AUSTIN, Texas — Texas has moved a floating barrier on the U.S.-Mexico border nearer to American soil because the Biden administration and Mexico protest the wrecking ball-sized buoys that Republican Gov. Greg Abbott approved within the identify of stopping migrants from coming into the nation.
The repositioning comes forward of a listening to Tuesday that would determine whether or not the buoys stay. Texas started putting in the bright-orange buoys on the Rio Grande in July and the state was rapidly sued by the Justice Department, which argues the barrier might affect relations with Mexico and pose humanitarian and environmental dangers.
During a visit Monday to the border metropolis of Eagle Pass, the place the buoys are positioned, Abbott mentioned the barrier was moved “out of an abundance of caution” following what he described as allegations that that they had drifted to Mexico’s aspect of the river.
“I don’t know whether they were true or not,” Abbott mentioned.
It is just not clear when U.S. District Judge David Ezra of Austin would possibly rule on the barrier.
In the meantime, Abbott’s sprawling border mission generally known as Operation Lone Star continues to face quite a few authorized challenges, together with a brand new one filed Monday by 4 migrant males who had been arrested by Texas troopers after crossing the border.
The 4 males embrace a father and son and are amongst hundreds of migrants who since 2021 have been arrested on state trespassing expenses in Texas. Most have both had their instances dismissed or entered responsible pleas in change for time served. But the 4 males continued to stay in a Texas jail for 2 to 6 weeks after they need to have been launched, in line with the lawsuit filed by the Texas ACLU and the Texas Fair Defense Project.
Instead of a Texas sheriff’s workplace permitting the jails to launch the lads, the lawsuit alleges, they had been transported to federal immigration amenities the place they had been then despatched to Mexico.
“I think a key point of all that, which is hard to grasp, is also that because they’re building the system as they go, the problems flare up in different ways,” mentioned David Donatti, an lawyer for the Texas ACLU.
Representatives of Kinney and Val Verde County, that are named within the lawsuit and have partnered with Abbott’s operation, didn’t instantly return emails looking for remark Monday.
The grievance additionally alleges that there have been at the very least 80 others who had been detained longer than allowed beneath state regulation from late September 2021 to January 2022.
Abbott was joined on the border on Monday by the Republican governors of Iowa, Oklahoma, Nebraska and South Dakota, all of whom have despatched their very own armed regulation enforcement and National Guard members to the border.
• Gonzalez reported from McAllen, Texas.
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