CBP starts the Big Bend wall in Hudspeth County while the park project stays suspended

The $46 billion program covers 30-foot steel bollard walls, vehicle barriers, new patrol roads and detection technology ^[2][16], so any per-mile figure blends work that costs very different amounts. Spread evenly over the 2,000-mile border it comes to about $23 million a mile ^[13][1]. At 12 miles a week, that average implies roughly $276 million of spending every seven days ^[2], and the Hudspeth County stretch implies about $1.08 billion ^[3].

The stock and the flow do not agree. Two hundred miles is about 17 weeks of output at 12 miles a week ^[4], and the pace only doubled this year, from the figure Rodney Scott gave earlier ^[15]. Run the remaining 1,800 miles at the doubled rate and you get about 150 weeks, close to three years, if every one of those miles takes new barrier ^[5].

The order of work matters. Panels are going up on 47 miles in Hudspeth County, roughly 9 percent of the region and one of five project areas ^[6][4], while the separate project inside Big Bend National Park sits suspended ^[7]. Outside the park, much of the Rio Grande frontage belongs to private owners, many of whom have pushed back ^[19], and activists have turned up at county meetings to ask elected officials not to cooperate with contractors CBP has hired ^[18]. The agency's statement does not address land access on the 47 miles ^[3].

Clara Benson, one of the founders of the No Big Bend Wall Coalition, said the group had been receiving reports of trucks moving supplies into the remote area along the Rio Grande and that contractors had been clearing yards to stage supplies ^[9]. "We will continue to fight for this land no matter what the outcome is. We will continue fighting to the end," said Benson, who was in Washington with other coalition members meeting lawmakers ^[10][12].

I think the sequencing is deliberate: the first panels went up on September 15, in the same week the landowners' suit was filed ^[5][7]. Two other readings fit the same facts. The park suspension could widen, in which case Hudspeth is the cheap end of the region and the 12-mile average falls when crews reach frontage whose owners will not sign. Or the suit reaches Big Bend 1, and panels already standing become the government's argument for finishing the line. Benson said: "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." ^[11]