A federal judge in El Paso has frozen Trump administration border wall construction across Texas’s Big Bend sector, handing activists a pause they call a total win while the case continues.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone issued a two-page injunction on Friday that stops the government from building border barriers or related infrastructure anywhere in the Big Bend sector, including Big Bend National Park, while a lawsuit by local residents and preservation advocates moves forward.

Reporting on the order shows Cardone also barred the administration from relying on waivers of environmental and other laws that had been used to speed construction, and she directed federal officials to comply with all applicable laws in the meantime.

The ruling lands in a remote stretch of the Texas-Mexico border that already records substantially fewer illegal crossings than other sectors. Federal officials had warned that barriers built elsewhere could push traffic into this rugged ground. Now the wall work is on hold.

Cardone’s order shuts down ground work sector-wide

Cardone’s written order, read aloud in court in El Paso, is blunt on scope. The government “shall not build border barrier or related infrastructure, or engage in any construction or ground disturbing activities, in the Big Bend sector.”

She also found the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on at least one of their claims. The New York Post reported her fuller finding: a likelihood of serious, irreparable harm without an injunction, and that the balance of equities and the public interest weighed in the plaintiffs’ favor.

That language freezes not only steel barrier work but clearing, road cutting, and other ground-disturbing activity tied to the project. It covers the park and nearby upriver and downriver stretches after recent construction activity in the region.

Judicial blocks on immigration enforcement tools are not new. Conservatives have watched similar fights when a Biden-appointed judge ordered the release of an alleged MS-13 member wanted for murder, drawing sharp DHS pushback over courtroom decisions that undercut street-level security.

River guides and activists celebrate outside the courthouse

Plaintiffs include Billy Miller, a river guide from Terlingua, Texas, and a church preservation group, joined by local residents and preservation advocates who sued after months of opposition and repeated stops and starts in construction.

Outside the El Paso courthouse, Miller framed the injunction as a narrow escape for the landscape he shows clients.

"We dodged a bullet today. It means that we can continue to introduce people to the wildness. Their plan was going to ruin the experience of anybody going out there."

Laiken Jordahl, with the Center for Biological Diversity that brought the suit, called Cardone’s ruling a “total victory,” according to coverage of the decision.

In August filings described by Just The News, the plaintiffs argued the damage would be permanent: once bulldozers clear vegetation, roads are cut into previously undeveloped terrain, lights are mounted, and steel barrier infrastructure goes in, those qualities cannot be restored through money or after-the-fact relief.

That is the core of their case, irreversible change to wild ground. It is also the core of the policy tradeoff the injunction locks in place for now.

Fewer crossings here does not erase the displacement risk

Big Bend’s lower crossing volume is real, and opponents lean on it. They say remote, rugged terrain already discourages illegal entry, so barriers would mainly scar the view.

Federal officials made the opposite point: pressure moves. When other sectors get barriers, traffic can shift into open ground. Cardone’s order keeps that ground open to construction only after full environmental process, not under the waivers the administration had issued to move faster.

Border infrastructure fights keep returning to the same courtroom pattern. One recent example ran the other direction when a federal judge cleared a path for Trump border wall work on the Tohono O’odham reservation, showing how much turns on which judge draws the case and how waivers and land claims are read.

Here, the administration is told it cannot lean on those waivers while the lawsuit proceeds. Every shovel of dirt must run the full legal gauntlet first.

Courts keep setting the tempo on border tools

The Big Bend freeze fits a longer stretch of injunction politics over immigration policy. Lawmakers have even moved to impeach judges who block Trump-era orders, including when Rep. Ogles filed an impeachment resolution against a federal judge who blocked a TPS order tied to Somali protections.

Separately, appellate panels sometimes unwind trial-court restraints, as when the Ninth Circuit lifted an injunction and freed Border Patrol to resume immigration stops in California. Cardone’s two-page order is a trial-level hold, not the last word, but it governs the dirt and steel on the ground until a higher court or final judgment says otherwise.

For now, the practical result is simple. No new barrier. No related infrastructure. No ground-disturbing prep work across the sector, park included. The lawsuit continues. The waivers are off the table. The administration must proceed under every applicable statute the plaintiffs invoked.

Miller and allied advocates get the wildness they wanted preserved in the short term. Taxpayers who funded a barrier strategy aimed at shifting traffic and sealing gaps get a courthouse pause written in two pages and read aloud on a Friday in El Paso.

Border security still depends on whether judges treat walls as optional scenery fights or as tools meant to stop illegal crossings before they become the next corridor.