A federal judge ordered Texas to remove floating barriers in the Rio Grande and barred the state from building new or placing additional buoys in the river, according to a Wednesday court filing, marking a victory for the Biden administration.
The judge ordered Texas to take down the barriers by September 15 at its own expense.
In July, the Justice Department sued the state of Texas over its use of floating barriers in the Rio Grande, which Gov. Greg Abbott has argued are intended to deter migrants from crossing into the state from Mexico.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A federal judge ordered Texas to remove floating barriers in the Rio Grande and barred the state from building new or placing additional buoys in the river, according to a Wednesday court filing, marking a victory for the Biden administration.
In July, the Justice Department sued the state of Texas over its use of floating barriers in the Rio Grande, which Gov.
Judge David Alan Ezra wrote that Abbott needed permission to install the barriers, as dictated by law.
“Governor Abbott announced that he was not ‘asking for permission’ for Operation Lone Star, the anti-immigration program under which Texas constructed the floating barrier.
Unfortunately for Texas, permission is exactly what federal law requires before installing obstructions in the nation’s navigable waters,” the judge wrote in his ruling.
“This argument fails because (1) the RHA has already balanced policy interests and determined that the nation’s interest in free navigation of its waterways is supreme to unauthorized state action, and (2) whether Texas’s claim of ‘invasion’ is legitimate is a non-justiciable political question demonstrably committed to the federal political branches,” he wrote.
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