Federal appeals court allows Texas to maintain border buoys on the Rio Grande

The state's legal team argued that the barrier serves to defend Texas "from transnational-criminal-cartel invasion."

instalación de la barrera de boyas en Texas. — (Office of the Texas Governor)

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8 de septiembre, 2023

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Judge David Ezra's decision Wednesday on Texas' border buoys was stalled within 24 hours. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit temporarily suspended the removal of the 1,000 feet of buoys on the Rio Grande and allowed Gov. Greg Abbott to maintain the measure to stop illegal migrants from entering the state.

The three judges, two Democrats and one Republican, sided with the governor and allowed the barrier to stay in Rio Grande until further notice. They did so after analyzing the document presented by Texas lawyers that alleged that the entry of migrants through the Rio Grande was an "invasion" and that the state had the right to defend itself:

The buoys were deployed under the Governor’s constitutional authority to defend Texas from transnational-criminal-cartel invasion. 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.

Texas installed barrier due to "border-security disaster"

In addition, the legal team said that Texas had been forced to install the controversial barrier due to "a border-security disaster" to prevent illegal crossings. Along with this, they denied that the buoys posed "obstructions in the nation’s navigable waters," as Judge David Ezra asserted in his order, since "no evidence showed the buoys ‘obstruct’ any navigable capacity of the river."

The appeal comes just after Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement that he "is prepared to take this fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court" and that he would do everything possible to maintain the barrier in Rio Grande to protect the state: