TEXAS — The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday filed a motion for a preliminary injunction in its case against Texas, seeking the removal of the buoy barrier the state placed in the Rio Grande and for any new construction to be blocked.
According to CNN, the department is asking the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas for removal within 10 days of the requested order.
The Justice Department on Monday sued Texas and Gov. Greg Abbott over the barrier.
The lawsuit asks a federal judge in Austin to force Texas to remove a roughly 1,000-foot line of bright orange, wrecking ball-sized buoys that the Biden administration says raises humanitarian and environmental concerns. The suit claims that Texas unlawfully installed the barrier without permission between the border cities of Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras, Mexico.
According to CNN, in order for the injunction to be granted, attorneys will need to convince the court that the lawsuit is likely to succeed on its merits. The motion argues that the floating barrier interferes “with the federal government’s ability to carry out its operations on the Rio Grande."
Speaking with Fox News on Monday, Abbott said Texas will take the matter all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if need be and that the floating barrier and other obstacles “have turned away and repelled tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people who try to enter into the United States illegally.”
Abbott additionally dismissed the DOJ’s claims.
“The fact of the matter is they’re using some obscure statute to try to stop us from continuing to deploy those buoys. It’s not ground in law whatsoever,” he said. “We believe we have the right to do so and we will take this lawsuit all the way to the United States Supreme Court.