Call it Texas Independence: Republicans and Democrats in the Big Bend say outsiders shouldn’t decide their future. They argue that a border wall would separate them from the rivers and land that define the region.
PRESIDIO, Texas – It’s a dark, starry night for Dennis Carrera. Mike Davidson has been rowing the Rio Grande for 49 years. For Bill Ivey, it’s the ghost town business he built with his father and now his son.
In a historically rebellious state, an unlikely coalition of Texans of diverse backgrounds and political opponents are banding together to fight President Donald Trump’s plan to spend billions on a border wall here in the state’s rugged Big Bend region.
River contractors have bombarded the state’s Republican Congressional delegation and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott with anti-wall postcards. A local photographer started a petition that gathered over 106,000 signatures. Protests are planned for April 4 at the Texas State Capitol and Big Bend National Park.
There are now significant signs that their efforts may be paying off.
The Department of Homeland Security has updated its online “smart wall” map to replace plans for physical barriers with “deterrent technology” at national and state parks in the region. Local officials, including the governor, said they had been informally assured that no wall would be built inside the park.
Big Bend residents oppose border wall proposal
Residents oppose a proposed border wall near Big Bend, citing environmental and economic concerns.
Texans in the Big Bend say the region’s border wall threatens their land, lives and livelihoods. They don’t want distant government officials making decisions without their input. Physical barriers could put at risk the landscape, which attracts more than 500,000 tourists a year and drives the local economy.
“It doesn’t take much to destroy a community, and if you put a wall in the Big Bend region… it would destroy the economy here,” said Ivey, a Republican and longtime Trump supporter.
“I think someone drew a line on a map of Washington, and they’ve never been here,” Ivey said. “All you have to do is come here and see it.”
The dark nights of Big Bend reveal distant galaxies. The green Rio Grande floats like a ribbon in the jaws of jagged canyons. Once a quaint ghost town, Terlingua serves as a springboard to the vast desert vistas of Big Bend National Park. The Presidio, with a population of 3,246, has historic Mexican, Spanish, and indigenous roots in the area.
“The fact that they’re trying to disrupt our peace, the fact that they’re trying to take away the only thing we have, which is the night sky, really makes me angry,” said Carrera, who lives in Presidio. The government already has a contract to build 272 miles of border wall in the Presidio.
In an emailed response to questions, U.S. Customs and Border Protection told USA TODAY that the combination of barriers, roads and technology adjacent to Big Bend National Park and Big Bend Ranch State Park is “still in the planning stages.”
CBP said it coordinates with federal and state agencies “throughout border security and technology implementation planning to achieve the Border Patrol’s operational priorities.”
The Big Bend region of Texas is one of the last areas along the border without some kind of fence or barrier. Locals say the mountains, remote desert and extreme weather are enough deterrents to prevent illegal crossings.
The Border Patrol’s own numbers bear that out. At 500 miles, the Big Bend sector is the largest of nine sectors on the Southwest border. Although it is almost a quarter of the distance between the United States and Mexico, the number of illegal border crossings is at an all-time low.
In late 2023, during President Joe Biden’s presidency, the El Paso area was recording more than 50,000 migrants per month, while the Big Bend area had about 1,500 migrant encounters. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, there were 3,096 immigration arrests in the Big Bend region in fiscal year 2025, or 1% of the 237,538 border arrests overall.
CBP said a contract has been awarded for a “major border wall system” in the eastern and western border areas of the Presidio that will run through farms and ranches to the edge of Big Bend Ranch State Park. CBP confirmed to USA TODAY that construction of a three-mile border barrier originally planned within the state park has been canceled.
“The Wonders of the Rio Grande”
In late March, the bilingual slogans “No Walls” and “No Al Muro” were plastered all over the Big Bend area, on trucker hats, road signs, bumper stickers and hand-embroidered beer koozies.
During his 2015 election campaign, Trump promised to build a “big, beautiful wall” along the nearly 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border. His first administration built 482 miles of physical barriers, but installed only 137 miles of new fencing, according to an analysis by border security researcher Adam Isakson.
Biden halted construction of the border wall. Trump restarted it. In the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law by President Trump last summer, Congress gave the Department of Homeland Security $46.5 billion to expedite border wall construction.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced by January that it intended to issue $11.4 billion in contracts in President Trump’s first year and award the remaining contracts by June 30. The goal is to construct 250 miles of new border barrier by September 30th.
Local alarm began to spread after the Big Bend Sentinel newspaper published a story about the president’s plans.
Terlingua outfitters handed out addressed postcards to tourists after canoe trips. At Benga, a restaurant and tourist hub, every table had a barrier postcard and a pen. Activists erected a makeshift iron fence in the restaurant’s parking lot and posted another slogan, “Stop the Steal,” on top of it. This is a play on the MAGA effort to overturn the 2020 election.
Erin Little, co-owner of Big Bend Boat and Hike, said she and other tour companies have mailed thousands of postcards to Abbott, Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, and Rep. Tony Gonzalez, whose district includes Big Bend.
Mr. Cornyn, Mr. Cruz and Mr. Gonzalez did not respond to USA TODAY’s requests for comment. Abbott spokesman Andrew Maharelis told USA TODAY that the governor “fully supports the use of all tools and strategies necessary to assist the Trump administration in deterring illegal immigrants who attempt to make the dangerous journey across our southern border.”
“Rugged and isolated areas like the Big Bend present a unique opportunity to deploy technology to assist border security,” Mahalelis said in an email, adding that U.S. Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks assured governors there are no physical barriers in state or national parks.
Still, tourists are pitching in to continue the fight alongside locals, Little said as he carried a plastic box of postcards.
“Great support,” she said.
One Texas mother who was near the top of the mountain said a wall won’t stop crime. It always finds a way. She wrote in cursive: “What the wall prevents is our daughters’ access to the wonders of the Rio Grande and the curiosity of future Texans to learn and grow from experiences on protected public lands.”
Wall by the river: “The final insult”
During the day, the road between Presidio and Terlingua through Big Bend Ranch State Park curves along the river and up and over steep hills.
A violent volcanic eruption approximately 30 million years ago (after the extinction of the dinosaurs) created the sheer rock faces and boulder fields that make the area’s topography so unique. The Rio Grande is a relatively recent arrival geologically, flowing into the Big Bend about 2 million years ago.
In late March, turtles sunbathe on the river’s edge. Gambel’s quail runs among the rocks. The scorching 100 degree sun in the afternoon keeps other wildlife away.
But at night, desert animals come down to the Rio Grande in search of water. The mule deer, with their keen ears, dart across the two-lane state highway. A company of pig-like javelina roams around. A black-tailed jackrabbit threads its way through a field of mesquite and flowering nopal cacti.
Davidson, a longtime river guide and born-and-raised Texan, began guiding tourists on the Rio Grande in the 1980s, when the river was swollen and flooded frequently.
“When I first came here, we had summer rains and bad flooding,” he said. “We like rivers. We like floods. The higher, the better.”
Over the years, he said, the river has been subjected to “small insults” that have added up to dramatically change its nature and ecosystem. He points to a warming climate and increased growing of expensive, water-intensive agricultural products in Mexico since the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s.
The lanky 73-year-old paddled the river for five straight days in late March, guiding vacationing couples, families and college students, many on their first run on the Rio Grande.
“It would feel like the final insult to build a wall separating me from the river, which is part of my existence,” he said.
“Why do they want to make it?”
The world’s eighth-largest economy, a lone star state and former Republic of Texas with a history of fighting for independence, has a track record of overseeing the federal government. It is the largest state in the Lower 48 and the second most populous.
Asked if Big Bend residents could stop the wall from being built, Ivey said, “I’m old enough to remember when a group of Texans tried to secede from the Union.”
Border wall opponents plan to hold rallies at the Texas State Capitol in Austin on April 4th and in the Santa Elena Valley in Big Bend National Park the same day. They want Mr. Abbott and the state’s congressional delegation to take a stand.
In the Presidio, Luis Armendariz Spencer keeps a dusty copy of Texas Monthly in the back seat of his Chevrolet, which includes a cover story about a Texas gunman called “The Hell We Raised.” He owns farmland on the U.S.-Mexico border and believes there is no need for a border wall in the area.
“Why do they want to build it?” he asked. “To prevent Mexicans from coming to the United States to work? But they’re not coming anymore.”
Grassroots efforts to oppose border wall construction have had little success. But as opposition to Big Bend grows among Republicans, President Trump’s Department of Homeland Security is signaling it may be listening.
On March 5, the same day that President Trump fired former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, the official color-coded “smart wall” map was updated online to show that Big Bend National Park would be equipped with unspecified “detection technology” rather than a 30-foot steel barrier.
On March 22, Big Bend Border Patrol Chief Lloyd Easterling told Presidio County Commissioner Deirdre Hissler that DHS has also decided to remove physical barriers at Big Bend Ranch State Park. Local residents are concerned about the departure of officials. A few days later, Easterling announced he was retiring from the Border Patrol.
On March 30th, the “Smart Wall” map was updated again to reflect that new stance. But residents say the new colors on the digital map are not enough to allay fears.
“When the map changed, did we celebrate? We celebrated,” she said. “But we remain on high alert.”
Landowners received notices threatening eminent land, which is the federal government’s right to expropriate property for a fair payment for its own purposes. Hissler said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and others will review the property ownership in Presidio County Court on April 20. Local residents have been sharing photos of survey markers appearing on state park grounds.
Contractors are surveying the area.
In Valentine, 95 miles north of the Presidio, the mayor received a request from a company called Frontier Development to set up a camp with 200 trailers to house out-of-town construction workers, city clerk Albert Miller said. The total population of the town is 73 people.
Before the committee could discuss it, the company withdrew its proposal after encountering opposition.
Carrera, who has returned to his hometown of Presidio after a decade in Dallas, worries about how the men’s camps, construction teams and floodlights will affect the quiet, dark night skies of the countryside he has drawn into.
In Dallas, “we had to plan for times when the moon would be visible,” she said. “I took a photo with my iPhone today, and you can see the Milky Way.”
“Being four minutes away from a sign that says ‘Night Sky Preserve’ feels very special,” she said. “If you do that, everything will be ruined, right?”
Lauren Villagran covers borders and immigration for USA TODAY. Contact her at lvillagran@usatoday.com or laurenvillagran.57 on Signal.
