# Thaddeus Cleveland **Status: stub — expand.** **Thaddeus Cleveland** is the sheriff of Terrell County, Texas, a sparsely populated county on the Rio Grande northeast of Big Bend National Park. He spent 26 years in the U.S. Border Patrol before running for sheriff as a Republican. Cleveland matters to this vault as a *pro-enforcement* dissenter on the [[Big Bend National Park Border Wall]]. He does not argue that the border should be open; he argues that the Big Bend region's canyons, cliffs, and river already function as a barrier, that the money would buy more security as detection technology and agents, and that "the people making the decisions out here for the Big Bend sector have never stepped foot out here." He has said the federal spending on the project does not square with his own fiscal conservatism and that he may leave the Republican Party for independent status over it. He signed a letter circulated by former Texas land commissioner Jerry Patterson praising [[Donald Trump]] for closing the border while asking the administration to consider cheaper and less destructive options for the region. His testimony is a useful receipt precisely because his priors run the other way: the objection is not to enforcement but to the *instrument*. ## See also - [[Big Bend National Park Border Wall]] - [[Thaddeus Cleveland - We had a God-made barrier]] - [[CBP]]