BREWSTER COUNTY (AP) – Joe Carrasco is among 400 Texas landowners in the Big Bend region facing land seizure by the Trump administration for border security infrastructure. He and others have received letters from U.S. Customs and Border Protection asking them to allow contractors onto land to survey it or risk losing it through eminent domain. Despite mixed signals about building border barriers, the government has awarded contracts and waived environmental laws to expedite the process. Carrasco and others fear losing their land and way of life in an area that sees minimal migrant traffic. Some residents are uniting to fight the government’s plans, fearing the loss of their land and heritage.
As a teenager, Joe Carrasco would help his father pick onions and cotton on the family’s 40-acre ranch on the banks of the Rio Grande. On the weekends, he would mount his horse and wade across the river into Mexico, where he would race his horse and drink beers.
Today, Carrasco is 71, retired after 26 years working in the oil fields, sitting under a carport with a Michelob Ultra beer and staring at the mountains while his cows graze on his alfalfa farm.
“I like what I see,” he said.
But he doesn’t like what he sees coming.
Carrasco is one of an estimated 400 landowners in the Big Bend region whose land has been targeted by the Trump administration. Like other property owners along the Rio Grande, Carrasco received a letter from U.S. Customs and Border Protection earlier this year asking him to let contractors on his land to survey it or risk losing it through eminent domain.
Over the past year, the Trump administration has sent mixed signals about its plans to erect border barriers in this rugged, mountainous region, saying that it prefers other infrastructure such cameras, sensors and vehicle barriers inside Big Bend National Park and the neighboring Big Bend Ranch State Park.
Even though immigration officials have claimed they’re not building a wall in the parks, the federal government has awarded billions of dollars worth of contracts to companies that have previously built border walls for work within the parks.
It has also waived environmental laws in the state and national park to speed up the process. And contractors are seeking permits to access enough water to house hundreds of workers in the area who will be tasked with building some form of border security infrastructure.
But what is clear is that the federal government has threatened to seize land along broad swaths of the Rio Grande away from the parks. And that’s causing alarm up and down the river.
“I don’t want a wall, I want to see this view,” Carrasco said, pointing at the mountains on the Mexican side of the river.
One-quarter of the border, 1% of migrant traffic
Big Bend is the largest Border Patrol sector, covering 77 Texas counties and 517 miles of the 1,954-mile-long U.S.-Mexico border.
It is also the least busy.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency recorded 3,096 migrant encounters in the sector in fiscal year 2025, or 1.3% of the 237,538 apprehensions recorded across the entire U.S.-Mexico border. That is a 74% drop compared to the two previous fiscal years.
And in the first seven months of the current fiscal year, the sector has logged 1,236 encounters, a 42.5% drop compared to the first seven months of the previous year.
Still, the Trump administration has described the region as “an area of high illegal entry where illegal aliens regularly attempt to enter the United States and smuggle illicit drugs.” On Wednesday, a U.S. House of Representatives committee killed a proposal by U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, to bar the Trump administration from erecting border barriers in Big Bend National Park.
The region is surrounded by rugged canyons and residents live mostly in isolation among desert plants and wildlife, including endangered species. Some residents can trace their family history to the founding of Redford in the 1870s. Others moved to the area more recently after experiencing its quietness and breathtaking views of the mountains. Some have started businesses catering to tourists such as renting river canoeing equipment or serving as river guides. Both old-timers and newcomers fear they would lose their way of life if the federal government seized their land for a border wall.
The threat of losing their land has galvanized some landowners, who say they’re appalled that the government would forcefully seize land in a state that prides itself on defending private property rights.
Some said that they feel powerless and lack the legal and financial resources to fight the federal government.
“I don’t want a wall, but if they’re going to build it, how am I supposed to fight it?” said Adan Madrid, 65, a descendant of one of the founding families. In March, he received a CBP letter offering $2,500 for a right of passage on his farm that sits near the riverbank, or risk losing the whole property, including his home, through eminent domain.
Other residents are trying to unite landowners to fight the Trump administration’s efforts, saying they won’t willingly give up land they’ve cultivated and handed down through generations for hundreds of years.
“It’s just something that’s been happening for generations, people coming in and trying to take land and families fighting to keep it,” said Yolanda Alvarado, 38, who also received a CBP letter seeking access to her land in nearby Pilares. “But I think this generation is more vocal and able to fight back. We have access to more resources and unlike older generations there isn’t a language barrier.”
“I just want to protect my dad’s land”
Carrasco, who lives mostly in Odessa but frequently visits his ranch, said he signed off on allowing a surveyor on his property, hoping that he could get additional information about what the federal government wants to do on his property and whether he would be paid for it.
He said he could use the money after an oil company he worked for declared bankruptcy and he lost $260,000 of his employer-sponsored 401K.
Carrasco said he’s one of the few Trump-supporting Republicans in Presidio County, a Democratic stronghold sandwiched between Republican-leaning Jeff Davis and Brewster, the two other counties that make up the Big Bend region.
He said he agreed with Trump that the Biden administration was to blame for hundreds of thousands of immigrants crossing the Texas-Mexico border.
But he did not expect the Trump administration would target his land for border security infrastructure.
He said he’s told CBP representatives that he doesn’t want a border wall because it would ruin his farm, cut off access to an irrigation pump that pushes Rio Grande water into his alfalfa farm and ruin the big sky mountain views he’s enjoyed his entire life. He said the contractors he’s spoken to have offered scant details on what they intend to build.
“I want to come down here and die here in however many years I have left,” he said, taking a drag from his cigarette. “But now I have to deal with this.”
Carrasco’s grandfather owned the ranch and gave parcels to Carrasco’s father, who eventually divided that land among Carrasco and his brothers and sisters. After Carrasco graduated from high school, he went to work in El Paso, nearly 300 miles upriver, before getting a job in the Odessa oil fields in the 1980s.
As his brothers and sisters either passed away or moved on from the family ranch, he continued to invest in it, building a second home and remodeling the original adobe home he and his father were born in.
When he retired four years ago, he began to focus more of his time here, adding a carport for his tractor and the ATVs he bought for his grandchildren. He fixed water pipes and added additional irrigation lines. He also put in a pool with an outdoor restroom.
“I just want to protect my dad’s land,” he said.
Jesus Valenzuela, Carrasco’s neighbor, hasn’t received any communication from CBP. But he is expecting it because his mobile home is about 200 feet from the Rio Grande.
His wife, Diana Valenzuela, 74, said it stresses her out not knowing if the federal government also plans to seize their land. She said they’re too old to move and couldn’t afford to find a new home.
After meeting in Roswell, N.M., where Diana was born and her husband lived for a while, they moved to Redford 40 years ago and raised two sons and a daughter on the riverbank. They now have 12 grandchildren, seven great grandchildren and one great great grandchild who all visit during their summer break from school.
Jesus Valenzuela, a retired commercial driver, compares the border wall to the dividing line between North and South Korea, something that will separate people on both sides of the Rio Grande who have always felt like a single community.
“But it’s like they don’t care who they step on,” Diana Valenzuela said.
Coming home again
Mario Peña, 62, was born and raised in Redford. He grew up on his family’s farm, growing onions and cantaloupe. Like Carrasco, he left to work in the oil fields, then started his own business as an oil field contractor.
The Peñas have not received any type of communication from CPB, but their neighbors on either side have. Peña said he expects the federal government will also want a piece of his farm.
“I’m willing to die to protect my land,” Peña said, sitting in a metal chair under a carport that overlooks the lush green farm that stretches to the river.
As his children got older, he said he began to miss the 40-acre farm, which he had inherited after his father died. Shortly before the start of the COVID pandemic, Peña started to revisit the farm and laid an irrigation pipe to pump river water to the fields for alfalfa. At the height of the pandemic, Peña moved into his childhood home fulltime. His son joined him later that year.
“I always wanted to come back home,” he said. “I have to do something for my dad before I die. To get the farm all green up to the river — that’s my goal.”
His son, Joaquin Peña, was laid off from his job at an oil field service company in nearby Monahans in 2020 and joined his father in reviving the family farm. His father named him after the Mexican bandit Joaquin Murrieta, memorialized in literature and movies for revenge hunting down the Anglo settlers who lynched his brother and raped his wife during the 1849 Gold Rush in California.
The son said that he supports his father in taking any legal action necessary to protect their land. He said his father has invested too much time and money to easily give it up for political reasons they don’t agree with.
“What’s the point of putting all this money into the farm if the government is just going to take it away from us?” the younger Peña said as he drove on a utility vehicle through a muddy access road with his white Great Pyrenees dog riding next to him.
“I’m not willing to live in a cage”
David Keller, 55, an archaeologist who previously worked for Sul Russ University in nearby Alpine, moved to the Big Bend region 25 years ago after completing his master’s degree in Montana. He was born and raised in Lubbock, but after moving to Redford he decided he would never leave.
He bought two properties, one on the riverbank. Like other landowners, he also received a CBP letter seeking permission to access his land. But like many here, he refused to sign anything.
“We are not against border security,” he said, standing on a dirt path next to his 7-year-old Poodle mix named Sola. But he doesn’t see the use for a border wall.
“People across the river are our family and friends, there’s no animosity, we’re not afraid of them,” he said. “So to put a border wall here, it’s the most wrongheaded thing to do.”
In 2022, Keller led an archaeological project that found new artifacts from a 1918 massacre, in which Texas Rangers killed 15 Mexican-American men and boys in nearby Porvenir. The Rangers at the time said they were targeting bandits raiding people’s ranches, but families of the victims have said they were innocent and the attacks were motivated by racism toward American citizens of Mexican descent.
He said the region is filled with overlooked Mexican-American and Native American history that could be lost if construction crews begin bulldozing new roads and scraping the ground to build a wall.
In Arizona, border barrier construction crews damaged a Native American archaeological site believed to be at least 1,000 years old. In El Paso, the Trump administration has also sued the Catholic Diocese of neighboring Las Cruces, New Mexico, for 14 acres of land at the bottom of Mount Cristo Rey, where a 29-foot-tall statue of Jesus Christ draws hundreds of pilgrims each year and overlooks Ciudad Juárez, El Paso and Sunland Park, N.M.
“This could destroy the feeling of this place,” Keller said. “I’m not willing to live in a cage.”
However, he said he has come across residents who are afraid to challenge the government out of fear of retaliation, partly because of historical precedent and because many residents depend on federal government jobs. He said he’s tried to convince those families that without their voices they may lose this battle.
Concepcion “Chon” Prieto, 87, inherited his 400-acre ranch on the riverbank in Redford from his grandmother. His family has been in the area for at least five generations, he said, and have survived hard times. In 1934, a Texas Ranger fatally shot one of Prieto’s cousins while searching for bandits, according to a book written by Keller. Prieto heard the story as a child and said the experience made his family wary of people coming onto their land.
Most of his family has moved away, but he said he stays in Redford to continue watching over the family land. He said he does not want to give it up and plans to sell the land to the person who is taking care of it for him.
“I would rather give it up to someone who cares about it than the government,” he said, sitting on a recliner surrounded by mail — including letters from CBP saying that the federal government wants feedback as part of a public comment period from owners with property on the riverbank.
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