Texas has moved a floating barrier on the U.S.-Mexico border closer to American soil.

The lawsuit alleges that four migrants who were arrested under Operation Lone Star remained locked up as long as six weeks after their criminal trespassing cases were dismissed or they served their sentences.

Long before a Chinese spy balloon captivated the U.S. last month, Kyle Bass foresaw a foreign danger planned for the skies above his Texas property.

The Texas Facilities Commission continues negotiating with private landowners for the rights to build segments of a state-funded border wall. Without these agreements, the state can’t move forward with building more segments of the wall.

In a 50-page complaint to the U.S. Department of Justice, immigrant and civil rights groups argued Gov. Greg Abbott’s initiative to arrest migrants on trespassing charges is discriminatory.

The Texas Department of Public Safety and U.S. Border Patrol insist the 11 men, arrested under Gov. Greg Abbott’s border initiative, weren’t set up for trespassing charges. But a county attorney decided the case was too muddled to prosecute.

The almost 250 detained men, whose immediate release was ordered three days ago, are expected to be turned over to federal authorities to be detained again, deported or freed in the United States while their cases are being resolved.

The men were arrested by state troopers and held for weeks without facing formal charges, a violation of state law. It’s the latest misfire in Abbott’s hastily assembled effort to involve Texas in patrolling the border.

Defense attorneys have started asking courts to set migrants free because local justice systems, overwhelmed by arrests under Gov. Greg Abbott's border security push, are routinely violating state law and constitutional due process rights.

Officials said immigration authorities weren’t interested in taking migrants who had no criminal conviction into federal custody. But without documentation, at least one newly released migrant soon found himself back in detention.

Under Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security push, Texas state police have arrested hundreds of migrants in the conservative county, usually after spotting them on cargo trains or walking remote ranch lands. Sent to a state prison retooled as an immigration jail, many men were left without lawyers for weeks.

After more than three weeks in jail, a trespassing charge against the man was dropped because state troopers shouldn’t have arrested him under Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security push. He wound up in bureaucratic limbo for days as federal agencies passed the responsibility for resolving his immigration status.

The governor's decision to go all in on border security is evolving rapidly, and many of those on the ground don't know how it's going to work.

Border-crossing immigrants are being arrested by Texas troopers on state charges like trespassing, and they’re starting to trickle into a prison emptied to house them.