DOJ threatens to sue Texas if Rio Grande floating barrier isn’t eliminated

The Justice Division has stated it plans to sue Texas if the state doesn’t take away the 1,000-foot floating barrier it positioned within the Rio Grande river in a bid to discourage unlawful immigrants from crossing the US border.

The specter of authorized motion was made in a letter despatched to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott by the Biden administration on Thursday.

The barrier of wrecking ball-sized buoys, which was strung up earlier this month close to the border city of Eagle Cross, was “illegal” and violated federal regulation, the letter charged.

“The State of Texas’s actions violate federal regulation, elevate humanitarian considerations, current critical dangers to public security and the setting, and should intrude with the federal authorities’s capability to hold out its official duties,” it stated.

Gov. Abbott fired again on Twitter, insisting: “Texas has the sovereign authority to defend our border, underneath the US Structure and the Texas Structure.”

“We have now despatched the Biden Administration quite a few letters detailing our authority, together with the one I hand-delivered to President Biden earlier this 12 months,” he continued.

The floating barrier was initially put in close to Eagle Cross — an unlawful crossing scorching spot.

However it’s designed to be moved and prolonged to cowl different elements of the Rio Grande if needed, Abbott stated when he first introduced the transfer.

The massive orange buoys, which measure 4-feet every, sit a foot beneath the water and are anchored to the riverbed.

“Most [migrants], they don’t wish to go underneath water, they’re making an attempt to scale over, like a wall,” Texas Division of Public Security Spokesman Lt. Chris Olivarez informed The Put up final week.

“Particularly with kids, I feel it’s going to be handiest with households who’re making an attempt to return throughout. Throughout the board, we wish to stop folks from crossing the river within the first place.”

The buoys are just the latest move in Abbott’s multibillion-dollar operation to try and secure the Lone Star state’s border with Mexico.

Other escalations have included razor-wire fencing and arresting a slew of migrants on trespassing charges.

Abbott’s mission — dubbed Operation Lone Star — got here underneath scrutiny after a Texas trooper claimed migrants had been denied water they usually’d been given orders to push border crossers again into the Rio Grande.

The Texas Division of Public Security stated the trooper’s allegations, which had been made in an e-mail to a supervisor, had been underneath inner investigation.

With Put up wires