"Today, under authority of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act and the Real ID Act, the new Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin waived 29 environmental and conservation laws in the Big Bend Sector.
This waiver specifically concerns a remote 60-mile section of the Rio Grande Wild and Scenic River, between Black Gap Wildlife Management Area and Amistad National Recreation Area.
Managed by the National Park Service (NPS), this section includes the rugged and spectacular Lower Canyons, where the “river cuts through isolated, rugged canyons and the Chihuahuan Desert as it flows through some of the most critical wildlife habitat in the country.”
“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct additional physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project area,” Secretary Mullin said in the waiver, which was published in the Federal Register."
