Nearly 80% of the controversial floating barrier Texas state officials assembled in the middle of the Rio Grande to deter migrant crossings is technically on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border, according to a federal government survey released on Tuesday.

The river barrier, assembled near the Texas border town of Eagle Pass, has come under national and international scrutiny, including from the Mexican government, which has strongly voiced its objections to the buoys.

But Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said preliminary information indicated that the first person found dead had "drowned upstream from the marine barrier and floated into the buoys."

Abbott and other Texas officials have insisted the buoys are necessary to stop migrants from entering the U.S. illegally, and the state has refuted claims it violated federal law and international treaties when it set up the floating barriers without permission from the Biden administration or Mexico.

The survey could add a new legal dimension to the Biden administration lawsuit, which argues that Texas violated a longstanding law governing navigable U.S. waterways when it set up the buoys without federal permission.

Unlawful crossings along the southern border fell to the lowest level in two years in June, a drop the Biden administration attributed to a set of asylum restrictions and programs that allow migrants to enter the U.S. legally.

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