Image Credit: John Moore / Staff / Getty Images 
Over 100 miles of new border wall in Texas’s Big Bend National Park will begin construction soon.
The full 517-mile stretch of the Big Bend sector will receive an upgrade to its border protection, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), with around 111 miles of “primary border wall” beginning construction.
Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem has said the Big Bend sector is an area of “high illegal entry,” with close to 90,000 illegals apprehended in the area between fiscal year 2021 and July 2025.
According to Fox, “In areas previously designated for ‘detection technology’ in the park, primary border wall system is now in the “planned” phase, meaning it’s waiting to be awarded contracts for construction.
“The sections that pass through Big Bend are part of a 111.6-mile stretch of primary wall, which the CBP site refers to as ‘steel bollard wall.’ That stretch is broken by some areas of border within the national park which are still designated as detection technology only. Those areas may be impacted by nothing more than cameras and lights, though the specifics are unclear.”
CBP expects all border contracts to be awarded by mid-2026.
Eminent domain may be used to acquire sections of border land for construction of the wall.
In September 2025, officials awarded $4.5 billion in contracts to add 230 miles of “smart wall” and 400 miles of “new technology” for monitoring the border.
Smart wall is a system that combines “steel barriers, waterborne barriers, patrol roads, lights, cameras, and advanced detection technology.”
CBP announced this week that there were zero releases of illegal aliens along the US border with Mexico for the eighth consecutive month.
The figure of zero was for the month of December 2025.
In December 2024, by contrast, CBP released 7,041 illegals into the United States from the southern border.
CBP has “recorded its lowest encounter totals ever to start a fiscal year.”
The Epoch Times reports, “In Fiscal Year 2026, which started on Oct. 1, 2025, there were 21,815 apprehensions along the southwest border, the lowest ever in the first quarter of a fiscal year, the agency stated, noting that this was 95 percent lower than the first-quarter average under the Biden administration.
“As for illegal crossings, there were 30,698 total encounters nationwide in December 2025—92 percent lower than the monthly peak of the prior administration, which was 370,883. The recent figures are also the lowest encounters ever for a month of December.
“There were 6,478 Border Patrol apprehensions on the southwest border in December 2025, which the DHS stated was 96 percent lower than the monthly average during the Biden administration and fewer than four days’ worth of apprehensions in December 2024.”
