Arizona to remove shipping container wall from Mexico border
Published:Thursday | December 22, 2022 | 12:41 PM
PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Governor Doug Ducey will take down a makeshift wall made of shipping containers at the Mexico border, settling a lawsuit and political tussle with the US government over trespassing on federal lands.
The Biden administration and the Republican governor entered into an agreement that Arizona will cease installing the containers in any national forest, according to court documents filed Wednesday in US District Court in Phoenix.
The agreement also calls for Arizona to remove the containers that were already installed in the remote San Rafael Valley, in southeastern Cochise County, by January 4 without damaging any natural resources. State agencies will have to consult with US Forest Service representatives.
Ducey has long maintained that the shipping containers were a temporary fixture. Even before the lawsuit, he wanted the federal government to say when it would fill any remaining gaps in the permanent border wall, as it announced it would a year ago.
“For more than a year, the federal government has been touting their effort to resume construction of a permanent border barrier. Finally, after the situation on our border has turned into a full blown crisis, they've decided to act,” CJ Karamargin, Ducey's spokesman said. “Better late than never.”
“Final details are still being worked out on how much it will cost and when it will start,” Karamargin told The Associated Press.
The resolution comes two weeks before Democrat Katie Hobbs, who opposes the construction, takes over as governor.
The work placing up to 3,000 containers at a cost of $95 million was about a third complete, but protesters concerned about its impact on the environment held up work in recent days.
Meanwhile, limits on asylum seekers hoping to enter the U.S. had been set to expire Wednesday before conservative-leaning states sought the Supreme Court's help to keep them in place. The Biden administration has asked the court to lift the Trump-era restrictions, but not before Christmas. It's not clear when the court might rule on the matter.
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