{"id":384761,"date":"2026-07-24T05:12:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T05:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/384761\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T05:12:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T05:12:20","slug":"breakaway-border-buoys-disrupt-rio-grande-bridges-during-texas-flooding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/384761\/","title":{"rendered":"Breakaway border buoys disrupt Rio Grande bridges during Texas flooding"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sign up for TPR Today<\/a>, Texas Public Radio’s newsletter that brings our top stories to your inbox each morning.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of federal border buoys broke loose during recent flooding along the Rio Grande, disrupting traffic at international bridges and intensifying concerns that the floating barriers could endanger critical infrastructure and public safety.<\/p>\n

The high water was the first major test of a floating border barrier installed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The system consists of interconnected orange cylinders that are approximately 15 feet long, four feet high and weigh about a ton each.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe buoys were definitely in the water, could not be retrieved and were on their way down the Rio Grande,\u201d said Amerika Garcia-Grewal, co-director of the Frontera Federation and an Eagle Pass resident who has been tracking the barriers.<\/p>\n

Officials in Eagle Pass temporarily stopped traffic on the city\u2019s two international bridges as the buoys passed underneath.<\/p>\n

Eagle Pass is also home to about 2,000 feet of a separate floating barrier installed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott under Operation Lone Star. Those spherical buoys have been in the river since 2023.<\/p>\n

Abbott said during a news conference that the state\u2019s barrier remained in place during the flooding.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe state buoys remain intact where they were located initially and have not moved,\u201d Abbott said. \u201cThey\u2019re being reinforced as we speak to make sure they\u2019re not moved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although the state buoys did not float downstream, Garcia-Grewal said parts of the barrier appeared damaged and partially dislodged after the flood. She described the front of the barrier as curled inward \u201clike a fiddlehead fern\u201d and said its unsecured rear section was moving back and forth in the current like the tail of a dog.<\/p>\n

\"Texas<\/p>\n

Frontera Federation\/Courtesy photo<\/p>\n

Texas border buoys damaged after July 2026 flood <\/p>\n

She said the damage raised concerns that some of the state buoys could eventually break free and become another downstream hazard.<\/p>\n

That is what happened to an estimated 600 federal buoys in the Eagle Pass area.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s such a fiasco,\u201d said Tricia Cortez, executive director of the Rio Grande International Study Center.<\/p>\n

Cortez said many of the federal buoys became lodged in the river. Others crossed into Mexico, where some were reportedly recovered by residents and sold as scrap metal.<\/p>\n

Her organization warned about the potential danger when the Trump administration announced plans to deploy hundreds of miles of floating barriers along the Rio Grande.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of this was already predicted,\u201d Cortez said. \u201cOur organization commissioned a risk assessment of the wall and buoy system here on the Rio Grande.\u201d<\/p>\n

The assessment found that floodwaters could break the barriers apart and send the heavy buoys downstream, where they could strike bridges and other infrastructure.<\/p>\n

That concern became a reality in Laredo when dislodged buoys became trapped against support columns beneath the World Trade Bridge.<\/p>\n

Laredo Mayor Victor Trevi\u00f1o said officials temporarily stopped traffic so the bridge could be inspected.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause the buoys were lodged under the bridge, that was concerning to us,\u201d Trevi\u00f1o said. \u201cSo, we had to pause traffic.\u201d<\/p>\n

The World Trade Bridge is one of the country\u2019s busiest commercial crossings. Trevi\u00f1o said approximately $1.2 million in trade passes through it every minute.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is important to the economy of the United States \u2014 all the merchandise that goes through,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Inspectors found no damage, and traffic resumed. But Democratic U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro of San Antonio said the incident could have had a much worse outcome.<\/p>\n

Castro called the floating-border-wall-project poorly conceived and badly executed. He is seeking a congressional investigation into the contracts, the failure of the barriers and what federal officials will do to prevent a similar incident.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis work was done in a shoddy way, obviously,\u201d Castro said, criticizing the contracts awarded for the project.<\/p>\n

Castro also questioned whether the barriers have had any meaningful effect on unlawful immigration.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis whole thing was a big show,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was done completely incompetently.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trevi\u00f1o also questioned the need for the buoys, saying unlawful river crossings near Laredo have become rare. He said his greater concern is what the barriers could do during the next flood.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow we have real-time evidence,\u201d Trevi\u00f1o said, \u201cof what happened with the buoys when they got dislodged.\u201d<\/p>\n

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that contractors are working to recover the remaining buoys. The agency did not say whether it plans to redesign, reinforce or reconsider the floating barrier system before the Rio Grande floods again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sign up for TPR Today, Texas Public Radio’s newsletter that brings our top stories to your inbox each…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":384762,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-384761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/384762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}