- Coming up on "Austin InSight", a discussion on the plan to build a border wall through Texas' greatest natural treasure, Big Bend.

We'll hear from a border sheriff, a rancher, an archeologist, and more.

"Austin InSight" starts now.

- [Announcer] Support for "Austin InSight" comes from Sally & James Gavin, and also from Daniel L. Skret.

(vibrant music) (vibrant music continues) - Hi there and thanks for joining us.

I'm Laura Laughead.

It's known as Texas' gift to the nation, and now it could be at risk.

Big Bend National Park has been one of the most cherished parts of Texas for more than 80 years, offering more than 800,000 acres of extraordinary biodiversity, wildlife, and desert ecosystems.

That's larger than the state of Rhode Island.

Its natural beauty attracts more than half a million visitors every year, and there's no better place that showcases how the stars at night are big and bright.

However, in February, officials with the Trump administration waived more than two dozen environmental laws to clear the way for a 150 mile long border barrier through West Texas, including Big Bend National Park and the adjacent state park.

It's part of a broader $46.5 billion project under the Trump administration for a wall system at the U.S.

Mexico border.

U.S.

Customs and Border Protection says it's part of an effort to reduce undocumented border crossings and control drug and human trafficking.

But some wonder how effective or necessary this would be in the Big Bend area and what the cost would be not just economically, but ecologically.

The 2019 documentary "The River And The Wall" directed by local filmmaker Ben Masters, looked into the wall proposal during President Trump's first term.

The issues highlighted in the documentary still loom today.

- [Narrator] Less than 3% of Texas is open to the public.

That's it.

And there is no way that you could put a border wall even close to the river in a lot of this country.

It'd have to be built inland, bulldozing and slicing apart the only big chunk of public land that we have left in Texas, essentially blocking us from the Rio Grande.

- [Laura] The proposal has sparked bipartisan opposition, including a protest at the Texas Capitol.

In April, two West Texas groups and a river guide sued the Trump administration over the plans.

- [O'Rourke] Of the 2,000 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, I believe a little over 600 miles have fences, walls, physical barriers.

(solemn music) And that began after the 2006 Secure Fencing Act, which Republicans and Democrats, including Senators Obama and Clinton at the time voted for, which essentially allowed the Bush administration and then succeeding administrations to put up these physical barriers and to effectively waive all environmental and local stakeholder safeguards.

- One of the things that I've been frustrated with when it comes to border security is we try to have a one-size-fits-all solution.

You can't because every mile is different.

You have the Rio Grande, you have canyons, the Chihuahuan Desert.

You already have a physical barrier, it's called mountains.

Building a wall from sea to shining sea is the most expensive and least effective way to do border security.

- Last week, Customs and Border Patrol Commissioner Rodney Scott told the "Washington Examiner" that plans to build parts of the border wall within Big Bend National Park had been canceled after the pushback from residents.

Instead, according to the "Examiner" and "The Texas Tribune," federal officials will pave roads along the border and make use of drones and other digital surveillance.

We reached out to CBP regarding what prompted the decision and the future plans for the wall that would impact the adjoining state park or private property and we received the following statement, saying in part quote, "In locations where minimal barrier may be adjacent to parks, we are actively coordinating with park officials to ensure the alignment does not impede recreational access or activities."

For a better understanding of what's happening in the Big Bend region, we're first joined by Terrell County Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland.

He's a Border patrol veteran, an Air Force veteran, and a native of the Big Bend area.

Sheriff Cleveland, thanks so much for joining us.

- Hey Laura, great to be on with you.

- So Sheriff, last week, I'm sure you saw CBP announced that the proposed border wall is off the table inside Big Bend National Park.

It came as a surprise to some, but what's your reaction to that?

Why do you think federal officials backed away from those plans?

- Well, Laura, I can tell you, of my 26 years with US Border Patrol, I spent the last 11 years here in Sanderson where I'm sheriff now in Terrell County.

And this is actually my hometown where I grew up and was raised.

But I can tell you during those 11 years, look, we never had any plans for any type of physical structure along the Big Bend.

Not just the Big Bend National Park, but the Big Bend border patrol sector out here.

And again, it's a quarter, it's 517 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border.

So again, technology and manpower is the way we had planned to enforce border security out in this area.

- And I want to talk more about your alternative solutions in a second, but first I want to address that this decision obviously followed strong bipartisan opposition, including yourself as a Republican.

This level of unity is rare in today's political landscape.

Why do you think both sides of the aisle have come out against the border wall?

- And you're right, it is truly rare.

And we had people from both sides.

And when we talk about border security and immigration, we know that those are very complex issues and there's a lot of infighting going on with those.

But to see the people coming together, not just from the area but outside the area from both sides of the aisle was tremendous.

And I think the biggest part is because the natural resource that Big Bend National Park is, what it represents for us out here in Texas, and you know, just the nature itself.

We have out here, I got what I like to call a god-made barrier with the Rio Grande River, the cliffs that are part of the border out here.

So again, to go out and want to build a barrier on top of a barrier that's already there just doesn't make sense.

And I know you mentioned about the technology that we'll dive more into, but look, we have technology, we've been using the U.S.

Border Patrol that does a tremendous job and that we could utilize in better ways to protect our portion of the U.S.-Mexico border.

- You're right, the case for a wall in this particular area gets harder when you actually look at CPB numbers.

Border Patrol's Big Bend sector accounts for just 1.3% of all apprehensions along the entire U.S.-Mexico border.

So now, if not a wall, then what does effective border security look like to you in this region?

- And Laura, that's a great point that you bring up as far as the amount of activity out here.

We do have activity, but the reason we don't have activity like you see in El Paso to Juarez or Eagle Pass to Piedras Negras is because we don't have the infrastructure south of us.

There's only one port of entry, which is Presidio to Ojinaga and it's just difficult for people to get to this portion of the border and if they do cross out here, to get 'em out of the area without being detected or stopped by law enforcement.

But some of that technology that is beneficial to us that we have deployed out here, there's what's called autonomous surveillance towers and it's a tower that's about 20 foot tall that has radar on it coupled with a camera and it sits there and it's looking for people.

It won't detect animals, it won't detect vehicles, it's programmed specifically to detect the way people walk.

So that's one piece of technology that works.

But what's even better and one that I personally like to tell is the Predator B drone that CBP has.

It's what we used in Iraq and Afghanistan and it also has mounted radars and cameras on it that flies in the air.

It's unmanned, it's actually piloted out of San Angelo, Texas.

But its capabilities to detect people that have crossed the border, it is just tremendous.

It can't be beat and it's something that we need more of.

And out here in many of my social media posts, I highlight that because it often detects people that we had no idea were in the desert and it allows us to go in there and provides us the coordinates where they're at and to make those successful apprehensions.

- It is certainly such a multi-faceted problem and therefore a multi-faceted solution.

And I know this conversation is long from over.

Thank you so much to Terrell County Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland for your expertise.

- Thank you for having me, Laura.

God bless you.

- To help us further understand the local impact of the Big Bend border wall proposal, we also wanted to bring in our panel.

We first have Christina Hernandez with the Big Bend Conservation Alliance.

She is a Round Rock resident from Presidio whose family has lived in West Texas for over 1,000 years.

That's amazing.

We also have Yolanda Alvarado with the group No Big Bend Wall.

She's a fifth generation cattle rancher whose family has been on their property in the Big Bend area since 1919.

And finally, we have Dr.

Steve Black, who's been an archeologist for more than 50 years.

He's a research professor at Texas State University with extensive experience in the region's archeology.

I know this has been a busy and a tricky time for all of you, so thank you so much for being with us today.

- Thank you for having us.

- Thank you.

- So let's start out.

We posed the same question at the start of the show, but after this announcement from CBP, what do you think is motivating this latest reaction?

Let's start with you.

- I think it's a way to get the momentum to die down against the border wall, but I also think it leaves out the voices of individuals who own private property along the Rio Grande.

- Hmm.

And Yolanda, that's like your family.

You guys have property along the Rio Grande.

- Right.

Even if they say there's no wall in Big Bend National Park, it doesn't mean that we're leaving out other infrastructure that they're putting in.

And also, we still have a wall up north and whatever happens up north is gonna trickle down to the south.

- Indeed.

And what about you, Dr.

Steve?

- Well, the area that I know the best is the Lower Pecos Canyonlands at the eastern end of the wall.

And that part is still scheduled to go through as far as I understand it.

- And you two specifically, you are like boots on the ground living in Big Bend.

What are you hearing, if anything, on what's to happen next?

- Right now they're scheduling a man camp to be put in in Culberson County and they're already hauling water to the border and heavy machinery and already working on the wall as we speak.

So right now we're expecting to see construction continue.

Nothing has changed.

- If this wall goes up, what is at risk of being lost?

Let's start with you, Dr.

Steve.

- Well, the whole region has been home to humans for at least 500 generations of people going back at least 13,000 years and probably several thousand years earlier than that.

And there's a tremendous record of people's lives that is what we call archeological sites and historic sites and a lot of that record stands to be erased or severely impacted by the proposed wall.

- There is so much history in this land, it's kind of hard to wrap your brain around going back 14,000 years or so.

And I know your family, how rare and special it is that you can trace your family's ancestry in this area for 1,000 years.

So Dr.

Steve, to elaborate a bit further, can you talk about the archeological significance of some of these sites where the wall would be going up and what we would truly lose if they were to go up?

- One good example is the region's extremely fantastic rock art or painted pictographs on the cave and rock shelter walls.

And these date back at least 6,000 years ago and they were painted on and off for 5,000 years.

And they're often regarded as some of the most ancient books that we have that tell us about the prehistory.

It's not a book per se, but they're narrative scenes that tell, convey sacred stories.

And many of these that are going to be damaged by the wall or impacted by the wall.

About 80 of them are going to be on the wrong side of the wall, the south of the wall and therefore they're not going to be accessible to researchers and others of them lie directly along the wall line.

- So even if they're not destroyed or lost to history totally, we may lose access to the continuation of the study of them.

And to note, this area is also the oldest continuously cultivated land in the U.S.

So how would the border wall impact local farming?

We're not just talking about losing access again to the Rio Grande for irrigation, but also potentially losing access to some of the most historically significant farmland in the country.

Can you two talk about that?

- I think when I think about Presidio, specifically where my family is from and along going up towards Redford, that land has been in families for generations and so that is also a form of generational wealth and people are still using that land to provide for their families.

- And how might that impact, I know you're into ranching, but how might that impact families like yourself?

- Well we're full-time ranchers and so this would completely disrupt the entire operation, not to mention the environmental costs that would weigh on us including flooding, losing grazing land and everything else.

So we potentially might lose our entire business.

And we're not the only people who are experiencing this.

There are many ranchers and farmers along the border whose lives are at risk because of this wall.

- Wow.

So it's livelihoods at stake, the economy at stake.

But also let's talk more about wildlife.

I'm glad you brought this up.

How would a border wall impact wildlife migration and habitat in the region?

Because animals, they don't know which side of the wall they're on, they're gonna smell water and they might get confused.

- Well, we're in the desert and right now we have black bear who've been coming back, Mexican black bear coming back from Mexico into the greater Big Bend area.

And so they would be losing their migration patterns.

We're also in the desert, so a loss of water means that a lot of the animals who are in the area would be able to smell the water and die of thirst along a border wall infrastructure.

- And then this might also affect birds, correct?

- [Christina] Yeah, they can fly over the wall, but what we're talking about is loss of habitat.

And so habitat that they rely on in those migration patterns that would no longer be available.

Also nesting along the way, that habitat would be lost and birds would not be able to find areas of where they're normally having their young and also food in the area as well.

- This also could impact hunting, right, for the whole state of Texas.

That's something that I had not heard before.

Can maybe, Yolanda, can you elaborate on that?

- Well, again, with the migratory patterns of deer, aoudad, and as Christina mentioned, we are a desert.

So when our natural reservoirs dry up, which would take approximately four months in my area alone, we are a desert and we have droughts.

And once those dry up and these animals are not able to source from the other side of the river, they will migrate out of the area which could possibly end hunting in that area as well.

So they would most likely migrate up north.

- And you bring up the discussion of water and you know the old saying, "In the West, whiskey is for drinking and water is for fighting over," a lot of water, manpower, and just plain power will be required to build this wall.

Some counties in the area are already at a disaster water level now.

So what concerns do each of y'all have about the strain that construction could place on the local water and infrastructure resources?

- In that area, water is life and so we already have a very low water table, including when we're planting for green spaces, we're looking for plants that we know will do well in the desert and can acclimate to a low water table.

And so when you bring in this added population, we don't have an infrastructure, we don't have water wells, we don't have water capacity to be able to sustain this increase in population.

And that's very concerning because what happens to local residents?

- Indeed and some of these towns, they don't even have a grocery store and now they're gonna be expected to host an influx of people, people that you don't know, and these are very small, isolated towns so if you don't even have a grocery store to support your existing residents, how are you gonna support an influx of hundreds of new people?

- Not to mention they're also already in Jeff Davis County pumping out hundreds of thousands of gallons of water from wells and hauling it just for the build alone to be used for cement mixing or also dust settling while they take their heavy machinery down there.

So not only are we're gonna have more people occupying the land, but also using it for construction.

And that's definitely gonna bring down our water table.

- And Dr.

Steve, the water in this area has been crucial for those 14,000 years we talked about for people on both sides.

Can you talk about the historical significance that this source of water has played in this area?

- Well, people are tethered to water.

And so up and down the corridor, people have spent most of their time near bodies of water, near the river, near the canyons, near the springs that are in the canyons.

And these are the areas that are gonna be impacted by the construction of this road and it's gonna wreck tremendous damage to what is a fantastic archeological record going back, as you said, 14,000 years.

And so much of it is going to be threatened by this construction project, however they actually do it.

- And another layer to this is we have heard reports of some landowners in this area feeling pressured or confused for that matter into signing legal documents to grant entry to their property or let construction begin before the government can take possession through eminent domain.

In your experience, do you feel like landowners are being taken advantage of in some cases?

- Oh, 100%.

And I've spoke to my neighbors, even my family alone have been pressured.

They're issuing ROECs, which is a right of entry for construction before a survey can be done.

And threatening landowners, they have five days to sign or they will pretty much take it is basically the summary of these contracts.

And it's leaving many people confused.

But one thing I would like to mention is most of these contracts are riddled with mistakes since they're only using a county issued map from the appraisal district.

So many of the contracts do not have the correct name owners or parcel ID numbers.

And the U.S.

Army Corps of Engineers are pressuring landowners to sign.

- And something unique on your land, it's not just this ranching operation that's been in your family for more than 100 years, there's also a cemetery on your property that could be affected.

- Yeah.

- Can you talk about that?

- So right now we got the U.S.

Army Corps of Engineers issued a map of where the wall will be and it is directly on the road a half a mile away from the river, leaving our family home on one side and then our family cemetery and our water well on the other side.

And this is why I'm saying it would completely disrupt our operation.

And it's not just us, but it's our neighbors as well and many people along the border.

We know landowners who will have the wall seven steps from their back porch.

And these people are being pressured in and the issue with the ROECs is once you sign that contract, they can move in tomorrow and start construction.

And this is how they are fast tracking this process and taking advantage of landowners.

- You are all just normal people living your lives.

None of you chose to be activists so to speak.

Can you talk about the psychological emotional toll of this now national fight has been like for each of you?

- Yeah, I've stated before, it's hard for us to sleep and eat.

We have just an overhead of anxiety because we don't know what's gonna happen and we don't know what's coming.

And it's especially difficult since DHS and CPB have not been transparent about any plans.

The only thing we had was the CPB map on their website and they erased that as well.

So we don't know what's looming over our heads.

We have no way of figuring it out as well.

And like you said, there hasn't been any public comment on what is happening.

So psychologically what it's doing to our surrounding communities is it's just leaving us on edge.

I believe the Big Bend sector has $56.5 million in revenue and tourism alone.

So it's not just ranchers or landowners but there's businesses that will suffer because of this.

People are not gonna go river rafting with concertina wire.

So we have a lot more to lose in the region and it spans far beyond just the border.

- Indeed it does.

And not much of Texas is public land like this so to lose this would be absolutely devastating, even just a fraction losing some of this.

And you know, I want each of you explain what do you hope Texans or maybe anyone can understand about what is happening right now in Big Bend?

I want each of you to answer, but let's start with you, Dr.

Steve.

- Well, one of the biggest challenges is so little is known about what they're going to do.

They produce these generic statements and maps without telling any of us what they're actually going to do.

So understanding the impact, the short term and long term impact of it is hard for us to gauge.

And it's really not being able to carry out research in the area would be devastating for my field as well.

And there's so much of the history that is yet to be told that lies buried in the ground and it's going to be by all accounts going to be impacted severely by what's been planned.

- And Yolanda and Christina.

- Well for us it's not just fighting for our land, it's fighting for our livelihoods.

And what we're also fighting for is just our right to live.

Right now, the government put on the state of emergency on a border where we go to sleep peacefully at night.

There's no emergency there for us.

The only emergency is this wall coming in and disrupting our entire lives.

And so right now it's just really brought to light just how people don't understand what happens in that region and how easily the federal government can just come in, put this state of emergency and take land.

And it really comes to show if they're gonna do this here, who's to say they're not gonna do a state of emergency here in Austin to take over land and steal people's livelihoods?

- Nothing happens in a vacuum.

And then finally, Christina.

- I think I'd want people to imagine living in fear in their own homes every day, waiting for somebody to come and knock on your door and tell you that you can't be there anymore.

To tell your loved ones, your grandmother, your aunts that they need to leave because that land doesn't belong to them anymore.

And to live in this perpetual limbo because nobody will give you information on what's gonna happen next.

I think that is something that all of us want to impart on people in central Texas and beyond, that this is something that is impacting us every single day, every minute of our lives, and to put themselves in our shoes.

What would they do if their homes and their families were at stake?

- And it can be hard in the news cycle to hear, oh, you hear of something, and even though Big Bend is part of Texas, it's easy to disassociate, oh, it's far away.

But this is something that should impact every Texan.

And to hear your stories is so convicting, especially with the roots that you've had for generations, with the amount of study and the time you spent down there.

It's truly a complex issue that affects every Texan and I think should affect every American and it is far from over.

Christina Hernandez, Yolanda Alvarado, and Dr.

Steve Black, thank you so much for sharing your insights on Big Bend with us.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

(vibrant music) - And that's our show.

You can catch up on all our stories on the Austin PBS YouTube channel and you can always find full episodes of "Austin InSight" for free in the PBS app.

Thanks so much for watching.

We'll see you next time.

(vibrant music continues) (vibrant music continues) - [Announcer] Support for "Austin InSight" comes from Sally & James Gavin and also from Daniel L. Skret.

(bright chime)