The wall fight in Big Bend country is on its way to the Supreme Court, and the administration isn't waiting politely. Lawyers have asked the justices to lift a lower court order that's been blocking construction in that stretch of West Texas, according to Yahoo News. If the Court takes the case and sides with the government, the bulldozers roll again.

I've written before about the wall going up in Hudspeth County and the second project in Arizona. The Big Bend section is the prettiest and hardest country of the three. Steep, broken, remote. Building anything out there is an engineering problem before it's a legal one, and now it's both.

Where things stand: a district judge put a hold on the project, and the administration has gone over that judge's head. The argument is that the district court overstepped and that construction shouldn't sit in limbo while the case drags through appeals. The other side says the government cut corners on process and the courts have every business slowing things down.

I'll tell you what I know from the ground, and I want to be clear this is observation from living on this border, not a study. Delays on border projects aren't abstract to me. Every month a section sits unbuilt is a month the gaps stay open. On our own place, I've watched the traffic shift whenever the odds shift. Smugglers follow the weakness wherever they find it, whether that's a missing fence panel or a favorable ruling. That's been the pattern my whole life out here.

Now, I've got some sympathy for the people who love that Big Bend country, because I love it too. That's God's country out there, some of the finest scenery Texas has, and I wrote about the cottonwoods coming down at Lochiel and said the valley would survive it. It will. But I also drive past fence lines that have been cut and recut so many times the posts look frayed. Beauty doesn't stop a load of humans being marched through a rancher's pasture at two in the morning.

The legal question here matters beyond Big Bend. If lower courts can freeze border construction with injunctions that take years to unwind, then every project in the pipeline is one lawsuit away from standing still. If the justices lift the order, the message goes out that the courts aren't a parking lot for this work.

No timeline yet on when the Court might act. Emergency requests can move fast or sit on a desk for months, and there's no predicting which. What I can tell you from the ground is simple. Built sections get crossed less. Unbuilt sections get crossed more. Barrier plus enforcement is what works. Enforcement works when you actually enforce, and barrier is part of enforcing.

Vince Carrow will tell you the wall matters less than the agents and the deportation machinery behind it. He's half right. The wall without enforcement is a speed bump. Enforcement without the wall means you're chasing people through broken country at night instead of turning them at the line. I'll take both, and I'll take them now rather than after another round of oral arguments.

The Supreme Court doesn't ask my opinion, which is a shame, because I'd give them a free one. Lift the order. Let the crews work. And let the folks filing these suits come down and explain to a rancher, standing on his own cut fence, why the process needs another year.