U.S. Considered Border Buoys Months Before Texas Put Them In
The New York Times
Border officials explored using floating barriers from Texas to California in 2022. The effort could help pave the way for their deployment under President-elect Donald J. Trump.
On the U.S.-Mexico border, they are perhaps the most visible symbol of Gov. Greg Abbott’s effort to deter migrants from entering Texas: giant, orange buoys floating in the Rio Grande, designed to make it harder to cross.
They have also been contentious. The Biden administration has challenged them in court, and a district judge at one point sided with the administration, saying the buoys could pose a “threat to human life.”
But newly released agency emails and documents show that before the Biden administration fought the buoys, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials actually considered a large deployment of their own during an influx of migrants in late 2022. The idea was ultimately rejected before Mr. Abbott went ahead and did it himself.
The detailed consideration of a floating barrier by federal officials during the surge has not been previously reported. It suggests that the incoming administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump could find itself in a position to create its own barrier relatively quickly.
The first Trump administration began looking into a floating barrier late in its tenure, testing the same kind of buoys in 2020. The administration appeared to be moving forward when the coronavirus hit, and then Mr. Trump was voted out of office. President Biden halted construction of new border barriers at the start of his term.
But the continued exploration of a type of floating barrier by border officials into the middle of Mr. Biden’s term underscored the challenge presented by the high level of unauthorized crossings along the southern border at the time, with agents encountering more than 200,000 migrants each month.
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