The Trump administration appears to be changing track in its plan to build a physical wall along a 200-mile stretch of rugged Texas desert that includes Big Bend National Park, where locals and environmental groups have lobbied against a barrier.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection updated last week an online map of the president’s planned border wall construction, with the route through Big Bend changed from “planned” for construction to “detection technology.” The change was earlier reported by the Houston Chronicle and other local media outlets.
When asked about the change, Border Protection did not definitely address whether there could be future plans for a wall at the park. The agency said it is “currently focusing on the top operational priorities with historical rates of high illegal entry where illegal aliens regularly attempt to enter the United States.”
The Big Bend region experiences just a fraction of the illegal border crossing along the U.S. Mexico border, though it traverses more than 500 miles of border along the Rio Grande. Just 734 people have been documented Border Patrol crossing in the Big Bend sector of the more than 27,000 counted along the entire border between U.S. and Mexico, according to the agency. Those numbers include both people who are seeking entry into the U.S. at official “ports of entry” and those apprehended crossing into the country by border patrol.
