Eagle Pass City Council members unanimously denied Gibraltar Construction Company’s request for permission to use Shelby Park as a staging area for the installation of buoys in the Rio Grande, despite more than 600 buoys already being stored in the park.
According to Border Report, the construction company offered the city of Eagle Pass $1,000 a month to lease 2.3 acres for one year to store “hundreds of orange, cylindrical buoys and equipment for the 62-mile waterborne barrier” it was hired by the federal government to install in the Rio Grande.
The U.S. Customs and Borders Protection website says that the buoys are part of the “smart wall” technology intended to stop illegal aliens from entering the country.
At Tuesday evening’s City Council meeting, City Manager Homero Balderas was questioned about the buoys already being stored in the park and “why he had spoken with the company without the council’s permission.”
In response, Balderas said the first thing he thought of when he was approached about the property was the state’s previous takeover of the park.
“My immediate thought was, if we react to this and immediately tell them [the federal government] no, then they could perhaps do the same,” said Balderas.
During the Biden administration, Shelby Park had been a point of contention in the state’s fight to protect the southern border.
Gov. Greg Abbott seized the park in January 2024, deploying National Guard troops, DPS officers, and barriers to secure the area and denying federal officers access to it.
Attorney General Ken Paxton denied then-Department of Homeland Security General Counsel Jonathan Meyer’s demand to allow federal agents into the park to seemingly remove razor-wire fence barricades.
In August of 2023, Eagle Pass City Council members voted to change Shelby Park’s status from private to public. The previous private status allowed state and federal officers to catch and detain illegal aliens attempting to enter the U.S. for criminal trespass or other charges.
