The administration is asking the Supreme Court to step in before the case is even argued — because every day the injunction stands, the government says, costs nearly half a million dollars and leaves the least-patrolled stretch of the southern border without a wall.
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to lift a federal judge's order blocking construction of a border wall across Texas's Big Bend region, filing an emergency application that puts the fate of more than 300 miles of planned 30-foot bollard wall in front of Justice Samuel Alito, Reuters and Bloomberg Law reported.
U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone issued a preliminary injunction on October 2 in Friends of the Ruidosa Church v. Mullin, halting work in the Big Bend Sector — a Border Patrol region covering more than 500 miles of the Rio Grande and 77 Texas counties. The planned wall would run from Fort Quitman to Closed Canyon. A 47-mile section entered construction in September, five contracts have been awarded, and the plaintiffs put the project's cost at $1.7 billion, part of a $46 billion border barrier program.
The administration built its ability to move fast on waivers issued between February and July 2026 — one signed by then-Secretary Kristi Noem and two by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin — designating the area one of "high illegal entry" under Section 102 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which allows the department to waive environmental and other laws to build barriers.
Cardone ruled the challengers are likely to succeed under the major questions doctrine, the principle that agencies cannot claim sweeping power without clear authorization from Congress. She pointed to the sector's own numbers: Big Bend records the lowest apprehensions of any sector on the southern border — between 0.3 and 2.2 percent of border-wide totals — with 3,096 apprehensions in fiscal 2025, down from 11,823 in fiscal 2023.
The government answers that the longer view tells a different story: more than 89,000 apprehensions in the sector across fiscal 2021 through 2025. In the emergency application, Solicitor General John Sauer argued the injunction "significantly frustrates the government's ability to stop the flow of illegal aliens and drugs across the southern border," warned that leaving Big Bend unwalled while barriers rise elsewhere would make it "a dangerous magnet for cartels," and said halting the work costs Customs and Border Protection at least $462,800 for every day of delay.
Leaving Big Bend unwalled would be "a dangerous magnet for cartels."
Cardone denied the government's request for a stay of her own order shortly before Wednesday's filing, leaving the Supreme Court as the only route: Section 102 channels judicial review of the waivers to direct Supreme Court review rather than the Fifth Circuit. The plaintiffs — the Center for Biological Diversity, the Friends of the Ruidosa Church, which is fighting to protect the historic adobe Sacred Heart church, and river guide Danny William Miller Jr. — had not issued a statement on the emergency application as of publication.
The application now sits with Justice Alito, who can act on it alone or refer it to the full court — and with it, whether construction crews in the Big Bend are back at work while the case is fought out below.