LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to keep building a wall along the southern border in Texas, including within a national park. As Carlos Morales reports, the decision comes despite an ongoing legal battle in a lower court over the project's legality.
CARLOS MORALES, BYLINE: The Supreme Court's order reverses a decision from a federal judge in El Paso that had halted the construction of 30-foot-tall steel barriers and patrol roads through desert shrubland and sweeping canyons carved by the Rio Grande.
LAIKEN JORDAHL: This decision greenlights the contractors. It allows the dynamiting of national park canyon walls, the bulldozing of pristine desert.
MORALES: Laiken Jordahl is with the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that brought forward a lawsuit, along with a landowner who fears losing his property through eminent-domain proceedings. In the justices' five-page ruling, the court wrote that federal law allows the Trump administration to waive environmental protections. And as a result, there's a, quote, "clear preference for expeditious border construction" over the harms of the plaintiffs.
STEVE VLADECK: The ruling, I think, is unfortunately all too typical.
MORALES: Steve Vladeck is a law professor at Georgetown University and studies the Supreme Court.
VLADECK: The court has taken the position over the last 21 months that the executive branch suffers irreparable harm anytime a lower court stops it from doing something it wants to do, whether or not the thing it wants to do is illegal.
MORALES: In a statement to NPR, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott said the agency will now be moving forward with critical border-security construction. Scott said the agency has met with local residents and has readjusted their plans for Big Bend National Park to preserve its unique landscape. The Trump administration has maintained barriers are needed in the Big Bend region to stop illegal crossings. Hillary Pierce is with the group Conserve Big Bend.
HILLARY PIERCE: The truth is, we do not have an immigration emergency in the Big Bend sector.
MORALES: The Big Bend sector is a nearly 500-mile stretch patrolled by CBP. Historically, it sees the fewest numbers of encounters along the Texas border, according to CBP data. The lawsuit at the center of the Supreme Court's intervention still needs to be ruled on in full. Meanwhile, landowners have lodged a separate lawsuit to stop the federal government from taking their properties.
For NPR News, I'm Carlos Morales in Marfa, Texas.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.