Supreme Court Lets Trump Restart His Texas Border Wall. Only One Justice Said No.

The border wall in Big Bend is back on. The Supreme Court on Monday let the Trump administration restart building barriers and patrol roads along the Rio Grande in far West Texas, putting on hold a federal judge’s order that had shut the project down for more than a month.

The vote wasn’t close. In a short unsigned opinion, the Court sided with the government. Only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she would have turned the administration down, and she gave no reason.

How the wall got stopped

Earlier this year, Homeland Security, first under Kristi Noem and then under Secretary Markwayne Mullin, used a 1996 immigration law to clear the way for construction in what Border Patrol calls the Big Bend Sector. That law lets the Homeland Security secretary build barriers “to deter illegal crossings in areas of high illegal entry” and “waive all legal requirements” needed to build them fast, including environmental rules. The department found that Big Bend “is an area of high illegal entry.”

Three opponents sued: an environmental group (the Center for Biological Diversity), a local river guide and landowner, and a group that preserves a historic church in the tiny town of Ruidosa. On Oct. 2, U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone in Texas blocked the waivers and halted all the construction tied to them.

Why the justices stepped in

Here’s the key: Congress wrote that 1996 law so that people can only challenge these waivers in court by claiming a violation of the Constitution. Every other kind of challenge is off-limits.

The opponents dressed up their case as a constitutional one. They argued the waivers broke the “major questions doctrine,” a rule that says big, costly government moves need clear approval from Congress. The Supreme Court said that is just an argument that the secretary overstepped a law, not a constitutional claim, and that the judge likely had no power to hear it. “There is no such thing as a ‘constitutional’ major-questions claim,” the justices wrote.

The Court said the government is “exceedingly likely to prevail” on that point. It also said the shutdown was hurting the country’s “compelling interests” in border security, and it cited a Customs and Border Protection official’s sworn statement that the freeze was costing the government “nearly half a million dollars in costs per day” that it could never get back.

As for the opponents’ worries about the landscape, the justices pointed straight back to Congress, which they said had shown “a clear preference for expeditious border construction over the very harms respondents assert.”

What it covers

The government says the Big Bend work involves about 341 miles of construction, including stretches of Big Bend National Park, NBC News reported. The administration argues there are illegal crossings and drug seizures in the area, and that a gap in the wall would funnel more traffic there, according to the Associated Press. Opponents say it’s a waste of money in a remote area that has some of the border’s lowest apprehension numbers, and that it threatens one of America’s most famous landscapes.

The Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement that the ruling lets construction resume and is “not a final ruling on the legality” of the waivers.

What happens next

Monday’s order isn’t the end of the case. It keeps the judge’s injunction on ice while the administration asks the Supreme Court to formally take up the case. If the justices decline, the hold ends; if they take it, the hold lasts until they rule. Either way, the crews can get back to work in Big Bend now.