A lawsuit has been filed to force an extensive supplemental programmatic environmental impact statement on the Trump's administration's proposed Border Wall, which could run, in part, along Big Bend National Park (above)/Rebecca Latson

The Trump administration's plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to keep illegal aliens out of the country has drawn a lawsuit from the Center for Biological Diversity and U.S. Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, who claim that the wall, if constructed, would impact millions of people, endangered species, and national parks.

The filing seeks an extensive supplemental programmatic environmental impact statement on the administration's U.S.-Mexico border enforcement program. If successful, the suit will force a federal assessment under the National Environmental Policy Act of the impacts of the entire program, which – in addition to the Trump administration’s proposed border wall – includes regional road construction, off-road vehicle patrols, installation of high-intensity lighting, construction of federal agency base camps and checkpoints, and other activities.

The border enforcement program stands to impact endangered species like jaguars and Mexican gray wolves, and protected federal lands such as Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, which is in Rep. Grijalva’s district, and Big Bend National Park, among others, a release from the Arizona Democrat's office said.

The lawsuit points to a NEPA requirement that impact statements be supplemented when an “agency makes substantial changes in the proposed action” – in this case, the changes to the U.S.-Mexico border enforcement program, which include President Trump’s proposed border wall. NEPA also requires supplemental analysis when “significant new circumstances or information arises,” including new information relevant to threatened and endangered species.

“Defendants have not updated their programmatic environmental analysis for the southern border enforcement program since late 2001, more than 15 years ago, despite the clear presence of the regulatory factors compelling the preparation of supplemental environmental analysis," the lawsuit charges.

“Our environmental protections should apply to the borderlands just as they do everywhere else,” Rep. Grijalva said Wednesday. “These laws exist to protect the health and well-being of our people, our wildlife, and the places they live. Trump’s wall — and his fanatical approach to our southern border — will do little more than perpetuate human suffering while irrevocably damaging our public lands and the wildlife that depend on them.”

“Trump’s border wall will divide and destroy the incredible communities and wild landscapes along the border,” added Kierán Suckling, the Center for Biological Diversity’s executive director. “Endangered species like jaguars and ocelots don’t observe international boundaries and should not be sacrificed for unnecessary border militarization. Their survival and recovery depends on being able to move long distances across the landscape and repopulate places on both sides of the border where they’ve lived for thousands of years.”