U.S. Customs and Border Protection has begun installing 30-foot steel border-wall panels on a roughly 47-mile stretch of Hudspeth County in west Texas known as Big Bend 1, the agency told the Associated Press — the first major construction push in a remote Rio Grande corridor where landowners, ranchers, and local coalitions have fought the project for months.

CBP said in a statement to the AP that “border wall panel installation is underway” on Big Bend 1. The first panels went up September 15, 2026, according to CBP, with AP reporting circulating September 18–19. A photo on the agency’s Smart Wall map showed a crane lifting one of the steel panels into place while workers looked on, the AP reported via HuffPost, NBC News, and Fortune.

What CBP is building

Big Bend 1 is one of about five project areas across the roughly 500-mile Big Bend region stretching from Hudspeth County south of El Paso to Lake Amistad, CBP told the AP. Newsweek, citing CBP’s interactive Smart Wall map, said the broader Big Bend program includes primary-wall and vehicle-barrier segments across Hudspeth, Jeff Davis, and Presidio counties, plus cameras, sensors, lighting, and patrol roads.

The work is part of a wider Trump administration plan to line the southern border with barriers, roads, and technology. The AP described an approximately $46 billion barriers-and-tech effort; KVIA and Newsweek cited $46.5 billion from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act for what CBP calls the “Smart Wall.”

CBP told the AP it is averaging about 12 miles of barriers per week along the U.S.–Mexico border — double the pace CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott cited earlier this year — and that it has recently reached about 200 miles of new barriers since the second Trump administration took office.

Not the national-park project

The Hudspeth County build is separate from a border-infrastructure project in Big Bend National Park, where CBP has paused ground-disturbing work for outreach to local leaders and stakeholders, the AP and KVIA reported. CBP has said it does not plan 30-foot bollard walls inside Big Bend National Park, Big Bend Ranch State Park, or the Black Gap Wildlife Management Area — favoring cameras, sensors, and limited low-profile vehicle barriers there instead, according to KVIA and Newsweek accounts of CBP statements.

Landowners, lawsuits, and signing bonuses

Opponents argue the Big Bend Sector has long been among the lowest-traffic corridors on the southwest border and that a continuous wall does not fit the terrain or private landownership pattern. Conserve Big Bend and No Big Bend Wall said in a statement quoted by KVIA that CBP’s own numbers show the fewest apprehensions of any southwest border sector for 53 years, and that “a few steel panels going up doesn’t change” their fight — including a federal lawsuit filed earlier in the week by landowners, ranchers, business owners, and a heritage nonprofit.

Clara Bensen of the No Big Bend Wall Coalition told the Guardian and AP reporters the fight continues. “We will continue to fight for this land no matter what the outcome is. We will continue fighting to the end,” she told the AP. “You talk to people in west Texas and they say even if they put it up, we’ll fight for them to take it down. So this fight is not over.”

The Guardian reported that CBP has been pressing Hudspeth County landowners for permission to erect the 30-foot bollard wall and offering signing bonuses as an incentive to avoid eminent-domain disputes — a classic federal pressure point where property owners face a choice between a buy-in and a condemnation fight.

Remote terrain, private titles, and lawsuit calendars still decide how continuous any “wall” becomes. Panels going up on parcels the government can reach is not the same as a finished corridor — and it is not a free pass past landowners who never signed.

Sources