Abbott ‘absolutely’ willing to take floating barrier legal fight to Supreme Court

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said Sunday that he is “absolutely” willing to take a legal fight involving a water barrier in the Rio Grande river to the Supreme Court if it escalates to that point.

Abbott’s statement comes days after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled 2-1 to decline the Texas governor’s request to reverse a lower court decision that had ordered the removal of the 1,000-foot-long string of buoys placed at the river in July. The court claimed the buoys could not be deployed due to the waterway being categorized as a navigable waterway; the governor argued that the waterway is “not navigable by definition” and is not used by boats for transportation means.

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“What Texas is going to be doing, and we will be seeking what’s called an unbuffed ruling by the entire district court of appeals, and if we lose there, we will take that to the United States Supreme Court because we know Texas has the right to legally deploy those buoys in the water to prevent people from entering our country and our state illegally,” Abbott said on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.

When asked for confirmation that he would take the state’s fight to keep the buoys deployed all the way to the Supreme Court, Abbott responded with a firm “absolutely.” He also said he plans to keep the buoys in place and that Texas has either already built or is working on more border wall than what the Trump administration completed.

Abbott added that he was surprised that a recent bill to impeach Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) had failed, and he called Mayorkas the person most deserving of impeachment in the current administration. It comes as a majority of likely U.S. voters would support an impeachment movement on Mayorkas.

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The recent ruling by the court was a victory for the Biden administration in its pursuit to remove the floating barriers, arguing they unlawfully block navigation and cause humanitarian concerns. Abbott said Friday that he and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton would seek an immediate en banc hearing, which would convene all the court’s judges to rehear the case if granted.

Border security has been a major focus for Republican lawmakers, especially for those who live in border states. Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake stated Sunday that Arizona has “the worst border” in the country and that a majority of the illegal crossings are made by adults, which she referred to as a “Bidenvasion.”