The Supreme Court voted 8-1 on Monday to let the Trump administration resume border wall construction across the Big Bend region of West Texas, lifting a lower-court order that had halted the project since early October, according to the Texas Tribune.

The order allows crews to return to work across a roughly 500-mile project area that includes land in and around Big Bend National Park, Big Bend Ranch State Park, and private and state land along the Rio Grande. The administration has said it does not plan to build a large wall structure inside the national park itself, per UPI.

A Temporary Win, Not a Final Ruling

The order is procedural, not a decision on the merits. It keeps construction moving while the court decides whether to take up the underlying case, or until the case plays out before U.S. District Judge Kathleen Cardone in El Paso, who issued the original injunction on October 2.

Cardone had found that sweeping waivers signed by the Department of Homeland Security — first under then-Secretary Kristi Noem and continued under her successor, Markwayne Mullin — likely exceeded the agency's authority under the "major questions doctrine," since they bypassed dozens of environmental and other federal laws to fast-track construction.

The Trump administration's emergency appeal, filed October 21, argued that Big Bend sees heavy illegal crossings and that a 1996 law gives the Homeland Security secretary broad authority to waive regulations in the name of border security. Solicitor General D. John Sauer called the district court's order "baseless" and "unprecedented."

"A CLEAR PREFERENCE FOR EXPEDITIOUS BORDER CONSTRUCTION."

In the unsigned majority order, the justices wrote that federal immigration law reflects "a clear preference for expeditious border construction" over the harms the plaintiffs described, according to Yahoo News.

Opponents Vow to Keep Fighting

The plaintiffs — including the Center for Biological Diversity, a river guide who operates in the Big Bend area, and a group seeking to protect a historic church in Ruidosa — called the ruling a setback but said their underlying lawsuit, challenging the waiver of dozens of laws to fast-track the barrier, will continue. The case centers on whether Congress ever authorized waivers as broad as the ones DHS issued for a border sector that records some of the fewest crossings anywhere on the southern boundary.

Construction crews are expected to begin remobilizing in the coming days. The case now returns to the lower courts, where Judge Cardone's full review of the waivers' legality continues.