Migrants walk between razor wire and a string of buoys placed on the the Rio Grande border with Mexico in Eagle Pass, Texas(AFP)
A federal appeals court on Thursday issued a temporary stay halting a previous judge’s order to remove a controversial buoy barrier in the Rio Grande, Politico reports.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling will allow the Lone Star state to keep the buoys in place until the court reaches a final determination.
Lawyers representing Texas on Thursday in “emergency” court filings argued that removing the barriers would cause irreparable harm.
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They wrote: “The United States failed to defend Texas’s borders, leading to millions of individuals and hundreds of millions of fatal doses of fentanyl, often trafficked by transnational criminal cartels, illegally entering Texas and the US. Consequently, the State declared a border-security disaster and placed an approximately 1,000-foot- long buoy system in the Rio Grande to prevent people and drugs from being trafficked into the State, violating federal and Texas law. The buoys have nearly eliminated illegal crossings of people and drugs where they’ve been placed.”
