Justice Department sues Texas over floating barrier in Rio Grande River

The Justice Department on Monday sued the state of Texas in a suit seeking to compel Gov. Greg Abbott (R) to remove a barrier in the Rio Grande River designed to block migrants from crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

“We allege that Texas has flouted federal law by installing a barrier in the Rio Grande without obtaining the required federal authorization,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said in a statement announcing the suit.

“This floating barrier poses threats to navigation and public safety and presents humanitarian concerns,” she said, adding that the barrier has prompted protests and “risks damaging U.S. foreign policy.”

The barrier, roughly 1,000 feet of buoys ranging from four to six feet in diameter, is the latest escalation from Texas, which also installed razor wire near the border and is among several states that have bussed migrants to left-leaning cities.

In anticipation of the suit, Abbott, who received a letter from the Justice Department Friday asking for the removal of the buoys, said in a Monday letter “Texas will see you in court.”

The suit argues the buoys are a violation of the Rivers and Harbors Act, which prohibits unauthorized barriers in any navigable waters. 

Abbott, in his earlier Monday letter, said that as commander in chief of Texas, he must defend “sovereign interest in protecting [her] borders,” the basis for a series of action taken under Operation Lone Star. 

DOJ’s action comes after the request of nearly 100 House Democrats, who on Friday urged Biden “to assert your authority over federal immigration policy and foreign relations and investigate and pursue legal action, as appropriate, related to stop Governor Abbott’s dangerous and cruel actions.”

The buoys, put in place around July 10, were installed just days after four migrants, including an infant, drowned trying to cross the river. 

At the heart of the dispute is the potential danger the buoys post to migrants.

Abbott claimed the buoys help deter a potentially dangerous effort to cross the river.

“While I share the humanitarian concerns noted in your lawyers’ letter, Mr. President, your finger points in the wrong direction. Neither of us wants to see another death in the Rio Grande River. Yet your open-border policies encourage migrants to risk their lives by crossing illegally through the water, instead of safely and legally at a port of entry,” he wrote.

That claim ignores a dramatic expansion of legal pathways to arrive in the U.S., including an expansion of appointments through an app that allows migrants to arrive at ports of entry – a policy that has been heavily criticized by Republicans.

“President Biden’s border enforcement plan has led to the lowest levels of unlawful border crossings in over two years. Governor Abbott’s dangerous and unlawful actions are undermining that effective plan, making it hard for the men and women of Border Patrol to do their jobs of securing the border, and putting migrants and border agents in danger,” the White House said in statement after the filing of the suit.

Abbott's comments also stand in contrast to a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper’s concerns about the humanity of Operation Lone Star that were made public last week.

In an internal email detailing a string of preventable deaths and injuries related mainly to razor wire and the buoys installed by Texas on the Rio Grande, the trooper asked his superiors to take a different tack, questioning orders to deny water to migrants and to “push the people back into the water to go to Mexico.”

“I truly believe in the mission of Operation Lone Star; I believe we a have stepped over a line into the in humane. We need to operate it correctly in the eyes of God. We need to recognize that these are people who are made in the image of God and need to be treated as such,” wrote the trooper in the email dated July 3.

This story was updated at 5:28 p.m.