A group of private landowners in western and southwestern Texas filed a federal lawsuit Monday to stop the Trump administration from building border walls, barriers and roads through their properties.
The group includes some property owners and local residents who were up in arms a couple of years ago demanding better enforcement along the border and criticizing the Biden administration for spikes in immigrant border crossings.
The lawsuit was filed by Conserve Big Bend, an umbrella group that includes a coalition of about 230 landowners, and six plaintiffs. It was filed in Washington, D.C.
The plaintiffs allege the administration has wrongly designated the area along the Texas border as one of “high illegal entry.”
The Trump administration did so, the lawsuit states, to invoke “extraordinary power” to build a border wall on their property in “one of the most remote, rugged and ecologically significant stretches of the United States.”
But in 2025 the Customs and Border Protection’s Big Bend sector, which stretches over 77 counties and the state of Oklahoma, tallied the fewest apprehensions — just 1.3% — among the total of nine Southwest border sectors, according to the lawsuit.
The same has been true in the last five years, when the Big Bend sector accounted for 1.16% of apprehensions and had the lowest number each year, according to the lawsuit.
Holding signs that read “Landowners against Border Wall,” landowners and their supporters stood Monday at the Presidio County Courthouse in Marfa, where the filing of the lawsuit was announced at a news conference. Some wore their summer cowboy hats and large silver belt buckles, while others held aloft flags of Texas and the U.S. One flag flown said, “Don’t Mess with Big Bend.”
“We spoke real loud when our border was being invaded. And as a two-time Trump voter, you know the border’s secure. Thank you, thank you, President Trump. You’ve secured the border, but now let it go,” Laura Allen, a Val Verde County rancher and a former Val Verde County judge, said at the news conference.
Allen, who’s not named in the lawsuit but is part of Conserve Big Bend, told those gathered of how she was repeatedly on Fox News and other media outlets when “we had the Haitian crisis in Del Rio.”
In 2021, more than 10,000 immigrants, mostly from Haiti, were packed by Customs and Border Protection under an overpass bridge in Del Rio, a city in Val Verde County, as border officers scrambled to keep up with a surge in crossings.
But now immigration enforcement-related construction threatens land that has been in Allen’s husband’s family since 1920, she said.
The project will go through the middle of their property, Allen said, which lies close to Lake Amistad and the Rio Grande boundaries. According to her, the construction plans would put “working facilities” behind “walls,” which would cut off a subdivision of about 100 retirement homes and weekend getaways built on their property.
NBC News reached out Monday to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not have immediate comment on the lawsuit.
The administration paused construction and survey work in Big Bend National Park last month. Rodney Scott, who heads Customs and Border Protection, said on X at the time that CBP was pausing “all construction activity in Big Bend National Park while I visit and conduct a personal, on-the-ground evaluation.”
The arrival of heavy equipment and the clearing of desert flora were shared on social media, sparking backlash. That pause is due to expire Sept. 30.
But landowners with property outside the park say their property is at risk. According to Conserve Big Bend, 65% of the 609 miles of the planned Big Bend sector border project is on private property.
According to the lawsuit, coalition members who own property in Hudspeth, Brewster, Presidio and Val Verde counties have received written notices from CBP identifying their land as potentially needed for the border wall project.
David Keller, a regional archaeologist and Conserve Big Bend board member, owns a 10-acre farm in Presidio County. He uses his property for boating, guiding river trips and for his own enjoyment, the lawsuit states. He fears the project will cut his access to the Rio Grande, affect irrigation and make his land unusable for farming, the lawsuit stated.
He said Conserve Big Bend formed as landowners began to receive letters from the government. Organizers rushed to identify landowners, contact them, hold landowner meetings, educate them and urge them not to sign away their rights.
“We brought this challenge because for us Big Bend is not an empty place on a map. It is our home,” Keller said.
Joaquin Peña said at the news conference his family has farmed land in Redford, Texas, for many generations “and now there is an imminent threat coming to our way of life.”
“Farming is the backbone to our community, and now we’re being told that we have to give up land for a threat that doesn’t even exist,” Peña said. “Yet the real threat is the government taking away land from honest Texans, and that’s just not right.”
William Zuberbueler owns about 1,800 acres and more from family and cousins. The Val Verde County land has been in his family since the 1880s and, over the years, the government has taken parts of it for various projects, he said.
In the 1980s, the government “required us to relinquish our land” for construction of U.S. Highway 90, Zuberbueler said. In the 1970s, some of the land was needed to protect rock art in Seminole Canyon State Park, he said, and before that, in the 1960s, the family lost portions of the land during the years Lake Amistad was built.
Between February and July of this year, CBP sent Zuberbueler multiple notices regarding 11 specific tracts where it may need to enter for construction-related work on his land, according to the lawsuit.
“Our land, which my brother still actively ranches, running sheep, goats and cattle, our birthright, is now being taken by an administration that has promised to protect it,” he said.
