EAGLE PASS, Texas — On Tuesday, the 5th United States Circuit Court of Appeals reversed an injunction in the border buoys case in Eagle Pass, Texas.
The ruling means Texas can keep the buoys in the Rio Grande River to prevent people from crossing the border.
Last year, a federal judge granted the injunction and a three-judge panel affirmed it.
The case will carry on as the ruling was solely about the injunction handed down in September 2023.
Before the injunction was issued, dozens of bright orange, wrecking ball-sized buoys created a water barrier longer than a soccer field on a stretch of the river where migrants often tried crossing from Mexico. Texas also installed razor wire and steel fencing on the border, while also empowering armed officers to arrest migrants on trespassing charges.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton celebrated the ruling on X Tuesday night:
The buoys, deployed in July 2023, brought a swift legal challenge from the U.S. Justice Department, which accused Texas of putting a barrier on the international boundary without permission. President Joe Biden's administration also said the water barrier raised humanitarian and environmental concerns.
Texas installed the buoy barrier near the border town of Eagle Pass, with anchors in the riverbed.
Eagle Pass is part of a Border Patrol sector that has seen the second-highest number of migrant crossings this fiscal year with about 270,000 encounters — though that is lower than it was at this time last year.
Like other pieces of Abbott’s multibillion-dollar border mission known as Operation Lone Star, the buoys pick up where former President Donald Trump left off. Plans for the same water barrier were in the pipeline in 2020, according to Mark Morgan, who at the time was the acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.