Judge determines that Texas does not have authority to place buoys on the border and that the case continue: “It is a sovereign state, not a sovereign country”

EFE

Texas suffered a legal setback this Friday in its battle over the buoys installed in the Rio Grande, on the southern border of the United States, when a federal judge rejected its request to dismiss the lawsuit filed by President Joe Biden's government that seeks remove the barrier.

Federal Judge David Alan Ezra denied the request of Texas prosecutor Ken Paxton to strike down the legal complaint launched by the White House last July.

Texas argued that it was forced to take action on its own to defend itself against an invasion of migrants, accusing the Democratic federal administration of failing to defend the southern border. But the judge opined that he does not have the authority to do so.

“Texas is a sovereign state, not a sovereign country,” the judge wrote in his opinion in which he sided with the federal government that the buoys are not permitted under the US Rivers and Harbors Act.

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The decision represents a victory for the Biden administration, which sued the state of Texas for installing the buoys in the Eagle Pass sector last July as part of Republican Governor Greg Abbott's Operation Lone Star against irregular migration.

However, the judge rejected the argument of the United States Department of Justice, which claims that the buoys violate the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of 1848, which prohibits construction that could impede navigation on the Rio Grande.

Ezra ruled that the treaty “does not establish what measures must be taken in the event of a violation.”

Texas still has several legal avenues to pursue the case and even take the fight to the United States Supreme Court. Next month, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals scheduled a hearing to hear the case. For his part, Judge Ezra will hear the case again in August.

The buoys caused the Mexican government to ask the United States on several occasions to remove the barrier, claiming that most of the buoys were in Mexican territory.

The International Boundary and Water Commission, a binational entity, corroborated this statement in a report presented to the Ezra court that concludes that the vast majority of the buoys are on the Mexican side.