AUSTIN — A dead person was found Wednesday stuck to the buoys Texas officials installed at the Mexican border and which are the heart of a Justice Department lawsuit that seeks to have them removed.
Mexico Foreign Affairs Secretary Alicia Bárcena said in a press release that officials with the Texas Department of Public Safety alerted the Mexican Consulate in Eagle Pass that a person was found deceased. The cause of death and nationality of the person are not known publicly, the release noted.
Bárcena went on to sharply criticize the buoys, saying they violate Mexico’s “sovereignty” and that people in her country are “worried over the impact on human rights and the safety of migrants,” the release said in Spanish.
A spokesperson for DPS did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Wednesday night.
DPS officials announced the buoys in June — a measure that’s part of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security initiative — and began installing them along the Rio Grande in the Eagle Pass region in early July.
But a few weeks later, the federal Justice Department sued Abbott over the buoys, accusing the three-term Republican governor of violating federal law and ignoring requests from the government to have the buoys inspected.
Abbott continues defending the floating barrier installation and says he’s protecting Texas’ borders by deterring migrants from crossing illegally. A spokesperson for Abbott did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Wednesday.
The reported death is the first publicly known instance of the buoys being connected to a fatality.
Democratic lawmakers have called the barriers “death traps.”
At a press conference in June announcing the barriers — which are strung together and each measure 4-feet in diameter — Abbott said the goal was to stop migrants from considering crossing the Rio Grande when they come across the floating barrier.
DPS Director Col. Steve McCraw said at the same press conference that they did not want people getting hurt from the buoys.
Mexican officials have sharply criticized Abbott’s border efforts, known as Operation Lone Star. His two-year operation has cost close to $10 billion.
In June, Bárcena sent a diplomatic note to U.S. officials asserting that razor wire along the Texas border and the buoys violate two treaties both countries signed in 1944 and 1970.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has called the state’s tactics to deter migrants “inhumane “ and said he would not meet with Abbott.
The Justice Department in its lawsuit wants a judge to force Texas to remove the buoys from the Rio Grande and to refrain from installing any structures in the river without permits from the federal government.
