Six former Big Bend National Park Superintendents, and one Former Deputy Superintendent, with a combined 259 years of National Park Service experience, wrote this open letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Mullin on May 21, 2026. The letter urges him not to waive the federal laws that would allow physical barriers and roads, as well as related border security infrastructure, to be built inside the park in the absence of environmental or cultural compliance or public involvement.
The letter was jointly organized by Keep Big Bend Wild and the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks.
“If a border wall—or other unnecessary and highly destructive border infrastructure—is built inside Big Bend National Park, it would be the most egregious assault on the integrity of the entire National Park System since the construction of a dam in the Hetchy Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park more than a century ago.”
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Keep Big Bend Wild
P.O. Box 66
Big Bend National Park, TX, 79834