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Border crossings in Texas have fallen dramatically, but that isn’t stopping the Trump administration from signing contracts worth about $1.9 billion to erect more barriers in the state, including 80 miles of buoy barriers floating in the Rio Grande.
While 17 miles of buoy barriers planned near Brownsville had already been made public, newly signed contracts announced this week show the administration is adding 63 miles of the barriers to the river in and around Eagle Pass, the city that became the site of record border crossings in 2022.
And it's only the beginning. The Trump administration intends to rely heavily on buoy barriers along the river, with plans to install an additional 458 miles, though they have yet to award contracts to firms to do the construction.
It’s a dramatic shift from two years ago, when President Joe Biden’s administration sued Gov. Greg Abbott to block his deployment of 1,000 feet of the buoy barriers. The barriers are made up orange buoys strung together that are each 4 feet each in diameter and rotate if people try to climb or get around them.
While they are meant to deter people from crossing the river into the U.S., critics have warned the buoys are a danger to people and to recreational boats navigating along the waterway.
Abbott was able to win court battles against the Biden administration to keep his buoys in the river, and now that Trump is in office and planning to use the buoys himself, the lawsuit seems to be on the brink of resolution.
In February, the federal court hearing the case officially put the Texas buoy barrier fight into abeyance, meaning the case has been put on hold. In September, the court announced that the state and federal attorneys are in “ongoing” discussions to resolve the case without any further trials.
Abbott has repeatedly said that despite the border being vastly more secure than it was during the Biden administration, Texas and the federal government have to keep building up the border barriers to dissuade people from trying to cross in the future.
“If we let the foot off the gas, that’s just going to send the signal that once again, it's going to be easier getting in,” Abbott told a group of Texas sheriffs during a meeting in April, explaining why he was still adding more border barriers and keeping Texas troopers on the border.
Data from U.S. Homeland Security show how dramatically border crossings have slowed. In August 2022, border patrol reported more than 50,000 migrant encounters in the sector of the border that includes Eagle Pass. In August 2024 it had fallen to less than 8,000. And this August, the Trump administration reported just over 600 encounters for the whole month.
 | Jeremy Wallace, Texas politics reporter |
Who's Up, Who's Down
A daily stock market-style report on key players in Texas politics.
Up: Illinois.
A Chicago federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration's federalization and deployment of Texas troops in Illinois. U.S. District Judge April Perry issued a two-week restraining order against the mobilization, saying in court that she saw "no credible evidence that there is a danger of a rebellion in the state of Illinois,” and that the show of force violated the 10th and 14th Amendments.
Down: Federal Government Workers.
We are now 10 days into the government shutdown and Senate negotiators don’t appear any closer to a deal to end the stalemate. And workers are about to feel the pain as they miss their first paychecks next week. While many NASA employees and others have been furloughed around the state, U.S. soldiers stationed on the 15 bases in Texas continue to report for duty, but aren't getting paid. “The longer this goes on, the more the American people realize that Democrats own this shutdown,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said during a speech on the Senate floor on Thursday. But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., responded in his own speech later that it was Trump and Republicans who are “playing with people's lives.”
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Photo by: Susan Barber
It doesn’t take much imagination to guess the reaction of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker to Gov. Greg Abbott letting Texas soldiers be sent to the Windy City. I’ll have their reactions and Abbott’s counterpunch on this week's episode of the Texas Take Podcast, along with insights from reporters Bayliss Wagner and Benjamin Wermund. Plus reporter John Moritz joins the show to talk about U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s potential in the U.S. Senate race and what Wesley Hunt’s entry into the GOP primary with Sen. John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton will mean in that race.
What else I'm reading
Vice President JD Vance is turning up the pressure on Indiana Republicans to follow Texas’s lead and redraw the state’s congressional districts to maybe produce another GOP-leaning seat in their state. Vance flew to Indianapolis to meet with Republican lawmakers there who have so far not moved much to redraw their state’s district lines. The Indianapolis Star reports that Indiana Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray told reporters on Friday afternoon that lawmakers had a "productive meeting" with Vance but didn’t provide much more detail about what happens next.
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