s disputed border wall is slated to be constructed, according to sources with US Border Patrol who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly.
‘They’ve been blowing things up for about the last two weeks. Underneath the surface is rock, not dirt. They have to blow it up in order to build the wall. No one knows about it because there’s no one out here to see it, but the project is moving ahead,’ one border agent told Daily Mail.
The revelation is expected to intensify a confrontation that has been building for weeks, with residents and local law enforcement pushing back against the border wall project under the impression that construction remained in the planning stage.
‘Our hearts were already broken by this, and such anger. Everyone is already doing as much as they can do (to protest.) They’re not being honest with us. We don’t know anything,’ Berg said.
The federal official noted that although the blasts are taking place just outside Big Bend National Park, the construction crews carrying them out are traveling across protected lands to reach the demolition sites.
‘The whole community is devastated,’ Terlingua photographer Natalie Newman told Daily Mail. ‘To hear that they’re already blowing s**t up is really upsetting. I thought we had a little bit more time before we got to that point because that’s the sort of damage that really is irreversible.’
The proposed wall would cut through the remote Big Bend sector along the US-Mexico border and extend across surrounding desert and mountain terrain
An explosion can be seen near El Centro, California as part of on-going construction for the border wall along the US-Mexico border
For months, residents in the small towns that make up Big Bend- Marathon, Sanderson, Alpine, Marfa and Terlingua- have been organizing in hopes of stopping the construction on the project.
‘All of the economy of Marathon is based on that park. The whole of Marathon would collapse. This is our economy. That’s all there is,’ Berg explained.
Locals have expressed fears that the roads and structures added to the park would dissuade nature-loving tourists who come to raft the Rio Grande River, which also serves as international boundary between the US and Mexico.
Despite promises not to build inside Big Bend National Park, the official map by the federal government on the US Customs and Border Protection website shows two miles of ‘vehicle barrier’ slated to be added to the park
Tourists also travel to the remote desert, designated a Gold Tier International Dark Sky Park designation in 2012, because it’s one of the few places in the US where the Milky Way can be seen with the naked eye at night.
‘The boats can’t get in so there will be no adventure tourism on the river,’ Berg added.
US Customs and Border Protection claimed construction is not happening inside the park, but did not address construction outside of the park.
‘Construction crews are onsite re-grading roads that were damaged by recent storms that are required for access to conduct surveys,’ a CBP spokesman told Our News Outlet via an emailed statement.
‘CBP’s contractor is clearing out areas to support the design and survey phase, ahead of the start of construction activities.’
The federal government first announced plans to build the wall in Big Bend last year as part of the ‘Big Beautiful Bill.’
When the announcement caused an uproar, the feds backed off, pledging there would be no wall inside the national park, however, current maps by CBP show a two-mile vehicle barrier in the park.
The vehicle barrier planned for the park is not the typical 30-40 foot steel bollard fence so many people are familiar with on the border. Instead, the vehicle barrier looks like a series of connected steel Xs four to six feet in height.
The Trump administration has also waived dozens of federal laws protecting national parks in order to move forward with the project.
The portion of the border wall being built inside Big Bend National Park would not be the typical 30-40 foot steel bollard fence so many people are familiar with on the border. Instead, the vehicle barrier looks like a series of connected steel Xs four to six feet in height. The image above shows a vehicle barrier being put in place near El Paso, Texas
Last week, bulldozers arrived in Big Bend National Park, however, locals were unaware constructions crews have been setting off explosives around the park to build on it
President Donald Trump’s administration has moved to waive nearly 30 federal environmental laws to fast-track a 175-mile border wall through Texas’ Big Bend region
The Department of Homeland Security has signaled its intent to sidestep 28 regulations ‘in their entirety’ in order to ‘ensure the expeditious construction of barriers and roads,’ according to a filing in the Federal Register
Previous Republican and Democrat American presidents had never built a border wall in the remote region of the Lone Star State because the land itself is largely considered a natural barrier.
‘We don’t need it,’ Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland, the top cop in Sanderson, told Daily Mail.
The retired Border Patrol agent said that an immigration checkpoint along the remote roads would do more stop illegal immigration in the region than any man-made barrier.
However, illegal immigrant traffic in Big Bend accounts for less than 2 percent of all illegal traffic in the US, according to statistics by CBP.
Cleveland is just one of the many local sheriffs and county judges that have come out against the addition to the border wall.
‘It’s just a waste of of resources: taxpayer dollars, ecological resources, business people’s livelihoods, ranchers’ livelihood. It’s not needed in this area, and there’s just no way that it makes sense,’ Marathon resident Rosalina Crase said.
As the locals helplessly watch construction continue on the wall they loathe, they plan to keep fighting, with a protest set for Wednesday morning. in one of the Big Bend’s most famous areas, Santa Elena.
However, locals pointed to on-going lawsuits by landowners and the possibility of even more lawsuits as a way to stall, if not end, the border wall construction.
