Texas can keep Rio Grande floating barriers for now, appeals court rules

Texas can keep its floating buoy barrier in the Rio Grande in place for now, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday. 

The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily halted District Court Judge David Ezra’s Wednesday order for Texas to remove the thousand-foot-long barrier put in place by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this year in an effort to deter smugglers and migrants from crossing the river border with Mexico. 

The temporary stay will remain in place until the Fifth Circuit can hear Texas’ appeal of Wednesday’s district court order. 

“If Texas must move the buoys from their current location, its appellate rights are effectively lost because the harm is already done to Texas’s sovereign self-defense and public-safety interests,” lawyers for Abbott and the Lone Star State argued in their request for stay. 

“The buoys were deployed under the Governor’s constitutional authority to defend Texas from transnational-criminal-cartel invasion,” Texas’ court filing in the fifth circuit continued.

“Moving the buoys exacerbates dangers to migrants enticed to cross the border unlawfully, and to Texans harmed by human trafficking, drug smuggling, and unchecked cartel violence.”

Ezra’s removal order was part of a preliminary injunction and not a final ruling in the federal lawsuit.

The Justice Department sued Abbott in July, arguing he did not have the authority to order the placement of the marine barrier.

Federal prosecutors also asserted that the spinning, 4-foot-wide orange buoys erected in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, Texas, are a “threat to human life.”

Mexico has demanded that the buoys be removed from the Rio Grande as well.

A recent study by the International Boundary and Water Commission found that most of the buoys were originally placed in Mexican waters.

Abbott vowed Wednesday to take the case up to the Supreme Court if necessary.

“Today’s court decision merely prolongs President Biden’s willful refusal to acknowledge that Texas is rightfully stepping up to do the job that he should have been doing all along,” the three-term governor said.

“Our battle to defend Texas’ sovereign authority to protect lives from the chaos caused by President Biden’s open border policies has only begun.”