A UNITED STATES federal appeals court on Thursday allowed Texas’s floating barrier on a section of the Rio Grande to stay in place a day after a judge called the buoys a threat to the safety of migrants and relations between the US and Mexico.

The order by the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals puts on hold a ruling that would have required the state to move the large buoys by next week.

The barrier is near the Texas border city of Eagle Pass, where the right-wing Republican Governor Greg Abbott has authorised a series of aggressive measures in the name of discouraging migrants from crossing into the US.

The stay granted by the New Orleans court lets the barrier remain in the water while the legal challenge continues.

The lawsuit was brought by the US Justice Department in a rare instance of President Joe Biden’s administration going to court to challenge Texas’s brutal border policies.

On Wednesday, US district judge David Ezra of Austin ordered the state to move the roughly 1,000-foot barrier out of the middle of the Rio Grande to the bank, calling it a threat to human life and an obstruction on the waterway. 

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador celebrated the original order saying the barrier was a “violation of our sovereignty.”

But Texas told the appeals court the buoys reroute migrants to ports of entry and that no injury from them has been reported. 

Last month, a body was found near the buoys, but Texas officials claimed that preliminary investigations indicated the person had drowned before coming near the barriers.

Eagle Pass is part of a border patrol sector that has seen the second-highest number of migrant crossings this fiscal year, with about 270,000 “encounters.”

The Biden administration has said that illegal border crossings have declined since new immigration rules took effect in May.