Did anti-migration buoys close port in Laredo, Texas?

In July 2026, after heavy rain caused deadly flooding in Texas communities along the Rio Grande, a claim circulated online that more than 100 anti-migration buoys that broke loose as the water level rose closed the port in Laredo.

The rumor circulated on Threads (archived), while one popular Instagram account wrote, in part (archived):

Texas built a floating wall of blade studded, one ton buoys to maim people trying to cross the Rio Grande, and this week that same cruelty came roaring back to bite the state that built it, when over a hundred of them broke loose in flooding and slammed straight into Laredo, shutting down the nation’s number one trade port.

While local media reports and footage from a local photographer showed that floodwaters did sweep a number of large orange buoys down the Rio Grande, the loose flotation devices did not fully close Port Laredo in southern Texas, as claimed. The port’s bridge for commercial traffic was closed, but city officials redirected such traffic to another bridge. Therefore, we’ve rated this claim a mixture of true and false information.

Local media reported that the buoys were due to be deployed as an anti-immigration tool stopping people from crossing the Rio Grande.

Laredo officials temporarily suspended (archived) commercial traffic on the World Trade Bridge on July 19, when the buoys reached the city. The World Trade Bridge is one of four bridges that facilitates international trade and traffic between Laredo and Nuevo Laredo in Mexico. Laredo officials redirected (archived) commercial traffic to the Colombia Solidarity Bridge while the World Trade Bridge was closed, allowing port operations to continue, though they did acknowledge that the World Trade Bridge’s closure would cause disruption.

Snopes asked the Texas Department of Emergency Management, Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Homeland Security exactly how many buoys came loose, what their route of travel was and about claims the buoys each weighed one ton. 

The departments did not answer these questions. On July 21, CBP and the DHS sent identical statements via email that read:

As a result of heavy rains and rapidly rising water this past week, buoys in the process of being deployed by a contractor into the Rio Grande River were swept away. All of the buoys remained under the control of the contractors and had not been transferred to U.S. Border Patrol custody.

After several sections accumulated near the World Trade Bridge, traffic operations were temporarily suspended out of an abundance of caution, but the operations have since reopened. There are no reported injuries or damage to the bridge. Contractors are working to recover remaining buoys.

The city of Laredo said (archived) the World Trade Bridge reopened July 20 after being closed as a “precautionary public safety measure.” The city of Eagle Pass, which had temporarily closed (archived) two bridges that were affected by the runaway buoys, said (archived) it temporarily opened one of its bridges on July 17. By July 21, the city’s cameras showed cars on both bridges.

Snopes contacted Port Laredo to ask whether the port was ever fully closed while officials dealt with the loose buoys and how the temporary closure affected traffic at the port. We await a reply.

The buoys that floodwaters swept down the Rio Grande on or around July 16 appeared similar in shape and size to buoys (archived) that the Border Patrol in Laredo used to deter migrants arriving from Mexico from crossing the river. The Border Patrol in Laredo said on Facebook it was deploying its buoys in May. 

The agency did not reply when asked whether the buoys swept away in the July flooding were the same model as the one the agency used in Laredo. We asked the city of Laredo if the buoys that got stuck on the World Trade Bridge were the ones that came from Eagle Pass or the ones installed locally. We await a reply.

In June 2023, the state of Texas deployed its own buoys that were different from the ones floodwaters swept away in July 2026. At the time, Gov. Greg Abbott said the state put buoys on the Rio Grande alongside razor wire to deter migrants from crossing the waterway.

Officials reportedly removed the state’s buoys from the river before the flooding. We contacted Abbott’s office to confirm this and await a reply.

At least two people died when heavy rain caused flash floods in the areas surrounding Uvalde, Texas, around July 16. 

In 2025, at least 139 people died in flooding in Texas Hill Country and Concho Valley, north of Uvalde. The deaths included 25 campers and three staff members at Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian summer camp, who died when flash flooding overwhelmed the camp in the early hours of July 4.

For further reading, Snopes investigated several rumors regarding the 2025 Texas floods. 

Sources