Anti-migrant buoys ‘drifted’ into Mexico, Abbott says after Texas quietly moved them back

WASHINGTON — Texas has quietly moved its anti-migrant buoys to the American side of the Rio Grande, though Gov. Greg Abbott resisted acknowledging they were placed in Mexican territory, asserting Monday the 1,000-foot barrier may have just “drifted.”

The explanation seemed at odds with a July 27 aerial survey showing most of the barrier’s concrete anchors on the wrong side of the border, too, in addition to most of the buoys.

The governor offered no apology to Mexico, which complained for weeks about the violation of its sovereignty.

“There were allegations, which I don’t know if they were true or not, but allegations that the buoys had drifted toward the Mexico side,” Abbott said Monday afternoon in Eagle Pass, flanked by four fellow Republican governors. “And so out of an abundance of caution, Texas went back and moved the buoys into a location where it is clear that they are on the United States side, not on the Mexico side.”

Crews were working on the buoys a few hours before the governors spoke with reporters, each blasting President Joe Biden’s immigration policies.

U.S. District Judge David Ezra, a Reagan appointee, will hear arguments Tuesday morning in Austin on the Justice Department lawsuit aimed at forcing Abbott to remove the buoys and halt further construction in the river separating Texas and Mexico.

An 1899 law prohibits construction in a waterway without federal approval.

Abbott says Texas needs no such permission because it’s under “invasion” by migrants and drug smugglers. Texas also contends the provision only covers navigable waters.

“We are fully authorized by the Constitution to do exactly what we are doing, and that is to secure the border,” he said Monday.

Federal courts have always rejected efforts to equate immigration with the emergency powers afforded states in case of invasion.

Last Tuesday, the Justice Department filed a survey from the International Boundary and Water Commission, the binational agency that controls the river, showing that roughly 80% of the barrier was on the Mexican side. The photo also shows most of the anchors on the Mexican side.

Thursday night, a tipster alerted the commission that work was being performed. The next morning, the agency dispatched a civil engineer, Evelio Siller. His affidavit, filed with the court later Friday, described excavators and workers repositioning the concrete anchors.

Texas officials had previously denied the barrier crossed the border at all.

The state paid a company called Cochrane USA $850,000 to install the barrier in early July. The 4-foot buoys are attached to concrete blocks using 12-meter chains. The river is no deeper than 4 feet in that area, so the barrier could shift quite a bit in the current.

A Department of Public Safety spokesman, Travis Considine, said the state didn’t pay anything extra to move it.

Neither Considine nor aides in the governor’s office responded to requests to explain how the anchors ended up on the Mexican side and how that jibed with Abbott’s assertion the barrier may have drifted.

The Justice Department issued a lengthy rebuttal to Abbott’s contention last week about the breadth of states’ self-defense powers. It also highlighted treaties and statutes that long defined the Rio Grande as navigable, refuting the defense that the river is too shallow to require approvals from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other agencies.

The Justice Department also says the barrier harms relations with the nation’s largest trading partner — even more so once the border violation became apparent.

The fact that Texas decided to rectify the error without a heads-up, let alone permission, added to a growing list of “ongoing and flagrant violations” by the state, the Justice Department told the court Friday.

“The United States had no advance notice that Defendants would be performing additional work on the Floating Barrier. When questioned by counsel this afternoon, Defendants admitted that Texas is presently repositioning the Floating Barrier within the river,” DOJ said. “Texas’ newly resumed, unauthorized construction activities in the Rio Grande underscore why this Court should” order Texas to remove the barrier.

Frank Fisher, spokesman for the U.S. Section of the IBWC, said the agency “is monitoring the recent activity involving the Texas floating barrier in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass,” and referred further questions to the Justice Department.

On Monday afternoon, Abbott met with news media in Eagle Pass with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem. He defended Operation Lone Star, Texas’ $10 billion border security effort that includes installation of 60 miles of razor wire and deployments of state police and National Guard.

Abbott asserted that by treaty, the U.S. and Mexico are allowed to install buoys in the river. He didn’t cite any provision allowing installation of buoys in the other country’s waters, however.

Federal authorities say the string of buoys, tightly connected, amounts to an obstruction of the sort that requires federal approval.

Mexico’s top diplomat raised complaints about the buoys with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas during meetings in Washington two weeks ago.

Migrant advocates, Democratic lawmakers and Mexican officials say the buoys force migrants intent on crossing the river to do so at deeper and more dangerous parts.

They’ve also decried the use of razor wire, after migrants have become entangled and cut.

Abbott says the barriers are meant to shunt migrants toward official ports of entry, where they would face no risk of injury.

Several migrants have drowned near the buoys since they were installed about six weeks ago.