A federal judge has ordered the state to relocate the barrier that was erected to stop illegal crossings into Mexico and the border of Mexico, to the banks of the river.
A federal judge has ordered Governor. Greg Abbott on Wednesday to remove a barrier of floating buoys along the Rio Grande that was placed by the state of Texas to deter illegal crossings into Mexico and concluded that it posed a barrier to the flow of the river and an “threat to human life.”
The Justice Department filed suit in July, alleging that the barrier was in violation of the federal law prohibiting structures that are located in navigable waters with no federal authorization.
The border barrier, located in a portion of the river near the border town in Eagle Pass, Texas, threatened migrants, hindered the activities that were carried out by border patrols Border Patrol and harmed diplomatic relations with Mexico.
Judge David Ezra of the U.S. District Court in Austin directed the state to relocate the barrier of about 1,000 feet towards its U.S. banks of the river before Sept. 15 as the legal proceeding continued.
In granting the preliminary injunction on Wednesday the judge concluded it likely that the government is likely to win on the merits of the case if there were an entire trial.
The judge ruled that the dangers that the barrier posed, that federal authorities claimed included the possibility of drowning in the event that people attempt to traverse the river, were more important than the importance Texas could have in limiting migration to the state. The judge’s ruling also stopped any construction of a floating barrier.
The Mr. Abbott’s office released the following statement, in which they pledged to appeal the ruling. “Texas is prepared to take this fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court,” the statement read. Then, on Wednesday afternoon, Texas filed a notice of appeal.
The governor who has pushed the boundaries of state intervention regarding immigration, seemed eager to take on the court battle regarding his authority to build barriers across the border. In a letter sent to the president Biden on July 1, the governor insisted that he was legally authority to create the border and that was partly due to an article in the U.S. Constitution dealing with the state’s powers in the event of an “invasion.”
The Justice Department, in its lawsuit, centered its attention on Texas in violation of the federal law known as which is the Rivers and Harbors Appropriation Act which governs the federal authority over navigable waterways. The lawyers of the department also resisted to Mr. Abbott’s claim that he has an right to declare an”migrant “invasion,” arguing that only the federal government can decide on such a decision.
“Whether and when an ‘invasion’ occurs is a matter of foreign policy and national defense, which the Constitution specifically commits to the federal government,” the Justice Department’s lawyers claimed in their legal documents.
Judge Ezra stated during a hearing in the last month that he didn’t intend to expand the debate about the buoys into a immigration debate and said that the judge did “not here to engage in any kind of political comment in this decision.” He stated that the issue of an invasion fell to the branches of the political system to decide and instead of the judiciary.
The court battle was the first challenge directly by the federal government against the Mr. Abbott over his increasingly aggressive efforts to block migrants from gaining entry into to the United States, a sweeping multibillion-dollar program called Operation Lone Star.
In their responses the lawyers representing the plaintiff Mr. Abbott and the state of Texas asserted that the river and harbors laws did not apply since there was no Rio Grande in that section was too narrow to be navigable, and also due to the fact that the buoy barriers wasn’t physically connected with the riverbed.
They claimed that Texas was also legally authority to use buoys since illegal crossings of migrants and the smuggling of illegal drugs from Mexico constitute an invasion and was the case for Mr. Abbott had the power to declare and fight in accordance with the U.S. Constitution, without supervision.
In his ruling in the case, Judge Ezra dismissed the argument. “Such a claim is breathtaking,” Judge Ezra wrote.
Herr. Abbott has said that the state operation is designed to deal with the huge number of immigrants who are entering America. United States outside lawful ports of entry, in spite of what he, along with other Republicans believe is a lack of border security from Biden administration. Biden administration.
In its reports that defended the barriers, stated they made it unsafe for any migrants who were in trouble when crossing the river and made the process of rescuing them more hazardous to Border Patrol agents. According to the documents there were 89 deaths due to water of migrants who lived in and close to Eagle Pass.
The court ruled that the barrier was the risk of harm to individuals and negatively impacted relationships with Mexico. “Credible evidence establishes that the harm from the floating barrier is immediate and ongoing,” the judge determined.
