The Department of Justice is threatening to take Texas to court over the Lone Star state’s recent controversial measures to keep immigrants from crossing the border.
Both CNN and the Houston Chronicle reported Friday that the Justice Department has sent a letter to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott warning him that the moves raised humanitarian concerns and had not been authorized by the federal government.
Texas has installed floating orange buoys with nets beneath them in the Rio Grande River to make it harder for migrants to swim or wade across. It has also put in place razor wire in some areas to discourage undocumented immigrants from crossing.
The Republican governor’s moves have been controversial. A state trooper said he encountered a woman having a miscarriage who was trapped in the razor wire, according to an internal Texas Department of Public Safety email obtained by the Dallas Morning News. He was also told to push migrants that made it across the river back into it, the paper said.
“The State of Texas’s actions violate federal law, raise humanitarian concerns, present serious risks to public safety and the environment, and may interfere with the federal government’s ability to carry out its official duties,” the Department of Justice letter to Abbott reads, according to CNN.
The department also noted federal law prohibits obstructions to navigating U.S. rivers and building any obstructions without first getting a signoff from the U.S. Army’s Corps of Engineers.
A spokesperson for the Department of Justice confirmed to HuffPost that the agency sent Abbott a letter “providing notice of our intent to pursue legal action related to unlawful construction of a floating barrier in the Rio Grande River.”
In June, when Abbott announced what he calls Operation Lone Star, he said the intent was to keep migrants from reaching Texas to be turned back.
“We’re securing the border at the border,” the governor said at a news conference. “What these buoys will allow us to do is to prevent people from even getting to the border.”
The new obstacles have come even as the number of Southwest border crossing encounters through June has been down for the last five months compared to the same months in 2022, according to U.S Customs and Border Protection statistics. Migrant flows are often seasonal in nature.
Immigrant rights advocates have blasted Operation Long Star as inhumane.
“State troopers are deliberately pushing people toward razor wire, heat exhaustion, and dangerous river currents knowing that they will suffer, be injured, and die,” Bob Libal, a Texas consultant with Human Rights Watch, said in a statement last week.
The measures have also drawn fire in Congress. On Friday, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) released a letter signed by more than 80 House Democrats asking the Justice Department to take legal action to stop Texas.
They noted that Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) had given up on his plan for a makeshift border wall after the Department of Justice filed suit, and that Texas similarly failed to get permits before installing its barriers.
“Operation Lone Star’s programs and policies, specifically the recent erection of razor wire or buoy walls, pose a huge danger to migrants and impedes the ability of our border patrol offices to safely and humanely treat migrants as well as to comply with relevant federal and international laws,” the letter reads. “As Governor Abbott continues to escalate his efforts on the border, we urge you to take the above actions and stop this horrific abuse of power.”