CBP says it’s not responsible for runaway border buoys

HARLINGEN, Texas (Border Report) — The nation’s largest inland commercial port reopened unscathed Monday after being temporarily closed due to loose border buoys streaming and getting caught underneath it as Rio Grande floodwaters raged during the weekend.

Laredo Mayor Victor Treviño said the World Trade Bridge in Laredo, Texas, did not appear to have suffered any structural damage from the hundreds of border buoys that came down the river. The bridge typically carries up to 15,000 to 20,000 vehicles every day and is responsible for almost $1 billion in cross-border trade daily.

The mayor says the bridge had been temporarily closed out of caution to protect the public.

He says efforts by federal, state, local and private partners to retrieve the 1-ton buoys were going well, and that the waters were beginning to recede — down from a crest of 18 feet on Sunday.

Sources told Border Report some loose buoys have been seen downriver as far as Zapata County — that’s over 160 miles from Eagle Pass, Texas, where the bulk of the buoys originated.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection told Border Report the federal government was not responsible for the lost buoys because they had not taken possession of the waterborne barrier, yet.

“As a result of heavy rains and rapidly rising water this past week, buoys in the process of being deployed by a contractor into the Rio Grande River were swept away. All of the buoys remained under the control of the contractors and had not been transferred to U.S. Border Patrol custody,” a CBP spokesperson told Border Report on Monday.

On Friday, a CBP spokesperson told Border Report that “these were not buoys that were already deployed and anchored in the river.”

However, photos and videos show many of the cylindrical buoys were already attached in a string as they came downriver, and that’s what caused the most pileups under the World Trade Bridge, as well as several other international bridges in South Texas.

“After several sections accumulated near the World Trade Bridge, traffic operations were temporarily suspended out of an abundance of caution, but the operations have since reopened. There are no reported injuries or damage to the bridge. Contractors are working to recover remaining buoys,” the CBP spokesperson said.

U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, says the federal government, which initiated the buoys by arguing they were necessary to stop illegal immigration, needs to take responsibility for what happened.

“CBP immediately faulted the contractor but at the end of the day they got hired; they got paid literally billions of dollars, not millions, billions of dollars to do this. So even though there was a contractor, it’s still the federal responsibility,” Cuellar told Border Report on Monday.

Cuellar is ranking member of the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, which oversees funding for the Department of Homeland Security, and he opposes federal funds for the border buoys and border wall.

He says he also wants information from the International Boundary and Water Commission, which oversees the international river, as to why they signed off on the buoys being put in the Rio Grande.

“It gave the approval,” Cuellar said. “I want to say, ‘Hey, doesn’t this cause you some problems from what we just saw here with this flood?'”

Cuellar says that compared to flooding in 2010, this past week’s event was very moderate. But the hundreds of buoys coming downriver was a serious concern, and something they didn’t have to deal with in 2010.

“This is nothing compared to the 2010 flood,” he said, adding that if the same buoys had been in the river in 2010 “they would have not lasted one bit at all.”

Sandra Sanchez can be reached at [email protected].

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