A federal judge in Texas has temporarily blocked border-wall and related infrastructure construction in the Big Bend region, handing environmental and local challengers an early procedural win in a closely watched dispute over the government’s use of statutory waiver authority.

The case centers on whether the Department of Homeland Security lawfully bypassed environmental, cultural, and archaeological protections in order to accelerate border-barrier work.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has concluded that Department of Homeland Security and ICE guidance failed to comply with an earlier court order restricting warrantless immigration arrests in the District. The ruling, from Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, marks an unusually direct judicial rebuke: not just disagreement over policy, but a finding that agency conduct did not match the limits the court had already imposed.

At the center of the dispute is the scope of ICE’s authority to make warrantless arrests and whether revised agency guidance meaningfully honored the court’s prior restrictions.