PRESIDIO COUNTY, Texas — In the picturesque remoteness of the Big Bend region, where Yolanda Alvarado’s family has lived since before it was Texas, the sudden arrival of all the noise was impossible to miss: men yelling, machinery crunching, dynamite exploding in the mountains.

Nobody told her any of it was coming. “No announcement. No signs. There’s been zero communication,” she told MS NOW recently.

When she called around to neighbors and a local judge, wondering who granted this construction crew access to the land at the end of her rural, rocky road in Presidio County and what exactly they had planned, no one around her could or would tell her for certain.

The men and the machines belong to Barnard Construction, a Montana-based company owned by Tim Barnard, who has won more than $5.6 billion in border wall contracts during President Donald Trump’s second term in office. The work his company has begun at Alvarado’s doorstep is part of the administration’s signature fast-tracked promise to complete construction on an end-to-end 30-foot-tall border wall between the United States and Mexico.

Since 2015, Trump has sold his wall to the public as a national security imperative — a barrier required to halt dangerous migrants from streaming into America from the south. He doubled down on his vision on the day of his second inauguration in January 2025, describing the wall as a responsibility to “defend our country from threats and invasions.”

An MS NOW team recently drove more than 1,000 miles across the rugged Big Bend region, where even the most conservative Texans aren’t buying it. Many said it feels like the real invaders are flooding in from Washington.

Trump asked Republican voters this week at the party’s gathering in Dallas to pretend he’s on the ballot in November’s midterm elections. But since he isn’t, Big Bend conservatives who spoke to MS NOW said they are poised to vent their outrage at his fellow Republicans, including Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, both of whom are on the ballot.

Residents who live by these newly formed construction sites are still visibly upset. As drivers passed by, they pulled down their window to share their frustrations. Lou, who only shared her first name, described feeling “on the alert constantly,” gesturing toward the Barnard worksite full of contract laborers. “Who do I report this shit to?

“Somebody’s going to get hurt, OK? And it’s not going to be me!”

It’s not just that they are bothered by an inconvenient construction project — the Trump administration is taking steps to seize some Texans’ private land.

The Alvarados are one of at least 200 border landowners who have received letters in recent months informing them that the administration needs to access or use part of their property. The letters reviewed by MS NOW indicate that the administration will take the property through eminent domain proceedings, the federal government’s process to convert private land for public use, if landowners deny access to the construction crews. One letter explains that if the landowner and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, are unable to reach a negotiated purchase or easement agreement, there will be a “referral to the U.S. Department of Justice to initiate the eminent domain/condemnation process.”

Alvarado, who lives down the road from Lou, describes herself as a centrist who doesn’t fully embrace labels like red or blue. She can criticize both parties, she carries a gun, and she doesn’t like the way Trump speaks about Latinos. “I’ve always pretty much stayed in the middle and I don’t see myself swaying any way,” she explained.

But she is frustrated with Abbott for not doing more to push back on the Trump administration’s plans for the walls, through lawsuits or by directly lobbying the president, his ally.

In November she plans to vote for Democrats across the board, including Gina Hinojosa for governor and James Talarico, Paxton’s opponent in the Senate race.

A beloved park in peril

Almost immediately after he was sworn back in, Trump redeclared a state of emergency at the southern border and, through his massive spending bill, gave CBP more than $45 billion to spend on border wall construction.

“All of that money has to be spent by the end of fiscal year 2029. That provides a sense of urgency to the federal government to get this construction actually completed,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council.

“A no-bid contract allows them to get the money flowing more rapidly, and it also allows them to funnel these contracts to politically connected actors,” he added.

(Barnard, who along with his wife donated a total of $1 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign, did not respond to MS NOW’s multiple requests for comment.)

This summer, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Markwayne Mullin waived dozens of environmental protections, including rules protecting Native American burial grounds, to speed up border wall construction. In August, crews began to move heavy machinery and bulldozers into Big Bend National Park.

Texans were furious, protesting for days on end against what they saw as the destruction of pristine desert lands in service of an unnecessary border wall.

In response, CBP paused activity in the park and dispatched Border Patrol Commissioner Rodney Scott to meet with local leaders and law enforcement. CBP told MS NOW the agency had no plans to build a 30–foot wall in the national park, adding that the activity seen in Big Bend “is survey and design work — NOT construction of a physical wall through the park.”

Last week, The New York Times published satellite image evidence that the administration had begun construction on patrol roads and vehicle barriers in the national park.

Border Patrol organizes its operations into nine sectors along the southwest border of the United States. The Big Bend sector is, by far, the largest, accounting for more than a quarter of the U.S.-Mexico border. But its famously dangerous terrain, hot temperatures and mountains thousands of feet high make it extremely difficult for migrants to travel, and total border apprehensions in the area have been plummeting, reaching just 1.3% of the totals of last year.

That’s why none of this makes sense from a law enforcement standpoint, said Michael Ryan, a former law enforcement ranger in Big Bend National Park for 23 years. “The best way to do it is with Border Patrol agents,” he said. “They can learn, they can adapt, they can be moved around. And that’s what brings our numbers down to super low numbers of apprehensions.”

Even Terrell County Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland, a longtime conservative Republican who spent 26 years in the Border Patrol, thinks the administration’s plan makes little sense. He told MS NOW he was frustrated that Abbott and Paxton aren’t listening to local law enforcement. “The reason is they’re all afraid of President Trump. Because they know that if they go against him, then he’ll lash out at them and possibly sink their political career,” he said.

Cleveland has known Scott, the Border Patrol commissioner, since they worked together as agents in Arizona in the 1990s. He met with Scott in August in the aftermath of protests around the construction in Big Bend Park. Cleveland described Scott as a man of faith and a friend caught in a politically complex environment.

“He’s beholden to the president of the United States because he’s politically appointed, and he does have his marching orders to get this accomplished while they still can,” he said. “He’s going to do what he has to do and he told me to do what I have to do.”

He agrees with Ryan’s sentiment that money would be best spent on new agents and technological advancements. Cleveland brought MS NOW to visit watchtowers along the border outfitted with cameras that track human movement for a 5-mile radius. He pointed to the towers and advanced drones as examples of the kind of technology he believes make for a better use of taxpayer money than a 30-foot wall.

Cleveland still identifies as a conservative, but he recently met with Talarico and praised his border plan — which includes investments in technology and personnel — as being nearly identical to what Republicans like him had been asking for. He has had no face time with Paxton, the state’s sitting attorney general.

Talarico did not provide a statement to MS NOW for this story but has spoken out on what he calls the “corrupt” Big Bend border wall, unveiling his own proposal of hiring more Border Patrol agents, recruiting immigration judges and investing in surveillance technology.

Paxton told MS NOW in a statement that he was “focused on solutions that secure the border without sacrificing what makes Texas special.” He added that CBP’s decision to pause work in Big Bend Park “is exactly the kind of commonsense leadership Texans deserve.”

“We’re going to see the pendulum swing again, I’m pretty confident, here, even here in the state of Texas,” Cleveland said.

Local anger, national implications

Even in the tiny communities dotting the border beyond the park, where an influx of outsiders with money to spend might at first seem needed, the workers aren’t welcome. In that 1,000-mile drive in one of the nation’s reddest states, MS NOW saw plenty of billboards denouncing the project, but not a single MAGA hat or sign.

Lara Stage, a libertarian in the former mining town of Terlingua, told MS NOW that she planned to vote a complete Democratic ticket for the first time in her life. She suspects the pause in the park will pick right back up after the midterms, and worries that the local economy will be devastated if the border wall work repels people who come to see stars in the night sky and spend their days in the uninterrupted outdoors.

“I’ve reached out to Gov. Abbott on a multitude of times. I’ve never once had a response,” she said. “I guess he’s got other things to do.” Abbott did not respond to MS NOW’s interview requests, either.

Bill Ivey, a Trump voter, shares her concerns. He owns Terlingua’s Ghost Town, a picturesque tourist draw for visitors looking to shop, eat and listen to live music during their trips to Big Bend. A massive physical barrier and flurry of federal contractors living and working in camps along the border don’t strike him as being good for business, which is why his establishments now sport signs saying construction contractors won’t be served.

“There’s been a dark blanket of anxiety and fear and anger. You can feel the bad energy here because it’s so in our face,” Ivey said.

For the first time in his life, Ivey said, he doesn’t know how he’ll cast his vote come November: “I’m mad, I’m disgusted, and I’m disappointed in everybody in Washington.”

He said he knew one thing for certain: “I’m a Republican, but I’m not a Republican for Paxton.”

Generations, divided

The Alvarados’ 1,500-acre ranch has been in the family for five generations. Alvarado said the Trump administration’s first proposal would have placed the ranch on the Mexican side of the wall, and left their family cemetery, where her grandparents were laid to rest, on the U.S. side.

The second, more recent proposal, she said, would separate the family and their livestock from the Rio Grande, their water source.

She’s well aware that the federal government wins upwards of 90% of its eminent domain battles.

“There’s going to be a huge scar through this land,” she told MS NOW as she tended her ranch. “And I don’t know if I’ll be able to experience it or see it again, or look at it the same way.”

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