On the U.S.-Mexico border, they are perhaps the most visible symbol of Gov. Greg Abbott’s effort to deter migrants from entering Texas: giant, orange buoys floating in the Rio Grande, designed to make it harder to cross.
They have also been contentious. The Biden administration has challenged them in court, and a district judge at one point sided with the administration, saying the buoys could pose a “threat to human life.”
But newly released agency emails and documents show that before the Biden administration fought the buoys, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials actually considered a large deployment of their own during an influx of migrants in late 2022. The idea was ultimately rejected before Mr. Abbott went ahead and did it himself.
The detailed consideration of a floating barrier by federal officials during the surge has not been previously reported. It suggests that the incoming administration of President-elect Donald J. Trump could find itself in a position to create its own barrier relatively quickly.
The first Trump administration began looking into a floating barrier late in its tenure, testing the same kind of buoys in 2020. The administration appeared to be moving forward when the coronavirus hit, and then Mr. Trump was voted out of office. President Biden halted construction of new border barriers at the start of his term.
But the continued exploration of a type of floating barrier by border officials into the middle of Mr. Biden’s term underscored the challenge presented by the high level of unauthorized crossings along the southern border at the time, with agents encountering more than 200,000 migrants each month.
And it could help guide the incoming administration in how to create a network of buoy barriers along the border, even as migrant encounters have sharply declined this year, to around 100,000 per month.
Already, since the November election, Mr. Abbott, the governor of Texas, has been expanding the state’s limited buoy barrier, despite an ongoing legal challenge from the Biden administration.
The buoy plans discussed by federal officials in 2022 were part of a practice of investigating possible operations and did not reflect any policy change, according to a person familiar with the discussions. They were ultimately not approved by the agency’s leadership, the person said, requesting anonymity to describe the internal deliberations. No reason was given for the decision not to go forward.
A spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection declined to comment.
After the Biden administration decided against the barrier, the idea was taken up by Mr. Abbott, who deployed a 1,000-foot barrier in summer 2023 in the border city of Eagle Pass at a section of the river that was a hot spot for illegal crossings.
The federal government quickly filed suit, arguing that the floating barrier — large orange balls linked together to form a chain that is difficult to cross — violated a federal law regulating navigable waters.
A district court in Austin sided with the Biden administration, granting an injunction to remove the barriers and finding that they could pose a “threat to human life.” Texas appealed, arguing in part that the law did not apply in the case of the Rio Grande and also that the barriers would prevent drownings by discouraging dangerous crossings.
By deterring crossings, the buoys were also presented by state officials as a kind of safety measure.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit sided with Texas, allowing the barriers to remain in place while the case goes forward in the trial court.
But months before the case was filed, officials from U.S. Customs and Border Protection had met with a pair of contracting companies in the border city of Del Rio, Texas, to “discuss the deployment of Safety Buoy Barrier,” according to a newly released September 2022 internal memo.
The memo emphasized that the barriers would aim to reduce drownings and deaths by migrants in treacherous waters. “Goal is to minimize death/injury to crossing migrants and responding Border Patrol agents,” the memo read.
Another document, which was released with significant redactions, described how the agency had identified a requirement for a “buoy barrier or similar capability for the maritime border environments in six southwest border sectors” from Texas to California. The precise locations and lengths of the barriers being considered were redacted.
At one point, the documents show, officials also drafted another memo to be sent by Chris Magnus, the commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protections, to Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, titled: “Request to execute the safety buoy barrier project in priority locations across the southwest border.”
The memo was never formally sent, according to the person familiar with the deliberations, and its contents were redacted in the document release.
“The floating marine barriers deployed by Texas were designed by Border Patrol to deny illegal entry,” said Andrew Mahaleris, Mr. Abbott’s press secretary. “When President Biden refused to use them, Texas stepped up and deployed the barriers.”
The border agency documents were part of a batch of nearly 2,000 pages of emails, photos and memos related to the Texas buoy barriers that were released this month in response to a freedom of information request.
According to the documents, one of the contractors that met with federal officials in 2022 was Cochrane USA, which makes a range of safety and security barriers and fences. The company went on to work with the state of Texas on its barrier.
In a filing by Texas as part of the federal court case, a project manager with Cochrane USA said the company had been hired to create the buoy barrier during the Trump administration, but that its contract was canceled after Mr. Biden came into office.
“The subject system was designed to be a mechanism to save lives and direct migrants” to lawful ports of entry by “deterring unlawful, dangerous crossings,” said the project manager, Loren Flossman, who previously worked for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
In addition to information about the buoy barriers, the release of documents also included brief emails documenting episodes in which migrants were trapped or injured in concertina wire placed along the river by the state of Texas to deter crossings. In some instances, border agents cut the wire or used heavy machinery to lift it out of the way and reach the migrants.
“C-wire was cut at 1615 hrs to free a mother and 2 kids,” read one email from October 2023.
“Agents had to cut the wire due to an elderly subject displaying signs of hypothermia,” read another from the following month.
The state of Texas objected to federal agents cutting the concertina wire and sued the federal government to force it to stop.
As in the buoy case, the Fifth Circuit mostly ruled in favor of Texas, but did allow for some cutting of the wire. In a decision last month, the court said that so long as Texas provided border agents “necessary access” to both sides of the concertina wire, the agents could not cut it.
