Arizona Governor Doug Ducey and the State of Arizona have agreed to halt construction of a makeshift shipping container border wall after President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice filed a lawsuit accusing Ducey of illegally building the border barrier on federal land.
According to a court document filed last week, Arizona agreed to stop building the border barrier and remove all shipping containers that have already been installed.
” By January 4, 2023, to the extent feasible and so as not to cause damage to United States’ lands, properties, and natural resources, Arizona will remove all previously installed shipping containers and associated equipment, materials, vehicles, and other objects from the United States’ properties in the U.S. Border Patrol Yuma Sector, including from lands over which the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation holds an easement on the Cocopah Indian Tribe’s West Reservation,” the agreement states.
In October, Arizona officials told the Biden administration that it was within its rights to build the border barrier. At the time, Ducey’s spokesman C.J. Karamargin said, “The state of Arizona has no intention to remove the containers.”
“The governor takes his duty to protect Arizona very seriously, so the containers aren’t going anywhere,” he added.
The Biden administration’s effort to block state border security comes as more than 500,000 illegal immigrants crossed the US-Mexico border in just the first 74 days of the 2023 fiscal year.
The more than half a million illegal immigrant encounters in just over two months took place after the U.S. saw a record number of border apprehensions in fiscal year 2022, which ended on Sept. 30. According to CBP data, agents recorded 2,378,944 apprehensions, expulsions and “inadmissibles” in the 2022 fiscal year.
Earlier this year, Vice President Kamala Harris insisted that the U.S.-Mexico border is secure despite the record-breaking number of illegal immigrants entering the U.S.
“We have a secure border in that that is a priority for any nation, including ours and our administration. But there are still a lot of problems that we are trying to fix given the deterioration that happened over the last four years,” Harris said.
