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A lawsuit had sought to block border wall construction in the Big Bend National Park by targeting the waivers that sidestep environmental protections.
The United States Supreme Court has allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to build a border wall through a remote section of Big Bend National Park in West Texas.
In its decision on Monday, the court granted the government’s emergency request to lift a lower court’s injunction that had paused construction while the matter was litigated.
The injunction, it said, “impedes the Government from advancing its ‘compelling interests’ in border security and integrity”.
The border wall has long been a signature part of Trump’s platform to restrict immigration into the US.
During his first successful bid for the presidency in 2016, for instance, he rallied supporters with chants of “Build the wall!”
But the push to expand the border barrier through the popular national park has met pushback from conservationists, local officials and some members of Trump’s own Republican Party.
Big Bend National Park includes mountain ranges and desert that serve as a home to endangered species like the Mexican long-nosed bat.
Opponents say the plan to build the wall through the park would disrupt the ecologically and culturally significant landscape.
The Trump administration, however, has depicted the project as an urgent priority for national security and immigration control. It has described the Big Bend area as an artery for irregular border crossings and drug trafficking.
US District Judge Kathleen Cardone blocked the construction in October, noting that while the Big Bend sector makes up more than 25 percent of the US-Mexico border, it accounts for only 0.3 to 2.2 percent of migrant apprehensions.
“Therefore, if the Big Bend Sector is an area of high illegal entry, so is every other sector, and the waiver authority would apply to the entire US-Mexico border,” Cardone wrote.
The Supreme Court, however, said the government was “exceedingly likely to prevail” on its argument that Cardone lacked jurisdiction under the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, which limits the ability of lower courts to rule on border barriers.
Under that law, district courts can only hear claims alleging a violation of the US Constitution. The Supreme Court found that the challengers’ claim did not qualify, writing that “there is no such thing as a ‘constitutional’ major-questions claim”.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to indicate she would have denied the government’s request. She did not explain her reasoning.
The Center for Biological Diversity was among the plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, along with Friends of the Ruidosa Church and a local river guide and landowner.
The lawsuit challenged waivers used by the agency to fast-track border construction and sidestep environmental and conservation laws.
Without those waivers, plaintiffs said that construction would have to comply with laws such as the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act to alter the landscape in “one of the most remote and ecologically and culturally significant landscapes in the United States”.