Federal judge orders Texas to remove Gov. Greg Abbott’s border buoys

In a scathing order accusing Gov. Greg Abbott of ignoring U.S. laws, a federal judge has ordered Texas to remove a floating barrier the governor ordered installed in the Rio Grande River to block migrants from crossing, the Dallas Morning News reports.

U.S. District Judge David Ezra on Tuesday ordered Texas to remove its bright-orange buoys by Sept. 15 and prohibited state officials from replacing them with another obstacle, according to the Morning News. The order is a win for the Biden administration, which sued Abbott, arguing that federal law bans unapproved construction work in navigable rivers.

“The Court has found that the United States is likely to succeed on the merits of its claim that Defendants have violated” the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899, Austin-based Ezra wrote, according to the Morning News. “The Court also finds that Texas’s [sic] conduct irreparably harms the public safety, navigation, and the operations of federal agency officials in and around the Rio Grande.”

Texas has already filed an appeal of the decision. In an emailed statement, Abbott said Ezra’s ruling “merely prolongs President Biden’s willful refusal” to let Texas enact its own border safeguards. Abbott has repeatedly argued, erroneously, that the White House isn’t enforcing federal immigration laws.

The buoys are part of Operation Lone Star, a $4.4 billion immigration crackdown Abbott launched in the run-up to the 2022 election season. Although the Republican governor has repeatedly trumpeted the success of the state program in sweeping up criminals, media investigations suggest he and other state officials have played fast and loose with the numbers. 

“The buoys are a symbol of the hate-filled and inhumane policies Gov. Abbott has embraced as he continues to wage war on immigrants seeking to make better lives for themselves, as millions of other immigrants have done for hundreds of years in this country,” Carolina Canizales, a senior Texas strategist for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, said in a statement. “This stretch of the beautiful Rio Grande River has been turned into a militarized zone and has wreaked havoc in the peaceful community of Eagle Pass.”

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This article appears in Sep 6-19, 2023.