AUSTIN, Texas (CN) — The Justice Department sued Texas and Governor Greg Abbott on Monday after he refused to remove large buoys the state has placed in a section of the Rio Grande to deter immigrants.
Starting on July 9, Texas National Guard soldiers placed a 1,000-foot string of buoys the size of wrecking balls in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass, Texas.
The Justice Department claims Texas and Abbott violated the Rivers and Harbors Act by building the structure in the river, a navigable waterway of the United States which marks the border between Texas and Mexico, without a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“The Corps and other relevant federal agencies were deprived of the opportunity to evaluate risks the barrier poses to public safety and the environment, mitigate those risks as necessary through the permitting process, and otherwise evaluate whether the project is in the public interest,” the Justice Department said in its 9-page lawsuit filed in the Western District of Texas.
The suit was expected as Justice Department officials sent Abbott and Texas’ interim attorney general a letter Thursday notifying them the barrier violates federal law.
“Texas will see you in court, Mr. President,” Abbott responded in a letter of his own Monday morning.
Abbott also claimed the U.S. Constitution gives Texas the right to protect its borders.
The buoys are Abbott's latest effort to stop immigrants from entering the state illegally as part of his Operation Lone Star, an initiative he launched in March 2021 to counter what he calls President Joe Biden’s “open border policies.”
Texas has already spent more than $3 billion of taxpayer money on the operation for which thousands of Texas state troopers and National Guard troops were sent to the border.
And Republican state lawmakers, who control the Legislature, allocated another $5.1 billion for border security in a package of bills Abbott signed last month.
The suit comes one week after the Houston Chronicle, citing an internal email a Texas Department of Public Safety medic sent to his superior, reported that state troopers had been ordered not to give water to immigrants amid a brutal heat wave scorching South Texas, and to push people who swim or wade to the U.S. side of the Rio Grande back into the water.
The medic also complained that several immigrants, including a pregnant woman having a miscarriage, had been caught in and cut by miles of concertina wire Texas has placed at the border in Eagle Pass.
Abbott and other state officials denied any such orders had been given, and said state law enforcement was providing medical attention as needed to immigrants in distress, and encouraging them to cross at one of the 29 international bridges on the Texas-Mexico border instead of by the river.
Abbott says he is using every tool to deter illegal crossings between ports of entry, and respond to the “unprecedented humanitarian crisis at our southern border.”
“The absence of these tools and strategies — including concertina wire that snags clothing — encourages migrants to make potentially life-threatening and illegal crossings,” his office said in a July 18 statement.
Eagle Pass, which is 140 miles west of San Antonio, is in the Del Rio Sector, one of nine Border Patrol jurisdictions on the U.S.-Mexico border.
The area once saw few crossings by immigrants. But it has become the busiest of the five Border Patrol sectors in Texas. Last month, the Border Patrol apprehended more than 24,000 immigrants in the Del Rio Sector, the majority of whom were from Cuba and Venezuela.
Despite Abbott’s claims the White House is rolling out a welcome mat for immigrants, the Biden administration’s new asylum policies led to a steep decline of 206,000 to 144,000 apprehensions at the southwest border from May to June.
The administration has deemed immigrants ineligible for asylum if they enter the U.S. without permission, or do not ask for asylum in another country on their route to the U.S. It is placing them in expedited removal proceedings and quickly deporting them.
People removed this way are barred from reentering the country for five years, and face the possibility of federal charges if they are caught trying to come back in.
They can also apply for appointments to make their cases for asylum at ports of entry via a U.S. Customs and Border Protection app called CBP One. The government announced June 30 it had increased the number of daily appointments set through the app from 1,000 to 1,450.
The administration says its goal is to “provide a safe, orderly, and humane process for noncitizens to access ports of entry.”
But immigrant advocates have sued over the new restrictions claiming federal law is supposed to give people the right to apply for asylum no matter how they reach U.S. soil.
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