AUSTIN, Texas – In a meeting with the agency’s oversight board, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Freeman Martin told leaders that the federal government will take over the buoy barrier in the Rio Grande.
Texas installed the first set of buoys in June 2023, a thousand-foot chain of orange barriers held down by concrete blocks.
Gov. Greg Abbott pledged to install more buoys after the election, and on the day President Donald Trump was inaugurated, workers installed another section.
At the end of an Operation Lone Star update, Martin said the following:
“In a conversation with the federal government, just in the last couple of days, they love the idea, and they’re going to make a large investment and take over the buoy barrier operations in Texas, which is going to be a huge benefit to us.”
We know the first section of buoys cost the State of Texas about a million dollars. Details about the most recent installation have not been made available.
News 4 and Fox SA reached out to Texas DPS about how this will change operations, and if the “large investment” means the state will be reimbursed for the buoys.
As we’ve previously reported, Border Patrol tested the idea of a buoy barrier years before Texas rolled out its own.
From June 1-4, 2020, Border Patrol set up a testing scenario for different types of barriers along with Cochrane US, the manufacturer.
Redacted photos from the trials show several types of buoys lined up in a pool.
So why didn’t Border Patrol roll out a floating barrier at that time?
In 2024, we sat down with Rodney Scott, who was the Border Patrol Chief from 2020 to 2021.
“The administration changed,” Scott explained. “All that got shut down before actual contracts were written, before it was actually deployed operationally.”
Gov. Abbott’s office acknowledged the influence in a statement Friday:
“Texas finally has a partner in the White House, and Governor Abbott continues to work closely with the Trump Administration to secure the border. The floating marine barriers deployed by Texas were originally designed by Border Patrol to deny illegal entry. When former President Biden refused to use them, Texas stepped up and deployed the barriers to deter and repel illegal river crossings – these have been so successful that not a single migrant has attempted to cross over them. — Andrew Mahaleris, press secretary.
We’ve reached out to CBP and Texas DPS for comment on this story and will update if we receive a response.
