Tell us what you’ll do
With Ida Dominguez entering the race for Precinct 4 County Commissioner as a write-in candidate, voters now have a choice between Dominguez and Susan Hays. This is a good thing. It’s also a good opportunity to ask both candidates to tell us more about how they intend to do the job.
Dominguez has deep roots in Presidio County. Hays has substantial experience in law and government. Both are legitimate things to bring to this race.
Dominguez has identified several issues important to her, including border security without a wall. Hays has already been involved locally in the fight over the proposed border wall. But positions aren’t plans, and experience isn’t one either.
Roots matter. Experience matters. Neither tells us how you’ll govern.
What can a county commissioner actually do about the issues facing Presidio County? What would Dominguez do? What would Hays do? What would each fund, oppose, introduce or vote for? Where do they differ? What do they see as the most important work of Commissioners Court over the next four years?
These aren’t unreasonable questions. In the last Precinct 4 race, David Beebe talked specifically about how he intended to use the office. He proposed maintenance and replacement schedules for county assets, long-term planning for county buildings and better public communication about Commissioners Court meetings. On affordable housing, he acknowledged the limits of county authority and then talked about the tools the county did have at its disposal.
Dominguez deserves credit for stepping forward as a write-in and giving Precinct 4 voters a choice. A contested election is a sign of a healthy democracy. It asks candidates to make the case for themselves, rather than allowing experience, name recognition or deep local roots to make it for them.
There’s also a question particular to Dominguez’s candidacy that deserves a clear answer. Her husband has been Presidio County sheriff for many years. Supporting effective law enforcement and adequately funding the sheriff’s office are important responsibilities of Commissioners Court. If elected, however, Dominguez would also become one of the people making budgetary decisions affecting the department her husband leads.
That doesn’t imply wrongdoing. It does create a potential conflict. When matters involving the sheriff’s office come before the court, how would Dominguez determine when disclosure or recusal is appropriate? Voters should know how she intends to navigate that relationship before asking her to do so.
Hays should be pressed for specifics too. Experience with government is relevant to the job, but voters shouldn’t have to infer a governing agenda from a resume. What are her priorities for Precinct 4? Where does she think county government is falling short? What would she try to change?
We now have two candidates and, importantly, a contested race. Let’s hear less about why each is qualified to hold the office and more about what each intends to do once there.
Precinct 4 voters deserve that conversation.
Jennifer Elsner
Marfa
Here’s everything I think you need to know about what’s happening in Big Bend as someone that’s been paying attention since February.
In February, the Sentinel published the news that the Trump administration was moving forward with their plan to expand border barrier infrastructure across the Big Bend Sector. The Big Bend Sector is the largest (by land mass) of nine U.S.-Mexico border sectors as divided and operated by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The sector includes over 500 miles of the Rio Grande, roughly 26% of the entire border, and yet only accounted for about 1.3% of all border patrol apprehensions in fiscal year 2025 and has historically always been the least busy, by far, due its remote and rugged nature on both sides of the river. Big Bend National Park (BBNP) lies at the heart of the sector and accounts for just about 0.05% of all illegal activity.
In the beginning, the CBP’s Smart Wall Map showed a steel bollard wall stretching across almost the entire sector, including through most of BBNP, excluding only the most dramatic canyons. The map has since changed numerous times, leading to confusion and distrust, but is still the only real evidence we have of their plans at all because we still have not seen the actual contract and CBP refuses to meet with locals. There is a total lack of transparency from our government. At this time, the map shows bollard walls still planned for the sector upstream of BBNP while the park itself and the downstream portion of the sector show patrol roads, vehicle barriers, and detection technology.
Dozens of laws aimed at protecting natural and cultural resources were waived by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in order to fast track construction across the entire sector. Most of the sector is private land, and some land owners have received letters from CBP requesting right of entry or threatening eminent domain. Most land owners refuse to sign anything and have delayed operations, though the threat is very real and their fight will likely be a longer and harder one without the public appeal that the national park has, despite being much of the same wild and remote Chihuahuan Desert ecosystem. On federal land, work in BBNP was able to begin without delay.
On August 4, Southwest Valley Constructors, a subsidiary of Kiewit, moved heavy machinery into the park and began work improving one of the preexisting dirt roads. On August 5, they began bulldozing a new road near Santa Elena Canyon.
It was only myself and one other friend there to witness the start of this work where they were plowing through the floodplain, parallel to a preexisting paved road. For the next 12 days, without a single day off, they carved through the park, moving quickly down the line drawn on the CBP Smart Wall Map, stopping only where a steep hill would slow them down, and then picking back up somewhere else. They tore through critical habitat in the riparian zone between Santa Elena Canyon and Cottonwood Campground, carved a line across the foothills on the east side of Mariscal Mountain near Solis, and another through the mesquite bosque on the west side of Mariscal near Talley.
The images of the destruction quickly spread, and our collective voices were loud enough to make the CBP Commissioner pause work in the park, fly down to Texas, and see it for himself. There has not been any more destruction in the park since. A federal lawsuit filed by the People of La Junta et al. had a hearing on August 28 that I attended in San Antonio where my images were presented as evidence to the court. In court, the U.S. attorneys claimed that the work we were seeing in the park was still in the “planning and design phase” and it was still uncertain what exactly the government intends to do, although they assured us there would be no wall in the park. The judge ordered the pause be extended now through September 30 to allow further conversation between CBP and local stakeholders so a plan may be determined before work continues without one.
Although work is paused in BBNP, it continues just outside of the park. Massive swaths of land are being cleared for staging areas; while roadwork, land clearing, aggregate mining and man camp construction continues across the entire Big Bend Sector.
New roadways and vehicle barriers are just as harmful to natural resources, habitat, and historic and prehistoric cultural sites as a wall; they only lack the vertical which blocks wildlife migration. In BBNP, even if it’s “just a patrol road,” if they were to continue carving along the line as it’s mapped, as we saw them following it, they would destroy archeological sites and critical habitat and alter the landscape forever. If they were to continue building a road over Mariscal Mountain, where they have one mapped, it would require blowing up the mountain. I have personally hiked the trail over Mariscal, and I can attest, it would be impossible to build a road without explosives, just as they have exploded mountains in Organ Pipe National Monument in Arizona.
Technology already exists throughout the Big Bend Sector including in the national park. Technology alerts Border Patrol to illegal activity and agents make apprehensions. There is no need for billions of tax payer dollars to be spent on new infrastructure in the region, and certainly no reason to destroy a national park for such senseless infrastructure at that — new roads parallel to existing roads in some cases and in other cases creating access in otherwise inaccessible places; vehicle barriers where no vehicle can cross the river, in a region where the Mexican side is often even more remote and undeveloped; and upstream, where a physical wall is supposed to be built through wetlands and floodplains that will undoubtedly exacerbate flood risks in places that have already experienced devastating flooding without a steel wall dam to make it worse (Presidio 2008 flood). All while destroying natural and cultural resources with no oversight because all the relevant laws have been waived so these contractors can get a job done and make a buck with zero regard for the harm they do in the process.
Don’t stop paying attention to what they are doing in Big Bend.
Check out NoBigBendWall.org for more info and resources and donate to Big Bend Sentinel to support LOCAL journalism from the people on the ground.
Natalie Newman
Terlingua
