Full Fifth Circuit Hears Arguments Over the Fate Of Texas' Floating Border Wall
BY TYLER DURDEN
FRIDAY, MAY 17, 2024 - 06:20 PM
Authored by Bill Pan via The Epoch Times,
The legal saga over the fate of a 1,000-foot floating barrier on the Rio Grande has entered a new phase.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott last summer ordered the deployment of the string of giant orange buoys in the river near Eagle Pass. As a part of Operation Lone Star, the Republican governor’s signature initiative aimed to curb illegal border crossings from Mexico into his state, the buoys are anchored to the bottom and themselves rotate so that people can’t climb over or swim under them.
Following the installation of the barrier, the Biden administration sued Texas, demanding that it be taken down. Attorneys for Texas invoked the Constitutional right for each state to defend itself against “invasion”—in Texas’ case, by those illegally crossing the river, but that self-defense argument was rejected by the lower court, as did by a split three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Arguing on Wednesday before a full, 17-member Fifth Circuit, attorneys for both Texas and the U.S. Department of Justice largely focused on the question of whether Mr. Abbott’s floating wall violates a Reconstruction-era law regulating the use of waterways.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/...ng-border-wall
