Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court to Shut Down Judge Blocking Big Bend Border Wall

A single federal judge in El Paso just froze border wall construction at five active worksites in the Big Bend region of Texas.

Her injunction is now burning through federal taxpayer money every single day it stays in place.

The Trump administration just asked the Supreme Court to shut her down for good.

Judge Cardone Stalled for Weeks Then Blocked the Wall Again

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone first halted construction on the Big Bend wall project on October 2, 2026.

She froze all work and barred the Department of Homeland Security from using the legal waivers that let the agency skip dozens of environmental and historic preservation laws.

The Trump administration asked her to lift the pause immediately.

She sat on it.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer's office told her on October 16 that if she stayed silent through October 21, the government would treat her silence as a denial and go straight to the Supreme Court.

Cardone waited until October 20, then handed down a six-page ruling rejecting the administration again.

The next day, Sauer filed the emergency petition Big Bend landowners and environmental groups had been bracing for.

Sauer called Cardone's injunction baseless.

He told the justices she weighed hiking trails and scenic river views against the federal government's duty to stop cartels from moving people and drugs through open desert.

Cardone's order does not stop at Big Bend – it covers roughly 500 miles of the southwest border.

DHS Says the Freeze Is Costing Taxpayers a Fortune

Government lawyers told the court the pause is costing $462,800 per day in idle crews and sitting equipment.

Pulling workers and machinery off the five Big Bend sites could cost another $7 million.

Sauer told the justices the government has a "paramount interest" in finishing that stretch – without it, he warned, a quarter of the southwest border becomes "a magnet for cartel exploitation."

The agency has waived dozens of federal and state laws to get there.

Presidents Bush, Obama and Trump have all used that same waiver authority since Congress created it to keep single lawsuits from stalling border security for years.

None of that is new.

What's new is a federal judge deciding a river guide's view matters more than Border Patrol's ability to stop cartel smuggling.

CBP's own data shows illegal crossings in the Big Bend sector are already near zero.

The people suing to shut the project down are the Center for Biological Diversity, a small historic church group called Friends of the Ruidosa Church, and Terlingua river guide Billy Miller.

Texas Civil Rights Project attorney Dustin Rynders called Sauer's petition a "hail mary" that followed an "embarrassing" hearing for the government.

Rynders said the administration is "reasserting arguments it has already made to the same judge" and claimed Cardone will reject them again.

Sauer's own filing cuts against him – the government told the court it is "actively considering" shrinking the barrier project, not scrapping it, because the wall already standing elsewhere pushed crossings toward zero.

That is not an argument for leaving Big Bend open – it is an admission that walls work.

Justice Department Filed 111 Condemnation Suits Against Texas Landowners Since 2017

Texas landowners have been dragged into border wall litigation since Trump's first term, and the numbers show the pattern.

Justice Department attorneys filed just 20 condemnation lawsuits against Texas landowners during Obama's entire eight years in office.

Since Trump took office in January 2017, that same office has filed 111 of them, including 63 in 2020 alone.

One Starr County family, the Guerras, fought the federal government in court three separate times over land their family has held since a 1767 Spanish land grant.

Big Bend is the same fight in a new courtroom, with environmental groups now playing the role landowners played in 2017.

DHS is building under waiver power created by the 2005 Real ID Act, which lets the agency bypass laws like the Endangered Species Act to speed construction – and which courts have said can only be challenged on constitutional grounds, not disputes over environmental harm.

This is the second of six lawsuits filed over the Big Bend project since April, after bulldozers reached Santa Elena Canyon and excavators began cutting into Mariscal Mountain without the 30-day notice the government had promised the park.

If the Supreme Court lets a river guide and a defunct church group freeze five active job sites, every environmental group in Texas gets a free blueprint for stopping the wall anywhere they want.

Sauer's petition is betting the justices will not let a handful of plaintiffs with no crossing data hold up a border security project the administration campaigned on and voters approved twice.

Sources:

• Bethany Blankley, "Trump Admin Files Emergency Petition to SCOTUS in Big Bend Border Wall Case," The Center Square, October 21, 2026.
• Cameron Langford, "Condemnation Lawsuits Stand Between Trump and His Big Beautiful Wall," Courthouse News Service, August 13, 2020.
• Defendants, "Emergency Motion for Stay Pending Appeal," U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, October 9, 2026.
• Mary Cantrell, "Trump Admin Asks Judge to Let Big Bend Border Construction Continue," Marfa Public Radio/Texas Public Radio, October 9, 2026.
• Sam Karas, "Big Bend Border Injunction," Texas Monthly, October 9, 2026.