Last week of June 2026, the Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge in Alamo, Texas posted a short notice on Facebook. The levee would be closed to bicycles and pedestrians for the rest of the summer. Bicyclists should use Bobcat Trail instead.

That was how people in the Rio Grande Valley learned that the border wall was finally coming to Santa Ana.

The refuge sits in Monica De La Cruz's district. She voted for the bill that made it possible, and when her constituents asked her to stop it, her office did not answer.

What is being built

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection map shows a nearly three-mile stretch labeled the "Rio Grande Valley 4 Project" cutting through the top of the refuge along Levee Road.

Scott Nicol, a longtime anti-wall activist in the Valley, described what that means on the ground:

"What's going to happen is they're going to carve away the river-facing (side) roughly one-third of that levee and replace that side of it with a concrete slab, so just a straight vertical wall that'll be around 10-feet tall. Then at what is now the top of the levee, they'll put steel posts that are 6-inches wide and spaced 4-inches apart, and that'll stand about 15 to 20 feet above that concrete wall … and so you get a total of 30 feet."

Thirty feet of concrete and steel bollards, with four inches between the posts.

"Because of the limited space between the posts and the concrete is impassable to most terrestrial animals, you know a bobcat or an ocelot, they can't get up that 10 feet and they can't get between those bollards, so it's going to be absolutely devastating for wildlife."

Santa Ana is 2,088 acres of subtropical woodland — one of the last remnants of the forest that used to line the Rio Grande. The Fish and Wildlife Service calls it "the jewel of the National Wildlife Refuge System," a premier birding destination with species found nowhere else in the country outside deep South Texas, and home to more than 300 kinds of butterflies. And when the river floods, the levee is how animals get to higher ground. A wall on the levee cuts that off.

Nicol says the project is part of a $1.14 billion contract to Spencer Construction that also covers La Lomita, the National Butterfly Center, Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park, the Salineño Wildlife Preserve in Starr County and areas near La Grulla.

This had already been settled

Here is what makes this De La Cruz's story and not just Washington's.

During Trump's first term, activists in the Valley won this fight. They convinced Congress to write protections into law exempting Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, the National Butterfly Center, La Lomita chapel and Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park from border wall construction. Rep. Henry Cuellar, the Laredo Democrat, put the language in.

Those protections were not repealed by a court. They were not overturned by a president. They came out because Congress passed a new bill without them.

That bill was the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. It put $46.5 billion into border barrier construction, and it carried none of the Rio Grande Valley carve-outs.

On July 3, 2025, Monica De La Cruz voted for it. Roll call 190 — she is recorded as "Aye."

She is the member of Congress for Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge. The protection that had kept a wall out of it disappeared in a bill she voted for.

In February, her constituents asked her to fix it

This didn't happen quietly. In February 2026, more than 100 people rallied at the refuge to oppose the plans. What they wanted from De La Cruz was specific and small: back the restoration of the protective language in the ongoing congressional negotiations. Put it back the way it was.

Marisa Oliva, president of Friends of the Wildlife Corridor, warned that without action "we are going to leave the gates wide open" for the funding to reach Santa Ana.

Cuellar, who wrote the original protection, said of the administration: "They're trying to go around the language that I added."

De La Cruz's office did not respond to requests for comment.

Four months later, construction began.

"It could happen tomorrow"

When the levee closure was announced in June, Nicol called on De La Cruz, along with Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz — all three of whom voted for the bill — to intervene.

"They could push for this contract to be canceled or rewritten. It could happen tomorrow. I don't think they're going to do that, but I also don't think that just because they're in the same party as the president they should get a pass for that. Basically, they're deciding that they care more about fealty to Trump than they care about people in the Rio Grande Valley or the environment in the Rio Grande Valley."

That is the whole question in one paragraph. There is no procedural obstacle here. A member of the majority party, representing the district, asking her own party's administration to rewrite one contract in one place is about as easy a lift as exists in Congress.

She has not done it, and she has not explained why.

The Texas Observer asked her about the wall through Santa Ana in July. She did not respond to a request for comment.

The ocelot problem is not sentimental

Fewer than 100 ocelots are left in the United States. According to the Fish and Wildlife Service, they survive in two small, isolated breeding populations in South Texas — the whole federal recovery effort is about giving those populations room to disperse and reconnect.

A 30-foot wall with four-inch gaps is a wall to an ocelot in exactly the way it is a wall to a person.

This is also happening at a moment when the federal government has stopped counting habitat destruction as harm at all. In July, the Interior and Commerce departments finalized a rule redefining "harm" under the Endangered Species Act so that wrecking the place an endangered animal lives no longer counts — only directly injuring the animal does. A study of species listed between 1975 and 2017 found that 81% were threatened by habitat loss and only 17% by direct killing.

So the wall goes up through the habitat, and the law that used to call that harm has been rewritten to say it isn't.

What her district gets

De La Cruz's constituents did not get a vote on this. They got a Facebook post about a closed bike path.

They also got the rest of the bill she voted for. In Texas's 15th District, an estimated 65,193 people are projected to lose health coverage as a result of the health care cuts, according to the Joint Economic Committee. 55,480 households in the district — about 21% of all households — rely on SNAP, which the same bill cut.

And a wildlife refuge that Congress had already agreed to protect is getting a 30-foot wall through the top of it, on her watch, with her vote.

Sources

The construction announcement and Scott Nicol's description of the project were reported by Francisco E. Jimenez for MyRGV.com / The Monitor: Border wall construction set to begin in Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge (June 19, 2026). The February rally and the removal of the congressional carve-outs were reported by Texas Standard. Photo: Pintail Lakes Trail, Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge, via Wikimedia Commons.