Bulldozers and heavy construction equipment have arrived in and around Big Bend National Park in Texas, amid a battle over the Trump administration's plans to expand the president's border wall across one of the country's most remote national parks.

Social media videos by conservation groups and local activists show contractors clearing vegetation near the Rio Grande amid federal plans for multibillion-dollar border security project that includes vehicle barriers, surveillance systems and extensive patrol-road construction across the Big Bend region.

The work has faced bipartisan backlash in Congress, and opposition from environmental groups, former National Park Service leaders and local tourism businesses, who say the project could damage desert ecosystems and change the character of a park that attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each year.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) say the infrastructure is necessary to strengthen security in a region spanning hundreds of miles along the souther border. DHS has cited more than 89,000 migrant encounters in the Big Bend Sector between fiscal years 2021 and 2025, as well as drug seizures, when justifying additional infrastructure.

“This is the most heinous attack on an American national park in generations,” said Laiken Jordahl, national public lands advocate at environmental group Center for Biological Diversity. “The administration is preparing to blast hundreds of miles of destructive roads through the wildest place left in Texas and cut off public access to the Rio Grande, all to enrich private contractors.

Recorded migrant encounter figures across the wider Big Bend Sector have fluctuated in recent years.

Latest CBP data show Border Patrol recorded 148 encounters in the sector in June 2026, down from 412 in June 2023, during the peak of the border crisis.

During the first nine months of fiscal 2026 (October through June), authorities recorded 1,509 encounters, down from 10,291 during the same period in fiscal 2023, a decline of about 85 percent.

The figures cover the entire Big Bend Sector, which is wider than the park itself and spans roughly 517 miles of the border.

This is a developing story; more to follow.