Customs and Border Protection to begin work filling gaps in the border wall near the Morelos Dam in Yuma County || Twitter
By Mar y Jo Pitzl || Arizona Republic ?USA TODAY NETWORK
Under pressure from a federal lawsuit, Gov. Doug Ducey has agreed to remove his makeshift border barrier of shipping containers in Yuma and Cochise counties.
The 182 stacked shipping containers erected in Yuma County will come down by Jan. 4, “to the extent feasible,” according to a stipulation Ducey and federal officials agreed to in the federal litigation. The U.S. departments of the Interior and Agriculture sued Arizona on Dec. 14 to stop the container placement.
The stipulation also noted the state will not interfere with plans for U.S.
Customs and Border Protection to begin work filling gaps in the border wall near the Morelos Dam in Yuma County.
That promise of federal action is what prompted Ducey to back down on his own border barrier construction, his office said. “Finally, after the situation on our border has turned into a full blown crisis, they’ve decided to act,” spokesman C.J. Karamargin said of the Biden administration. “Better late than never.”
The Biden administration in late July authorized resumption of work on a barrier in the Yuma area, reversing its stance that blocked any continuation of the wall construction started during Donald Trump’s presidency. Ducey in August started stacking shipping containers along the border.
The agreement makes no mention of when the state must remove the four miles of container wall it erected in the Coronado National Forest in Cochise County. Discussions on how to accomplish that will start within a week between state and U.S. Forest Service officials, according to the stipulation.
In all, the state has spent about $82 million from its Border Security Fund to purchase 1,167 shipping containers, transport them to southern Arizona and stack them up as a barrier — and as a statement to prod the federal government to act.
“None of this would have happened if President Biden didn’t call for a halt to the construction of the border wall two years ago,” Karamargin said. “They have since reversed that decision, and we’ve been hearing for months that they were going to resume construction on a permanent border wall.”
Russ McSpadden of the Center for Biological Diversity applauded the agreement, but added that the federal government has not given any indication it would build a wall in the Coronado National Forest or the San Rafael Valley in Cochise County. He called the shipping container barrier an illegal stunt that chewed up millions of taxpayer dollars.
“Nevertheless we’re very pleased to see him agree to remove his political stunt from Yuma and the Coronado National Forest,” McSpadden said.
He added the state must also restore the damage it caused to public lands, Cocopah tribal land, the watershed of the San Pedro River and the wildlife corridor that crosses the border.
“Every wash that they built over was a violation of the law,” he said, referring to the San Pedro watershed. The same applies for the trees that were cut down to make room for the containers, he said.
The center intervened in a lawsuit that Ducey filed in federal court this fall, hoping to prove environmental harm from the makeshift wall. It was unclear Thursday whether the state would drop its lawsuit, which sought a ruling to allow the state to continue to place the shipping containers on federal land to fill in gaps in an existing border wall.
What the state will do with the shipping containers once they are removed from southern Arizona is unclear.
Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs has suggested they might be usable as housing, addressing another pressing need facing Arizona.
