A federal judge denied a small Texas border town's bid to block border wall construction through its levee system, handing the Trump administration a legal victory in its $46 billion push to seal the southern border.
Judge Reggie B. Walton ruled late Sunday that Presidio's development district failed to show it was likely to win its case, and he allowed the Department of Homeland Security to move forward with plans to build through the town's decades-old flood-control levees along the Rio Grande. The ruling clears the way for Customs and Border Protection to replace the earthen slope of the existing levee with a concrete wall topped by 30-foot steel bollard panels, a project the town of roughly 3,200 people argued could leave residents exposed to devastating flash floods.
Presidio's development district sued DHS earlier this year, contending the government was bypassing a federal law that requires Army Corps of Engineers permission before building on or near levees. The district also argued that CBP refused to share key construction details, citing national security. But Walton found that Congress gave the DHS Secretary broad authority to waive regulations, and did not intend to cap that power.
The judge's language made clear he took the flooding risk seriously. But he concluded the legal framework favored DHS. In his ruling, Walton wrote:
"For the foregoing reasons, despite the understandable concerns expressed by the plaintiff regarding the harms it and the plaintiff's residents might sustain by the potential construction of the Smart Wall, the Court is compelled to deny the plaintiff's motion for a stay."
That phrase, "compelled to deny", signals Walton saw the statute as clear enough to override the town's objections, however legitimate those objections might be on practical grounds. He ruled it was evident that Congress did not intend to limit the DHS Secretary's waiver authority, a finding that strengthens the administration's hand in future legal challenges along other stretches of the border.
The administration has already waived numerous regulations designed to protect the environment, wildlife, and archaeological and American Indian sites, a sweeping use of executive power that has drawn separate lawsuits in Texas from an unnamed environmental group and a church preservation group. The status of that litigation remains unclear.
The berms and levees shielding Presidio from the Rio Grande and its tributaries were built in the 1970s and 1980s. For a town of 3,200 people sitting in the arid Big Bend region, those earthen barriers are not an abstraction. Flash flooding along the Rio Grande can be sudden and severe, and the development district argued that swapping an earthen slope for a concrete wall with steel bollards on top could compromise the system's ability to absorb and redirect floodwaters.
The district issued a statement Monday expressing its frustration. "We are very disappointed that the court will allow this potentially disastrous construction to continue, but we remain committed to protecting the Big Bend area and those who rely on the threatened levees," the statement read.
CBP, for its part, has refused to disclose the full scope of its construction plans for the Presidio segment, telling the court the details cannot be shared due to national security. The government also argued there is no final plan for where the border wall will go or how it will be built, a position that made it harder for the plaintiff to demonstrate imminent, concrete harm, even as it raised its own questions about transparency.
The Presidio case is one piece of the administration's broader effort to build a continuous wall from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Senior administration officials have said a first layer of wall structure will be completed by next year, and the stated goal is stark: getting the number of people crossing the border every day to zero.
That ambition has already produced results elsewhere. The administration has recorded 13 straight months of zero border releases, a streak not seen in decades, a fact that undercuts critics who dismiss the wall as symbolic rather than functional.
The ruling also fits a pattern of courts siding with the administration on immigration enforcement. The Supreme Court recently backed the administration on green card enforcement in a 6-3 decision, and the Second Circuit handed Trump another legal win by overturning the release of an anti-Israel activist. Taken together, the judiciary has repeatedly affirmed that the executive branch holds substantial authority over immigration and border security, authority that opponents have struggled to check through the courts.
Judge Walton's finding on the scope of the DHS Secretary's waiver authority may prove to be the most consequential element of the ruling. By affirming that Congress did not intend to limit that power, Walton gave the administration a precedent it can cite in the separate Texas lawsuit and in any future challenges along the border. AP News reported that the judge found the plaintiff unlikely to succeed on the merits, a threshold that, if upheld, could discourage similar injunctions from other communities along the wall's path.
Still, open questions remain. The Army Corps of Engineers has not publicly weighed in on whether its permission was required or sought. The specific regulations waived by the DHS Secretary have not been itemized in public reporting. And the government's own admission that no final construction plan exists raises a practical question: how do you assess flood risk from a project whose details are classified?
For Presidio's residents, those are not academic puzzles. They are the difference between a levee that holds and one that does not. The development district has pledged to keep fighting, but Walton's ruling narrows the legal ground beneath them.
Meanwhile, the administration's broader border agenda continues to gain momentum. DHS has identified hundreds of thousands of noncitizens on voter rolls as part of a wider enforcement push, and Democratic leaders face growing pressure from within their own ranks over the party's posture on border security.
The Breitbart report on the ruling characterized it as a clear legal victory for the Trump administration, reinforcing the broader theme: courts have consistently found that Congress gave the executive branch the tools to secure the border, and opponents have yet to find a judge willing to take those tools away.
Securing the border was never going to be painless or popular with everyone. But when a federal judge says the law compels him to let the government build, the argument stops being about politics and starts being about whether Washington will finally finish what it started.