The Trump administration’s border-wall push has reached one of the most remote and politically difficult stretches of the southern border.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection says crews are now installing steel wall panels in Hudspeth County, Texas, as part of the 47-mile Big Bend 1 project.

The first panels went up on September 15. This is no longer a planning document, a contract announcement or a promise waiting on Washington.

Construction is underway.

Images from the worksite show the scale of the steel now being put into the ground:

The Associated Press reported that the Hudspeth County work is the first major wall construction in a Big Bend-area stretch where the administration’s plans have faced organized opposition.

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CBP confirmed that panel installation is underway and said the Big Bend 1 project covers 47 miles. The agency has also said it has doubled the pace of border-wall construction across the Southwest border.

The project is part of a much larger Trump administration infrastructure plan combining walls, roads, lighting and detection technology. In West Texas, the geography alone makes the work a serious undertaking: this is vast, rugged country where long distances and limited access complicate almost everything.

Current coverage from West Texas shows the wall push moving into terrain where previous construction plans repeatedly stalled:

Those objections include land acquisition, effects on ranching operations and concerns about access to water. The administration’s position is that physical barriers remain essential even in remote terrain because smugglers exploit gaps, roads and isolated corridors as readily as they exploit crowded urban sections of the border.

There is also an important geographic distinction. The construction now underway is in Hudspeth County and is not inside Big Bend National Park.

Separate proposals affecting park and state lands have produced their own legal and political fights.

For this project, the immediate fact is straightforward: CBP says the 47-mile installation has begun.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection says its Big Bend Sector is responsible for roughly 510 miles of river border along the Rio Grande and covers the largest geographic area of any Border Patrol sector on the Southwest border.

That immense footprint has always made Big Bend a different security problem from San Diego, El Paso or the Rio Grande Valley. Agents must patrol long, isolated stretches where terrain can slow both illegal crossings and the officers trying to stop them.

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President Trump campaigned on finishing the wall and restoring operational control at the border. In Big Bend, the administration is now moving from policy to steel in a region where previous wall plans repeatedly ran into resistance.

The political fight will continue. Lawsuits, land disputes and environmental objections remain active even as crews install the first steel.

For President Trump’s border agenda, Big Bend has moved from a contested plan to an active construction site.

Featured file photo: Construction workers install border-wall panels near Weslaco, Texas, on October 30, 2019. U.S. Customs and Border Protection photo by Jaime Rodriguez Sr. via DVIDS; public domain. Cropped to 1600×900. This file photograph does not depict the 2026 Big Bend worksite.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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