PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey will tear down a makeshift wall made of shipping containers on the border with Mexico, settling a lawsuit and political dispute with the U.S. government over the invasion of federal land.
PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey will tear down a makeshift wall made of shipping containers on the border with Mexico, settling a lawsuit and political dispute with the U.S. government over the invasion of federal land.
The Biden administration and the Republican governor have reached an agreement that Arizona will stop installing the containers in any national forest, according to court documents filed Wednesday in the US District Court in Phoenix.
The agreement also requires Arizona to remove containers already installed in the remote San Rafael Valley in southeastern Cochise County by January 4 without harming any natural resources. State agencies will need to consult with representatives of the US Forest Service.
Ducey has long maintained that shipping containers were a temporary fixture. Even before the lawsuit, he wanted the federal government to say when it would fill the remaining gaps in the permanent border wall, as he announced a year ago.
“For more than a year, the federal government has been promoting its effort to resume construction of a permanent border barrier. Finally, after the situation at our border became an all-out crisis, they decided to act,” said CJ Karamargin, a spokesman for Ducey. “Better late than never.”
“Final details are still being worked out about 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 office as governor.
The federal government filed a lawsuit last week against the Ducey administration on behalf of the Bureau of Reclamation, the Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service.
The federal government “owes Arizonans and all Americans to publish a timetable,” Ducey wrote last week, responding to news of the pending federal lawsuit.
The job of placing up to 3,000 containers at a cost of $95 million was one-third complete, but protesters concerned about its impact on the environment delayed the work in recent days.
Meanwhile, the limits on asylum seekers hoping to enter the US expired Wednesday before conservative-leaning states sought the Supreme Court’s help in upholding them. The Biden administration has asked the court to lift the Trump-era restrictions, but not before Christmas. It is unclear when the court might rule on the matter.
The Associated Press
