Wire reporting: (AP, via Arab News)

The Justice Department has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to lift a district-court injunction that pauses barrier and related construction in Texas' Big Bend Sector, CBS News reported, as Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott separately defended the project in an Associated Press interview carried by KSAT^1,2.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote that the injunction significantly frustrates the government's ability to stop illegal crossings and drug smuggling, and that officials chose the Big Bend project areas because of high rates of illegal-alien crossings and drug smuggling there in recent years, CBS News said¹.

The Center for Biological Diversity, which is challenging the work, said through senior attorney Zeynep Graves that it would fight construction through Big Bend National Park and that only Congress can authorize walling off the entire U.S.-Mexico border, according to CBS News¹.

Scott told the AP, as carried by KSAT, that if Big Bend were left without a wall or other infrastructure while other stretches were fortified, he was convinced it would be overrun². He said the agency's goal of knowing who and what is coming into the United States is non-negotiable².

CBS News said CBP has stated that proposed steel wall would not cut through Big Bend National Park, but that patrol roads, detection technology and about 17 miles of vehicle barriers would, and that Scott earlier paused work inside the park after bulldozers were seen there¹. In the AP interview, Scott said park plans would not include tall steel walls and that the agency was talking with locals about a solution, while lawsuits limited what he could specify².

KSAT's AP report said Republicans in Congress funded a plan last summer to mix 30-foot steel walls, vehicle barriers, roads and surveillance along the roughly 2,000-mile border with Mexico, that the administration says it is building about 12 miles a week, and that Scott said the primary wall would be done by the end of December 2027².

A judge this month paused construction in the region, citing a likelihood of serious, irreparable harm to plaintiffs, the AP account said². Whether the Supreme Court will stay that injunction, and what infrastructure if any will be built inside the national park, remain unresolved^1,2.