When it installed a chain of giant bright orange buoys on the Rio Grande earlier this summer, Texas hoped that its new “floating border wall" would slow the number of migrants using this shallow point of the river to wade into the U.S.

Instead, asylum seekers have simply been skirting the 1,000-foot barrier.

This stretch of the river, abutting Eagle Pass, Texas, has for the past few years been one of the most popular crossing spots for migrant families because Piedras Negras, the Mexican city across the border, is relatively safe. The water is also shallow enough to avoid the river’s most deadly currents. Blocking it off hasn’t deterred migrants, but it has redirected them to more dangerous points on the river.

“The proof is right there, the floating barrier is useless," said Norberto Muñoz, an impoverished Mexican pensioner who spends his days on the Mexican banks of the river fishing and collecting the few possessions migrants leave behind before crossing.

The floating barrier, located alongside acres of pecan orchards, has emerged as the most visible and disruptive element of a two-year campaign by Texas to take immigration enforcement - normally the domain of the federal government - into its own hands.

The chain of buoys installed in mid-July has sparked diplomatic complaints by Mexico that it violates water and boundary treaties. The Justice Department and Eagle Pass residents have sued Texas saying the state has no jurisdiction over the river. Experts on waterways have warned of its significant environmental risks.

Under what it calls Operation Lone Star, Texas has been arresting migrants crossing the Rio Grande on trespassing charges, subjecting them to weeks or months of jail time before turning them over to the Border Patrol. Despite stepped-up law enforcement at Eagle Pass, the area saw the largest increases in illegal crossings in the last two years, according to a review by The Wall Street Journal.

The barrier is formed by tethered buoys about 4-feet high, filled with foam and made with materials to withstand seawater conditions. The chain has blades affixed between buoys and is anchored by concrete blocks on the river bed. It cost about $1 million to install and can be easily moved and expanded, state officials have said.

“It’s a waste of money and far from effective," said Tom Schmerber, a Border Patrol veteran who serves as sheriff of Maverick County, where Eagle Pass is located. “I see it as a political stunt."

The buoys are having their intended effect because no one has tried to climb over them, said Abbott’s spokesman, Andrew Mahaleris. The purpose of the buoys - which Texas hopes to expand - is to redirect migrants seeking asylum to legal ports of entry, he added.

The state is separately suing the Biden administration to halt a program that allows migrants to make appointments for asylum requests at ports of entry through a smartphone app.

The Justice Department said in court that the federal government has sole jurisdiction over the river. Texas has responded with an untested legal argument: that the U.S. constitution allows states to defend their sovereignty in the case of a foreign invasion.

Late last month, a dozen migrants waded past the barrier and reached the U.S. bank to the unwelcoming sight of razor wire and metal fences also installed to discourage crossings. They looked for gaps, with some getting injured as they struggled through any openings, only for U.S. authorities to detain them, in many cases.

“The barrier complicates things, but it won’t stop a determined migrant," said Erick Villalobos, a hefty Venezuelan automotive engineer in Piedras Negras who attempted to cross the river at another point before. He decided to back off before reaching the U.S. bank after exhausting himself helping another migrant who nearly drowned.

Valeria Wheeler, the executive director of Mission: Border Hope, the lone migrant shelter in Eagle Pass, said she hasn’t noticed a drop in illegal crossings since Texas installed the barrier, but has seen many more migrants with injuries who took riskier routes across the river. More migrants are being dropped off at her shelter by the Border Patrol with sprained ankles, scrapes or other injuries. And the shelter has been receiving more migrants from a local hospital where they had surgery on their arms or legs, she said, after having navigated the lines of razor wire and fencing.

In a court filing in the Justice Department’s lawsuit, Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens said the buoys would likely mean agents end up rescuing more migrants from the water.

More than a hundred migrants have been found dead near Eagle Pass and Piedras Negras so far this year, according to Mexican officials familiar with cross-border data. Many had drowned farther upstream and their bodies were found when they floated down the river. Others perish from dehydration amid scorching heat in what has become one of the world’s deadliest border crossings.

For migrants, the river marks the last few yards of a 1,000-mile trek through inhospitable land, where they face extortion by local authorities, kidnapping, and risk of sexual assault by criminal groups.

Many migrant children arrive in Piedras Negras with acute respiratory infections from the extreme weather encountered during the long trek, said Daniel Macía, the Piedras Negras field chief of Doctors Without Borders, an international aid group that provided health and psychological assistance to almost 7,000 migrants in the area during the first half of the year. Adults suffer muscle injuries from extremely long walks and gastrointestinal problems due to poor hygiene conditions and mental stress, he said.

Close to 318,000 migrants have been apprehended by the Border Patrol in the sector that includes Eagle Pass between October and July, compared with 376,000 in the same period a year earlier, according to U.S. government data.

After a sharp drop in migrant apprehensions following a tightening in U.S. immigration policies in May, the number of illegal crossings has picked up in recent weeks.

Farther south, a new migrant surge is overwhelming the Darién Gap, the lawless jungle straddling the borders of Panama and Colombia that migrants from Venezuela and other countries must pass through en route to the U.S.

Almost 128,000 U.S.-bound migrants crossed the jungle during July and August, according to Panamanian government estimates. Many of them are arriving in Piedras Negras. So far this year, a record 324,000 U.S.-bound migrants have crossed through Panama, compared with 248,000 in all of 2022.

In Piedras Negras, hundreds of migrants request first aid, food and lodging at Frontera Digna, a shelter run by the Catholic church in a former school where classrooms now serve as dorms.

Before dusk late last month, dozens of migrants gathered in the old schoolyard and made their way to the river a few blocks away. The low water level, a result of the season’s light rains, makes crossing easier, said José Goycochea, a young migrant from the Venezuelan capital Caracas.

Goycochea said he recently defected from Venezuela’s special police force, which a United Nations panel said is responsible for scores of extrajudicial killings. He said he made some $20 a month in a country where a kilo of meat costs $6. Through bribes and extortion, he would bump his salary up to $100. The Journal wasn’t able to verify his circumstances.

He is one of the few migrants at the shelter who has an appointment to legally enter the U.S. and request asylum. Getting an appointment online through the CBP One app takes a long time and migrants don’t have enough money to wait, Goycochea said.

Many migrants arriving in the shelter are in a hurry to get to the Rio Grande.

“I want to go right now," said Martina Miranda, a 50-year-old homemaker from Honduras who arrived at the shelter with bruises on her face. She said she fell from a freight train she was traveling on as she fled a raid by Mexican immigration agents. The floating barrier won’t deter her, she said.

The Mexican government has delivered three diplomatic notes to Washington expressing concern about the humanitarian impact of the river barrier. It has also objected to how Texas has cleared land on islets in the Rio Grande to make it harder for migrants to cross over; Mexico considers the islets to be in the river’s international waters.

Texas subsequently had excavators on the Rio Grande move the barrier closer to the U.S. side after a survey by the International Boundary and Water Commission indicated that nearly 80% of the buoys were in Mexican territory. Mexican officials say the barrier still breaches treaty provisions that there should be nothing obstructing or modifying the river flow.

The barrier also increases the risk of environmental damage linked to flow changes and erosion. Flooding risks dislodging the buoys and washing away the concrete blocks anchoring them, hitting bridge foundations downstream, said Adriana Martinez, who conducts research on the impact of human activities on river systems at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Martinez grew up in Eagle Pass.

Jesse Fuentes, a retired schoolteacher and one of the Eagle Pass residents suing Texas over the river barrier, meanwhile, says the state isn’t serving local people’s best interests.

He opened a business eight years ago to teach kayaking and bring Eagle Pass residents closer to the Rio Grande by organizing river tours and tournaments.

“Then Texas state came in and took over the only public boat ramp," he said, a move that destroyed his business. Fuentes filed a lawsuit challenging the state’s initiatives on jurisdictional grounds after seeing the installation of the floating barrier.

“It looks like a third-world country," Fuentes said. “They don’t care because they don’t live here."

Write to Santiago Pérez at [email protected] and Michelle Hackman at [email protected]