MARFA, TX — A coalition of Big Bend landowners and Conserve Big Bend filed a federal lawsuit on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (1:26-cv-03198), challenging the legal basis the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has used to fast-track border wall and infrastructure construction across the region. The lawsuit names DHS, Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin and CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott as defendants.

Landowners and organizers announced the filing at a press conference at the Presidio County Courthouse in Marfa.

The lawsuit centers on a legal threshold buried in a nearly 30-year-old immigration statute. Section 102 of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act gives the DHS Secretary extraordinary power to waive dozens of federal laws and fast-track barrier construction, but only in areas the Secretary formally designates as having “high illegal entry.” Landowners argue Big Bend does not meet that standard, and that DHS’s own data proves it.

“Under federal statute the Secretary of Homeland Security is granted extraordinary, expedited powers to construct border barriers and sweep aside dozens of federal protections, environmental laws, and ordinary due process,” said Clara Bensen, Board Member with Conserve Big Bend and Director of Communications for the No Big Bend Wall initiative. “But, Congress explicitly set a strict legal prerequisite for that extraordinary power: it can only be invoked in designated areas of ‘high illegal entry.’”

According to the complaint, the Big Bend Sector spans 517 miles, more than a quarter of the entire U.S.-Mexico border, yet has recorded the fewest apprehensions of any southwest border sector every year for the last 53 years. CBP’s own figures show the sector accounted for just 1.16% of total apprehensions along the southwest border between fiscal years 2021 and 2025, and that apprehensions fell 74% between fiscal years 2023 and 2025, to the lowest annual total for the Big Bend Sector since fiscal year 1963 and the fewest recorded by any southwest border sector since fiscal year 1967.

“The government’s own official statistics tell the real story,” Bensen said. “You cannot legally bypass the laws of this country by fabricating an emergency that does not exist. Declaring over 500 miles of steep cliff faces and perilously rugged desert an area of ‘high illegal entry’ is not just detached from reality, under federal law, it is arbitrary, capricious, and unlawful.”

The lawsuit names Conserve Big Bend and six landowners as plaintiffs: Charles L. Cecil IV, John Ferguson, David Keller, Nadine Pineda Mata, Joe Pineda and Leo Nunez Pineda.

The lawsuit asks the court to declare the Secretary’s “high illegal entry” determinations for the Big Bend Sector unlawful, vacate them, and issue a preliminary and permanent injunction blocking construction of the project until the government follows the law. The complaint brings claims under the Administrative Procedure Act, alleges the government exceeded its statutory authority and acted ultra vires, and raises Fifth Amendment due process and Take Care Clause violations.

David Keller, a regional archaeologist, landowner, board member with Conserve Big Bend and plaintiff, said the lawsuit is the culmination of more than a year of organizing among landowners stretching from Fort Quitman to Amistad Dam.

“Our coalition includes 230 landowners across the region, more than 70 of whom were willing to serve as plaintiffs in the lawsuit being announced today,” Keller said. “We have brought this extraordinary challenge because, for us, the Big Bend is not an empty place on a map. It is our home. This project can be stopped. It will be stopped. And in fact, we are already stopping it.”

Keller said organizing has already slowed the project. “Landowner resistance has slowed this project dramatically,” he said. “People have refused access agreements. Survey and construction schedules have fallen months behind. Contractors have been sent home.”