US is suing Arizona governor for ‘trespassing’ on his Mexican border wall.
The U.S. government on Wednesday sued Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and the state for placing shipping containers as a barrier at the border with Mexico, saying they were trespassing on federal land.
The complaint, filed in US District Court, comes three weeks before the Republican governor is stepping aside for Democratic governor-elect Katie Hobbs, who has said she opposes construction.
Ducey told U.S. officials earlier this week that Arizona is ready to help remove the containers he says were put up as a temporary barrier. But he wants the US government to say when it will fill in remaining gaps in the permanent border wall, as it announced a year ago.
The US “owes it to Arizonans and all Americans to release a timeline,” he wrote in a letter Tuesday, responding to news of the pending federal complaint.
Border security has been a focus of Donald Trump’s presidency and remains a key issue for Republican politicians.
The Justice Department’s complaint is asking the Arizona Court to stop the placement and remove the containers in the remote San Rafael Valley of southeastern Cochise County.
Work to place up to 3,000 containers at a cost of $95 million is about a third complete, but protesters worried about the environmental impact have held up work in recent days.
“Officials from Reclamation and the Forest Service have notified Arizona that it is trespassing on state land,” the complaint reads. The lawsuit also seeks damages to compensate the United States for repairing damage along the border.
The Justice Department sued on behalf of the Bureau of Reclamation, the Department of Agriculture and the forest service it oversees.
US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said in a statement from Washington that the project “does not present an effective barrier, it poses a safety risk to both the public and those working in the area, and it has caused significant damage to public lands.”
“We need serious solutions on our border, with input from local leaders and communities. Stacking shipping containers is not a productive solution,” said Vilsack.
The complaint was welcomed by US Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva, a Democrat representing southern Arizona. He called the project an “illegal junkyard border wall.”
Southwest conservationist Russ McSpadden at the Center for Biodiversity said the federal complaint “should be the beginning of the end of Doug Ducey’s lawless assault on protected national forest lands and endangered wildlife.”
Ducey wrote to federal officials after they were notified of their intention to file the complaint, dismissing their argument that the containers “pose serious risks to public safety and environmental damage.”
“The greatest risk to public safety and environmental damage stems from the federal government’s inaction to secure our border,” Ducey wrote, with the January 2021 halt to construction of Trump’s border wall resulting in “an ever-increasing number of migrants who… continue to flow into the state.”
Ducey’s move comes amid a record stream of migrants arriving at the border. US border officials stopped migrants 2.38 million times in the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, up 37% from the year before. The annual total surpassed 2 million for the first time in August, more than double the number during the Trump presidency in 2019.
Ducey also dismissed US government claims that the containers are affecting federal agencies’ ability to carry out their official duties and complete construction of border infrastructure in some areas.
He said he was encouraged by the Biden administration’s earlier announcement to fill in gaps in the wall, but that was a year ago.
“Arizona had no choice but to address the crisis on its southern border and began erecting a temporary border barrier,” the governor wrote.
Hobbs said she believes the project is a political stunt but hasn’t decided what to do with the containers after her Jan. 5 inauguration.
Ducey sued federal officials over their objections to the container wall on October 21, insisting that Arizona has sole or shared jurisdiction over the 60-foot (18.2 meter) strip on which the containers rest and has a constitutional right to to protect residents from “imminent danger” of criminal and humanitarian crises.”
Ducey’s container wall efforts began in late summer at Yuma in western Arizona, a popular border crossing where dozens of asylum seekers arrive daily, often finding ways to bypass the new barriers. The containers filled areas that remained open when Trump’s 450-mile (724 km) border wall was built. But the remote San Rafael Valley — the latest construction site — is not typically used by migrants and was not included in Trump’s wall-building plan.
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