Border Crisis: Texas to Place Floating Barrier in Rio Grande to Curb Illegal Immigration

The state of Texas will place a 1,000-foot buoy barrier along the Rio Grande river to disrupt illegal immigration, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said during a press conference Thursday.

Abbott said the new floating line of buoys will begin “pretty much immediately” in Eagle Pass, Texas, during the press conference. Abbott made the announcement while signing a series of border security bills passed by the Texas legislature, which awarded $5.1 billion in funding to the state.

“What we’re doing right now, we’re securing the border at the border,” Abbott said. “What these buoys will allow us to do is to prevent people from even getting to the border.”

Border Patrol was already looking to use the water barrier, Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Director Steve McCraw said.

“We don’t want people to come across and continue to put themselves at risk when they go between the ports of entry,” McCraw said.

“Because of the water and the buoyancy of these, it’s very difficult to be able to go through these, it’s very difficult to come over. Now, there’s things you can do, and I won’t tell you exactly what to do and what time to do it, but there’s ways to overcome it, but it takes great effort, it takes specialized skills and equipment to do it,” McCraw added.

Texas has already deployed razor wire on certain areas of the border on land and the state’s National Guard has the assistance of authorities from 11 other Republican states.

The latest deployment of buoys will cost less than $1 million, McCraw said.