Trump messed with Texas. Now an army of pissed-off Texans are fighting his border wall

Host Maximilian Alvarez opens by situating the episode in the Big Bend region of far West Texas, near Big Bend National Park, Big Bend Ranch State Park, and the U.S.-Mexico border. He cites reporting that the Trump administration, which returned to office in January 2025, has renewed efforts to construct border barriers in areas without them, including Big Bend. Although the region has historically recorded the fewest illegal crossings on the entire Southwest border, the administration has awarded billions of dollars in contracts for border infrastructure while telling residents that it will not build a conventional wall or fence inside the national park. The episode states that $2.1 billion in contracts have already been awarded for wall construction in Presidio and Hudspeth counties; more than 500 private landowners could lose access to the Rio Grande; and construction is planned for areas including Big Bend National Park and Big Bend Ranch State Park. The Department of Homeland Security is described as waiving 31 federal laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. The hosts introduce five residents and former public officials who are organizing against the project.

Yolanda Alvarado, a fifth-generation cattle rancher and regional director for Conserve Big Bend: No Big Bend Wall, explains that the Big Bend region stretches from Hudspeth County to Val Verde County and includes family ranches in Hudspeth, Presidio, and Jeff Davis counties. She describes a vast, serene desert where one can see for hundreds of miles, but also a harsh rural environment with few ambulances, small schools, and limited services. Her children attend a school with only 35 students from kindergarten through high school. The region’s small communities depend heavily on visitors passing through the national and state parks. Sara Ryza, owner of the renovated Desert Air Motel in Sanderson, calls the towns “gateway” communities whose independent motels, restaurants, gas stations, and other businesses rely on tourism. Crystal Albright, who has lived in Terlingua for 36 years and owns a bicycle and outdoor-gear shop, says the area is both interconnected with the larger region and made up of distinct, gritty communities where business owners often run several enterprises. Scott Whitener, a former superintendent of Big Bend Ranch State Park, describes the national park through three linked environments: the Chisos Mountains, the open desert, and the Rio Grande corridor. He says residents from across the region have been brought together by meetings, rallies, and efforts to delay what they call the destruction of the area. Whitener puts the region’s scale in stark terms: the six affected counties contain roughly 23,000 people and 23,000 square miles—about one person per square mile. Sharon Reed-Gavin, who moved to Terlingua full time in 2013 after first visiting in 1976, says the area’s beauty includes irreplaceable archaeological and historical sites that construction crews have already disturbed. The residents insist that the region’s isolation does not mean it is empty or disconnected; it is a shared landscape with deep family, cultural, ecological, and economic ties.

The panel explains that the resistance is being organized by people who are already working long hours. Albright and her husband operate their bicycle shop and outdoor businesses six or seven days a week, and previously ran river-outfitting trips for 29 years. She uses the shop to display photographs of damage, explain the border project to visitors, encourage them to contact representatives, and raise money for organizations fighting the construction. Alvarado says her main job is managing her family’s cattle ranches, working outdoors with animals, droughts, floods, extreme heat, freezing weather, and the responsibility of teaching her children how to care for the desert, ranches, and livestock. Her organizing role has increasingly moved her from the desert to a computer, coordinating opposition to the wall. Whitener now works for an animal-rescue organization that covers an area larger than the six-county Big Bend sector, spending roughly 40 to 60 hours a week rescuing animals and using his remaining time to fight the project. Reed-Gavin, who is retired, says she is able to devote more time to the campaign, but emphasizes that the others work before, during, and after their regular jobs. She points to the long drives involved in participating in county meetings, rallies, and other organizing. The panel’s description of the campaign is therefore not of a single activist organization operating separately from the community; it is a network of ranchers, business owners, retirees, former park staff, and neighbors folding political work into already exhausting lives.

Alvarado says the river communities historically functioned as one region across the border. Presidio and Ojinaga, and the communities around Boquillas, shared daily relationships, and ranchers did not view the Big Bend area as a place requiring a wall. She says that changed after the George W. Bush administration built a billion-dollar wall on her aunt’s property, and intensified more recently when military vehicles and personnel began appearing along the border. She describes seeing Stryker vehicles and Army personnel, sometimes apparently idle or exercising, and says the deployment has filled hotel rooms and disrupted tourism. She also recounts sitting on her porch less than half a mile from Mexico when she learned that the region had been declared part of a state of emergency. Within a week, military personnel were appearing at her property; on one occasion, someone drove through her gate in the middle of the night. Scott Whitener says that in Marfa, U.S. military personnel have occupied a hotel costing at least $285 per night since February 2026, using its pool and weight room while not paying hotel taxes or contributing normally to the local economy. He stresses that his criticism is directed at the policy, not individual service members, whom he says are being separated from their families and sent on a mission where residents see no emergency. The panel argues that the militarization itself is damaging the area’s reputation. Ryza says the message that Big Bend is dangerous makes tourists choose other parks, while military and construction spending does not provide the stable, long-term economic development that local businesses need. The residents describe the claimed border crisis as a political narrative rather than a reflection of local conditions, and say the actual crisis is the arrival of construction and “destruction” crews.

The panel describes several different projects rather than one simple 30-foot wall. Ryza says a $2.6 billion contract in Terrell County and parts of Brewster and Val Verde counties covers four- and six-foot steel bollard vehicle barriers. The barriers would be placed near canyons and along the river, even though residents say vehicles are not crossing there and people could simply go underneath the structures. She calls the project an irrational waste of taxpayer money. Albright explains that the Rio Grande was once a shared community space. Before September 11, people could cross to Mexican villages for lunch and exchange news; after the border closed, residents lost regular contact with friends and relatives. Once a year, on Mother’s Day, communities on both sides still gather by the river, with bands alternating between Mexico and the United States while families eat, dance, and socialize. She says walls and vehicle barriers would sever those relationships further and could deny landowners access to the river. The residents argue that existing Border Patrol operations already provide security. Alvarado recounts riding a new four-wheeler while checking cattle near the border; Border Patrol recognized her, found her within 10 to 15 minutes, and quickly confirmed that she posed no problem. She says better technology, including drones or helicopters, could address genuine crossings without seizing land or destroying the landscape. The panel cites a proposed $7.46 billion expenditure for 517 miles of Texas riverfront and estimates of $14 million to $17 million per mile for wall construction. Alvarado says a 30-foot bollard wall on her family’s property alone could cost taxpayers nearly $100 million. Terrell County’s entire annual budget, one speaker notes, is less than $2.5 million.

The panel rejects the assumption that Texans automatically support a border wall. Alvarado compares the project to a data center imposed on a community without local consent: the government uses a frightening narrative to justify taking natural resources, land, and jobs. She warns that a national-emergency declaration used to waive laws in Big Bend could establish a precedent for deploying the military or overriding local control elsewhere, including Boise, Idaho. The residents say the issue should concern people across the country because it involves the government abusing emergency powers against American citizens. Alvarado also characterizes the broader border policy as racist and anti-Latino, arguing that years of anti-Latino narratives have made it easier for people to ignore abuses by immigration authorities. She says residents are being treated as collateral damage in a project driven by large contracts, detention-center interests, and political rewards rather than local need. Reed-Gavin says residents feel safer in Big Bend than in Dallas or Washington, D.C.; she says she and her husband have not locked their door in 13 years. The residents are particularly angry that elected officials who campaign on limiting federal overreach have not objected to the project. They mention a Texas state senator’s “Fed Act,” intended to protect West Texas landowners from federal overreach, while saying the senator has not spoken out about the border construction. Their conclusion is that border security already exists, the crossings are minimal, and the project’s financial and environmental costs vastly outweigh any claimed benefit.

Ryza says the coalition is not only fighting against construction but also fighting for the local tourism economy. She encourages people to keep visiting Big Bend, using the “Big Love for Big Bend” campaign to direct visitors toward independently owned motels, restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations, and other businesses. The panel also asks listeners to contact their representatives; residents who traveled to Washington, D.C., say lawmakers repeatedly told them they had received constituent calls, demonstrating that public pressure is noticed. Alvarado reports that the landowner coalition has enrolled more than half of the landowners along the affected border and filed a lawsuit against the federal government and the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, D.C. The lawsuit challenges the waivers that allow officials to bypass federal laws and argues that a claimed national-security emergency cannot erase landowners’ rights. At the time of recording, construction had not resumed, although residents were monitoring the area, and another hearing was scheduled in El Paso. They criticize the lack of transparency and say officials have not meaningfully consulted the communities or considered alternatives. Residents describe weekly rallies in Terlingua, with the 32nd rally scheduled for that Saturday, and additional rallies in cities including Houston and Dallas. They also attend county, city-council, groundwater, and other public meetings, sometimes driving hours to hold local officials accountable. Whitener says residents who had assumed their elected officials would simply approve the project are now showing up in large numbers. The message is that Texans outside major cities are not passive or uniformly pro-wall: they are organizing, confronting officials, and continuing to return to the meetings.

After the recorded conversation, Alvarez provides an update from Martha Paskowski’s reporting in Mother Jones. Federal Judge Kathleen Cardone granted a preliminary injunction to halt border-wall construction in the expansive Big Bend sector, including Big Bend National Park and Big Bend Ranch State Park. The order followed more than four hours of testimony from conservation groups and Big Bend residents, who emphasized the region’s dark skies, biodiversity, and rugged river canyons. Cardone said the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on at least one claim and would suffer irreparable harm if construction continued. Her order stops border-barrier construction throughout the Big Bend sector until the federal government complies with all applicable laws. It covers the entirety of Big Bend National Park and Big Bend Ranch State Park, as well as the Rio Grande border in the rest of the sector. The injunction remains in place while the lawsuit, filed in April, proceeds. Alvarez stresses that the struggle is not over, but presents the injunction as a significant victory for the coalition. The episode closes by directing listeners to the No Big Bend Wall materials and by promoting the Terlingua Music Bash, scheduled for October 15–18. Jules Taylor says the free event features about 40 artists across roughly six venues and benefits a local school, with a Day of the Dead costume parade also planned. The hosts encourage people to visit Big Bend, support local businesses, contact representatives, and follow the residents’ continuing fight.