In the final months of the Trump administration, a new plan to seal off the United States’ southern border started gaining steam: a floating water barrier to discourage migrants from trying to cross from Mexico.
The idea never materialized. But three years later, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has put it into action.
The state installed a floating barrier of bright orange, wrecking ball-sized buoys on the Rio Grande this month, stretching roughly the length of three soccer fields.
It is an untested strategy of deterring migrants along the U.S. border that is already fortified in wide sections by high steel fencing and razor wire. The rollout of the buoys on the Rio Grande has thrust Texas into a new standoff with the Biden administration over immigration on the state’s 1,200-mile (1,930-kilometer) border with Mexico.
The Justice Department has asked a federal court to order Texas to remove the buoys, saying the water barrier poses humanitarian and environmental concerns along the international boundary. Abbott has waved off the lawsuit as he is cheered on by conservative allies who are eager for cases that would empower states to take on more aggressive immigration measures.
That legal battle comes as President Joe Biden’s administration defends a new asylum rule in court. A federal judge Tuesday blocked the policy that the administration sees as a way of controlling the southern border while maintaining avenues for migrants to pursue valid asylum claims. The judge’s order won’t take effect for at least two weeks.
Here’s what to know about the river barrier:
“The water wall”
Like other pieces of Abbott’s multibillion-dollar border mission known as Operation Lone Star, the buoys pick up where former President Donald Trump left off.
In 2020, Mark Morgan was the acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. He told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he approved plans to deploy the same water barrier on the Rio Grande that Texas is now using.
That August, the Army Corps of Engineers posted a solicitation for a “buoy barrier system” that would “mitigate the ability of swimmers to climb” over or under it.
Morgan called it the “water wall.”
“It was really designed to be a stopgap to utilize in high-flow areas where we didn’t have a physical structure in place,” Morgan said.
Spokespersons for CBP did not immediately address questions Tuesday about the 2020 plans. The federal International Boundary and Water Commission, whose jurisdiction includes boundary demarcation and overseeing U.S.-Mexico treaties, said it didn’t get a heads-up from Texas about the state’s floating barrier.
Experts have raised concerns of the buoys changing the river’s flow or of objects getting caught in them. Morgan, who is now a visiting fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said environmental reviews under Trump raised issues with the barrier but said he could not recall specifics.
“Just like the physical wall itself, right, there are a variety of things you can do to accommodate that,” he said.
“Flouted federal law”
It is unclear how quickly a federal judge in Texas will rule on the Biden administration’s lawsuit.
