A letter defending the decision to house workers connected to a federal border infrastructure project has triggered a new wave of criticism in Terlingua, with residents accusing the manager of a local RV property of profiting from construction he says he opposes.
The Big Bend Sentinel published the letter Monday from Dan DiBona, the former owner and current manager of Terlingua Ghost Town Rentals. The newspaper published the letter in its entirety and without an accompanying response, after separately reporting on the business’s plans to accommodate construction workers.
DiBona’s letter, titled “Why harassing wall workers, local business and individuals kills resistance to the wall,” argues that denying lodging and other services to individual workers is both ethically wrong and strategically ineffective.
“I refuse to do it,” DiBona wrote. “I’m at war against this wall. People are not battlegrounds.”
The letter followed reporting that Terlingua Ghost Town Rentals plans to house contractors beginning in August. Harlan Stanley, a co-owner of the business, said in an interview that the property is renting to workers assigned to road construction, not crews erecting the physical border wall.
“We are not renting to the wall people,” Stanley said. “We are renting to the folks that are building the road.”
Stanley said he is “absolutely, unequivocally against the wall” but supports improving East River Road, which he said could make the area more accessible to park employees, security personnel and visitors who do not own high-clearance, four-wheel-drive vehicles.
Critics argue that roads, lodging, utilities and communications are integral parts of the larger border infrastructure project, regardless of whether the workers staying at the property are directly installing wall panels.
DiBona rejected that distinction in his letter, accusing critics of attempting to impose what he called a “moral purity test” on local businesses.
“The prevailing demand from locals is simple: enforce a moral purity test at my door,” he wrote. “Refuse water, power, privacy, safety and shelter. Make the wall workers’ lives miserable until they pack up and leave, never to return.”
DiBona wrote that he has faced threats to his personal safety and what he described as “mob rage” over the rental decision. He said longtime friends had withdrawn from him and that hostility toward the property and its management had become a daily concern.
The letter did not provide details documenting the reported threats, and the claims could not immediately be independently verified.
DiBona argued that anger directed at equipment operators, truck drivers and other wage earners would not disrupt a multibillion-dollar federal project. Instead, he said, hostility could provide justification for contractors to increase security and portray opponents as dangerous or unreasonable.
“By shouting at concrete truck drivers in parking lots, people in Terlingua are doing the contractors’ jobs for them,” he wrote. “You are giving a multi-billion-dollar federal enterprise the exact excuse it wants to justify heavier security, bring in armed law enforcement and dismiss this entire community as unstable zealots.”
He proposed replacing confrontation with what he called “Strategic Humanity,” arguing that respectful treatment could encourage workers to share information about environmental violations, waste, structural failures or contractors cutting corners.
“Hostility buys you their silence; basic human decency opens the door to actual transparency and real-time facts we can use to hit the corporate entities where it hurts,” DiBona wrote.
He also suggested that building relationships with workers could create opportunities to connect them with jobs elsewhere, potentially increasing turnover and slowing the project.
The argument received a largely hostile response in comments on the Sentinel’s Facebook page.
Several commenters described DiBona and the business as sellouts or collaborators. Others said providing weeks of housing, storage, electricity, water and internet access amounted to establishing a local base of operations and could not reasonably be compared with selling a worker a meal or a tank of gas.
Daylon Walton wrote that the letter ignored “the meaningful difference between selling somebody lunch or a tank of gas and giving a work crew weeks of housing, storage, electricity, water, internet access, and basically a local base of operations.”
“One is incidental commerce,” Walton wrote. “The other materially makes the project cheaper and easier to carry out.”
Raymond Skiles characterized the letter as “an elaborate, convoluted, high-toned, but ultimately vacant rationalization for simply cashing-in.”
Other commenters criticized the Sentinel for publishing the letter. Michael McLeod wrote that the newspaper had reported extensively on the wall but should not amplify people “making money off the wall who just want to clear their conscience.”
Some comments became intensely personal. DiBona was called a traitor, a sellout and a collaborator. One commenter compared providing services to wall workers with serving guards at Nazi concentration camps. Another suggested there should be no one the business would refuse to serve, listing members of the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis and people on the sex offender registry.
Other responses questioned the property’s septic capacity, raised unrelated accusations against DiBona and mocked the length and tone of his letter.
A smaller number of commenters defended the business’s right to serve the workers. One wrote that DiBona has the right to rent to anyone he chooses, while community members also have the right to remember the decision and spend their money elsewhere.
The response reflects a broader disagreement within the Big Bend anti-wall movement. One side argues that local businesses should refuse material support to anyone helping carry out the project. The other argues that targeting individual workers and businesses will divide the community while leaving federal agencies and large contractors untouched.
DiBona described the wall as a corporate grift and a taxpayer-funded transfer of money to major construction companies. He said the opposition should focus on the contracts, finances and environmental consequences rather than on workers renting RV spaces.
“We will never stop a multi-billion-dollar wall by picking fights with the men laying gravel,” DiBona wrote. “We stop it by exposing the financial grift, keeping our own community intact, and pulling the labor force out from under the project.”
Critics remain unconvinced. They say providing long-term lodging is not incidental commerce but essential logistical support for construction in one of the most remote regions of Texas.
The controversy is likely to continue as workers arrive and the project moves closer to construction.
