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Donald Trump’s signature border wall push got a major funding boost in the sweeping “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed in 2025 — and advocates in South Texas say the money could now be used to drive the building of new wall segments through some of the Rio Grande Valley’s most sensitive natural areas.
At the center of the fight is the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, one of the last remnants of the subtropical woodlands that once lined the Rio Grande. Since the 1920s, about 95% of that habitat has been converted to farmland, conservationists say, making the remaining patches especially important for wildlife and for nature tourism.
“It would be devastating to the wildlife out here,” said Minnesota birder Lori Archamault, who was visiting Santa Ana with her husband, Dennis. She said floodlights and other infrastructure associated with a wall could disrupt birds and migration. “The light pollution from those is terrible,” she said.
Local leaders also warn of economic fallout. A 2011 Texas A&M study found nature tourism contributed roughly $500 million annually to the Rio Grande Valley economy, a figure advocates cite as evidence that visitors drawn by birding and wildlife could be deterred by heavy construction and lighting in protected areas. And they would be denied access to many of the nature preserves.
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection online map shows proposed wall alignments that could cut through the Santa Ana refuge, Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park, the historic La Lomita Chapel, and the National Butterfly Center. In previous years, congressional “carve-outs” in appropriations language limited wall construction in certain protected zones, but advocates argue the new budget package changed the terrain.
Marisa Oliva, president of Friends of the Wildlife Corridor said without restoring the carve out language to current congressional negotiations over immigration enforcement, “we are going to leave the gates wide open for funding to be used to build border wall here at Santa Ana.”
Oliva recently helped organize a rally at Santa Ana that drew more than 100 people carrying handmade signs calling for wildlife protections. Organizers said the goal was to send a message to Washington D.C. and to key members of Congress involved in homeland security spending.
One of them is Henry Cuellar, a South Texas Democrat and ranking member of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees homeland security funding. Cuellar said the long-standing restrictions he helped secure remain in effect.
“That’s been in the law for many years, where they could not use any federal dollar to construct fencing in those areas,” he said.
Cuellar said he believes the administration and allies are trying to work around those limitations. “They’re trying to go around the language that I added…so they’re trying to go back to the exceptions I got years ago,” he said, adding that as a Democrat he has limited leverage. “I would ask the activists to focus their energy on the Republicans, because that’s where I need help.”
The refuge and other sites are in the district of Monica De La Cruz, a Republican. Her office did not respond to requests for comment.
