By Daniel Wiessner | SOURCE: THE GAZETTE
(Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday said it would reconsider a recent decision requiring Texas to remove a 1,000-foot-long (305-meter) floating barrier it had placed in the Rio Grande river to deter migrants from illegally crossing the border with Mexico.
The decision by the full 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans sets aside a divided three-judge panel’s December ruling, which had sided with the Biden administration and said that the state could not install the string of buoys without permission from the federal government.
That ruling was a setback for Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, who has strongly criticized Democratic President Joe Biden’s handling of record numbers of migrants crossing the border illegally.
The 5th Circuit said it would hear arguments in the case in May. Most of the court’s 17 active judges are appointees of Republican presidents, but two of the three judges who decided the case in December were appointed by Democrats.