Homeland Security is Bulldozing Big Bend National Park. Waived 31 Laws to Do It

They are bulldozing Big Bend National Park. Not near it. Inside it, along the Rio Grande, in the wildest country left in Texas, and the man who signed off on it is Markwayne Mullin, Donald Trump’s Secretary of Homeland SecurityIn May the Customs and Border Protection commissioner said out loud that CBP would not build a border wall inside Big Bend National Park. One week later his agency awarded a one point seven billion dollar contract for border wall construction in the Big Bend region. One week, my dude. I have held onto gym memberships longer than that.Then in June, Mullin waived thirty one federal conservation laws to make it legal. Thirty one. Including the National Park Service Organic Act, the law that says the Park Service has to protect the parks. Next day he waived the state and local laws too, just to be thorough. Highest number ever waived in that sector. He set a record. Somebody get this man a plaque, we can bolt it to a bulldozer.Mullin’s stated reason was an acute and immediate need for barriers and roads. The need was so acute that his first waiver had to be reissued because the filing described the wrong stretch of river. They had the coordinates wrong. They could not find the emergency on a map.Here is that emergency in numbers. Apprehensions inside Big Bend came to zero point zero four five percent of the national total. Not four percent. Not point four. Point zero four five.For four hundredths of a percent, they are blasting Mariscal Mountain with dynamite. The contractor, Southwest Valley Constructors, already got sued over dynamite work in Arizona after ranchers said the blasts threw car sized boulders onto their property. Are you fecking kidding me. Two hundred miles of patrol road, up to twenty four feet wide, through recommended wilderness. Lighted poles next to a port of entry that sees zero illegal entries. Barriers in walled canyons where no vehicle crossing has ever been documented, because no vehicle can get there. They are dynamiting a mountain to stop a car that would first have to learn to fly.Six former Big Bend superintendents and a deputy, two hundred and fifty years of Park Service experience between them, wrote to Mullin and asked him not to. He did it anyway. So they wrote again. Bob Krumenaker, the most recent former superintendent, said the waiver hands CBP unfettered authority to do anything they want inside a national park.All five sheriffs along that stretch of border oppose this. All fourteen Texas border county judges want answers. Brewster County’s sheriff said it will ruin the county, because they do not have oil and gas, they have tourism. The Texas land commissioner sent federal contractors a cease and desist for clearing state land illegally. When the Texas land commissioner is telling the feds to get off the lawn, the plot has been lost.Big Bend is eight hundred thousand acres, one of the darkest skies left in North America, black bears and mountain lions crossing between two countries because nobody told them there was a line. The whole point of the National Park Service is that it outlives whoever is temporarily in charge of it. Markwayne Mullin is testing that premise with dynamite.Sources:Our Public Lands & Waters More Than Just Parks https://bigbendsentinel.com/2026/08/04/more-questions-than-answers-as-contractors-descend-upon-big-bend-national-park/https://www.marfapublicradio.org/news/2026-08-04/border-project-contractors-arrive-in-big-bend-national-park-as-texas-lawmakers-call-for-a-pausehttps://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/federal-contractors-begin-border-construction-in-big-bend-national-park-2026-08-06/https://www.sacurrent.com/news/texas-news/bulldozers-plow-through-untouched-wilderness-in-big-bend-to-begin-border-wall-construction/https://www.commondreams.org/news/big-bend-border-wall Get full access to The Rogue Voice aka Linsay Rousseau at linsayrousseau.substack.com/subscribe