(Headline USA) Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said this week that he will not immediately comply with a Biden administration order to remove shipping containers stacked alongside his state’s southern border.
The Interior Department Bureau of Reclamation sent a letter to Ducey’s administration this month demanding that Arizona remove the 120 shipping containers that have been stacked along the U.S.-Mexico border in Yuma, Arizona, to help prevent illegal crossings. The administration claimed Arizona was violating U.S. law since the containers were not approved to be placed on federal land.
“The unauthorized placement of those containers constitutes a violation of federal law and is a trespass against the United States,” the letter reads. “That trespass is harming federal lands and resources and impeding Reclamation’s ability to perform its mission.”
Ducey’s spokesman, however, signaled that Arizona is willing to put up a fight.
“As for the letter, we question their legal analysis and we are looking at our options,” Ducey’s communications director C.J. Karamargin said, according to the Washington Examiner.
Karamargin argued the shipping containers have been stacked along the border for more than two months and yet the U.S. government decided not to acknowledge them until now, drawing into question their motives for doing so.
“It took the feds since August to write a letter? If this is any indication of their sense of urgency, then perhaps that explains the problem we’re having,” he said.
The Biden administration’s letter claims the government is concerned that the containers could interfere with federal contracts to install an actual border barrier where the containers are now.
But Ducey’s office dismissed the idea that the Biden administration is finally willing to take the border crisis seriously, pointing to the president’s past two years of inaction.
“The federal government has a duty to protect the states,” said Anni Foster, the general counsel to Ducey. “They failed to do that.
“We have made every effort to work with them and try to resolve this problem, but the governor can no longer wait for the federal government to take action when we have a community like Yuma, who is being sheltered at 150% of capacity.”
