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The Justice Department on Monday sued Texas over the state's use of floating barriers in the Rio Grande, a dangerous tactic meant to stop migrants from crossing into the United States from Mexico. Texas' Republican governor, Greg Abbott, had seemed eager to pick a legal fight with the federal government earlier in the day.
The DOJ sent a letter last week to Abbott’s administration threatening to sue over the floating buoys, some of which are reportedly wrapped in razor wire. As NBC News reported, the letter “says the state’s actions violate the Rivers and Harbors Act, endanger public safety and could obstruct the federal government’s official duties.” The DOJ gave Texas until 2 p.m. ET Monday to commit to removing the barriers or face legal action.
But Abbott on Monday said he would continue employing the tactic, which has been widely decried as cruel.
"We will see you in court, Mr. President," Abbott tweeted.
The barrier — and its role in Abbott’s beleaguered anti-migrant effort, Operation Lone Star — has come under fire in recent weeks. The Mexican government filed a diplomatic complaint last month alleging the floating barrier violates a U.S.-Mexico water treaty.
And last week, the Texas Department of Public Safety confirmed it was investigating a state trooper's claims that officers were ordered by their superiors to "push the people [migrants] back into the water to go to Mexico." The trooper described migrants, including children, getting caught in buoys covered with razor wire.
The Texas DPS has been the tip of the spear — the enforcement arm — of state Republicans’ contentious and arguably unlawful approach to localizing immigration enforcement. Ordinarily, immigration enforcement duties are left to federal officials, but Texas Republicans have pushed dubious legal theories to portray the arrival of migrants along the Texas-U.S. border as an “invasion” that warrants a warlike — and potentially, violent — response.
As The Houston Chronicle noted in its coverage of the trooper's claims:
The trooper’s email sheds new light on a series of previously reported drownings in the river during a one-week stretch earlier this month, including a mother and at least one of her two children, who federal Border Patrol agents spotted struggling to cross the Rio Grande on July 1.
I invite you to read some of my previous coverage on Texas officials and their warlike posture toward migrants. That rhetoric has led the Abbott administration's nationalist and bigoted crusade against migrants.
It appears erecting cruel and dangerous obstacle courses is one of the several brutal tactics Abbott is happy to deploy in the effort.