Funviralpark Under pressure from the Biden administration, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey is halting construction of a wall made from shipping containers on the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Republican governor reached a settlement with the Justice Department in which Arizona agreed to stop building a border wall on national forest land, according to court documents filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Phoenix.
The agreement allows Arizona to remove all shipping containers and related equipment, materials, vehicles, and other objects previously located in the U.S. Border Patrol’s Yuma sector without harming U.S. natural resources. stipulated to be removed. To that end, Arizona will work with U.S. Forest Service and Customs and Border Protection officials.
The agreement comes a week after the Biden administration filed a lawsuit against Ducey on behalf of the Bureau of Reclamation, the Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service.
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Shipping containers and vehicle barriers line the U.S.-Mexico border at the Coronado National Memorial in Cochise County, Arizona, December 11, 2022.
(Rebecca Noble/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Arizona Governor Doug Ducey speaks with Fox News at the National Governors Association Annual Summer Meeting in Portland, Maine on July 13, 2022.
(Fox News)
The Arizona Sheriff called the government. DUCEY Stops Sending Shipping Containers to Borders for Makeshift Walls
It’s two weeks before Democratic Governor-elect Katie Hobbs takes office. Hobbs calls the shipping container wall a political stunt and a “waste of taxpayer dollars.”
Ahead of the lawsuit, Ducey told federal officials that Arizona was ready to help remove the containers. But, as he announced a year ago, he wanted the federal government to tell him when the remaining gaps in the permanent border wall would be closed.
Read the latest court documents:
Arizona Fires Back at Biden Administrators’ Demands, Removes Shipping Containers Bridging Gap at Border
The governor’s office stressed that shipping containers were always intended to be a temporary solution to the border crisis, and the Biden administration agreed to take steps to continue building barriers in the region. said.
“For more than a year, the federal government has been touting efforts to resume construction of a permanent border barrier. We’ve made a decision… more than ever,” Ducey spokesperson CJ Karamargin told Fox News.
“We are working with the federal government to ensure that construction of this barrier can begin with the urgency that this issue requires,” Karamargin added.
The $95 million cost of deploying up to 3,000 containers was about a third of the way through, but the work was recently postponed by protesters concerned about its environmental impact.
Meanwhile, restrictions on asylum seekers seeking to enter the United States were set to expire on Wednesday, but conservative states have sought the Supreme Court’s help to keep the restrictions in place. , asked the court to lift Trump-era restrictions, but not before Christmas.
A general view of shipping containers installed to fill gaps in an unfinished wall along the U.S.-Mexico border on August 16, 2022 in Yuma, Arizona.
(Qian Weizhong/VCG via Getty Images)
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
