Big Bend residents form bipartisan campaign against border wall

Instagram post by local resident sparked grassroots movement

Instagram post ignites bipartisan Big Bend border wall resistance

Molly Walker, a 41-year-old Big Bend native, posted an Instagram story last February showing herself holding a protest sign fashioned from a pizza box with the words “NO WALL” scrawled beneath it. The post included a call to action asking anyone who wanted to organize to send her a direct message.

“The five people who responded to that photo,” Walker said, “with their various skill sets, I thought, ‘Wait … we can actually do something. Let’s try to do something!’”

Those respondents included Clara Bensen, who became an organizer with the campaign now called No Big Bend Wall, or NBBW. Bensen said the group has cycled through stages of emotional response to the proposed construction. “First it was shock,” she said. “Then anger. Now I think we’ve internalized the reality of a long-term fight.”

Walker said she has paused her career to dedicate herself to the campaign full time. “I’ve walked away from all of my sources of income,” she said. She added that she initially struggled with the sense of responsibility that followed her post’s unexpected reach.

The wall plans stem from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed by Congress last year, which gave the Department of Homeland Security $46.5bn to expand the border wall along the Rio Grande. As MSI previously reported, the administration has already awarded over $3.1 billion in contracts for the Big Bend region.

In the Big Bend region — including the national park, where experts say illegal crossings are rare — residents and environmental advocates argue the wall would cause irreparable damage. Organizers say it would harm wildlife, limit paddlers’ and fishers’ access to the Rio Grande, and likely strip the area of its international dark sky designation, a mainstay of local tourism.

“We live in a desert and they’re building a wall that cuts us off from our river. It makes no sense,” Bensen said.

Media attention surrounding the resistance has focused on the broad political coalition it has attracted. “I’ve never worked with so many conservatives,” Bensen said. Border agents, sheriffs, and progressive and conservative politicians have joined the effort, drawing up lawsuits, mobilizing landowners, and traveling to Washington to deliver a petition whose organizers said has exceeded 150,000 signatures to Texas Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz.

Yolanda Alvarado, whose family owns two ranches in the region, serves as the landowner coordinator for NBBW. She said she is in regular contact with other landowners, explaining their legal rights and presenting options through the legal defense fund operated by Conserve Big Bend, the umbrella nonprofit that includes NBBW. The wall would cut one of her family’s ranches in two, she said, leaving their well and ancestral cemetery on the inaccessible side.

“A lot of people say, ‘This is the federal government and they’ll do what they want,’ and I’m like, ‘That’s not how this works,’” Alvarado said. “We have a brilliant team. There’s not going to be a wall.”

David Keller, an archaeologist and co-owner of a local bar who serves on NBBW’s board, described the group’s current posture. “We’re fighting like hell,” he said. “That’s for damn sure.”

The fight has been complicated, however, by cooperation from some community members. In April, a local pecan farmer sought to sell well water to a 500-person man camp for wall construction workers. In May, a landowner leased space in his RV park to wall contractors. Barnard Construction, which received a $960m wall contract in March, has been buying building materials from the Moody Bennett Ranch — partly owned by Yeti co-founder Ryan Seiders — and using the land for equipment, according to a report by Marfa Public Radio. Seiders did not respond to requests for comment, according to The Guardian, and a Yeti spokesperson said the company has no involvement in or ownership of Moody Bennett Ranch.

“The only reason there’s any work getting done is those people,” Alvarado said. “And they stand to make a lot of money.”

Anna Claire Beasley, another local involved with NBBW, said she has deep family ties in the region. “I have family from Presidio that goes way back,” Beasley said. “As a little girl we’d travel here and I dreamed of living here.” She said she would not abandon the fight. “It took effort, time and dedication to make the move and I didn’t do all that for nothing. I’m not going to roll over.”

Walker said she believes the national conversation about the border is disconnected from local reality. “The American understanding is built off worst-case scenarios and manufactured fear rhetoric,” she said. “It completely disregards that there are American lives and thriving communities rooted to the border.”

Keller, who said he lost his job, both parents, and a serious relationship in recent years, said Big Bend is all he has left. “I’ve pinned my entire life on this place,” he said. “So what does it mean to lose it? Some might say, ‘Well, you’re not losing it. They’re just building a wall through it.’ But to me, it’s a total loss. I don’t know if I could stay.”