By Anita Snow and Ross D. Franklin -
The Associated Press
SAN RAFAEL VALLEY, Arizona.
-- Work crews have been non-stop placing hundreds of shipping containers laced with barbed wire along Arizona's remote eastern border with Mexico in an attempt by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey to show he has low control the border, even if he is close to leaving office.
Ducey has gone ahead with his company despite objections from the federal government, environmentalists and the incoming governor, who said state resources were being misused.
Democratic Governor-elect Katie Hobbs said last week that she was "looking at all options" and has not decided what to do with the containers after she takes office on January 5.
She previously suggested that the containers be repurposed as affordable housing, an increasingly popular option for the homeless and low-income.
“I don't know how much it will cost to remove the containers and what the cost will be,” Hobbs told Phoenix PBS television station KAET in an interview Wednesday.
Activists sit in newly installed shipping containers along the border creating a wall between the United States and Mexico in the San Rafael Valley, Arizona, Thursday, Dec. 8, 2022. Ross D. Franklin / AP
Federal agencies told Arizona that construction on US land is illegal and
ordered it to stop.
Ducey responded on October 21 by suing federal officials over his objections, and sent the dispute to court.
Environmental groups say the containers
could endanger natural water systems
and the species that inhabit the area.
“
A lot of damage could be done here between now and early January
,” said Russ McSpadden, a southwestern conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity who has traveled regularly to the site since late October.
[On video: Texas sets up a virtual wall with patrol boats on the Rio Grande to prevent migrants from crossing]
Ducey insists that Arizona has exclusive or shared jurisdiction over the 60-foot (18.2-meter) strip on which the containers rest and has a constitutional right to protect residents from "imminent danger posed by humanitarian and criminal crises."
“
Arizona is going to do the job that Joe Biden refuses to do
: secure the border in any way we can,” Ducey said when Arizona sued the federal government.
“We are not going to take a step back,” he remarked.
Federal agencies want Ducey's complaint dismissed.
Border security was a central issue of Donald Trump's presidency and continues to be a major issue for Republican politicians.
Hobbs' Republican rival, Kari Lake, campaigned on a promise to send the National Guard to the border on her first day in office.
Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, recently re-elected to a third term, has pushed to continue building Trump's signature wall on mostly private land along his state's border with Mexico and raised funds to help pay for it.
He has also drawn attention for busing immigrants to Democratic-led cities far from the southern border, including New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington DC.
Ducey launched this policy in the midst of a record number of immigrants arriving at the country's southern border.
There were 2.38 million apprehensions of attempted border crossings in fiscal year 2022, from October 1, 2021 to September 30, 2022, up 37% from the previous year.
The annual total topped 2 million for the first time in August and is more than double the highest level reached in 2019 during the Trump presidency.
New containers in an area without migrants
Construction of the Ducey container wall began
in late summer in Yuma
, western Arizona, a heavily used crossing point with dozens of asylum seekers arriving daily, often finding ways around the new barriers. .
The containers filled areas left open when Trump's 450-mile (724-kilometer) border wall was built.
But
the remote San Rafael Valley, the most recent construction site, is rarely used by migrants
and was not included in Trump's wall construction plan.
McSpadden said he has seen no migrants or Border Patrol agents there, only hikers and backpacking cyclists.
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Construction there stretches from the oak forests in the Huachuca foothills southeast of Tucson and across the valley prairies.
By the middle of last week,
cranes had hauled more than 900
blue or rust-colored metal containers up a dirt road freshly scraped into the landscape.
They then stacked them two by two until they were 17 feet (5.2 meters) high, placing crisscross steel vehicle barriers at waist height.
Workers bolted the containers together and welded sheet metal over the gaps.
[Two exhibitions, on both sides of the US-Mexico border, build artistic bridges on the migratory phenomenon]
Still,
huge gaps remain in the new container wall
, including an open space of several hundred yards (meters) on terrain too steep to place the containers.
In some areas with rain channels or drop-offs, there are gaps nearly three feet (1 meter) wide.
Environmental activists who demonstrated at the Cochise County site last week largely halted work in recent days by standing in front of construction vehicles.
Recently, a
dozen protesters sat on top of stacked shipping containers
or on camp chairs near the tents and vehicles where they sleep.
Million dollar projects on federal lands
The work in Yuma cost about $6 million and was completed in 11 days with 130 of the containers covering some 3,800 feet (about 1,160 meters).
The Bureau of Reclamation told Arizona that it violated US law by building on federal land.
The Cocopah Indian tribe also complained that the state did not apply for a permit to build on their nearby reservation.
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The newer project is much larger, costing around
$95 million
and using up to
3,000 containers
to cover 10 miles (16 km), in southeast Arizona's Cochise County.
The US Forest Service has also told Arizona to halt its work on the Coronado National Forest, recently alerting visitors to the potential dangers posed by construction crews involved in the state's "unsanctioned activities."
Endangered species in the "sky islands"
The Center for Biological Diversity has sided with the federal government's position that the construction violates US law.
[Texas border wall faces lack of land and high cost of construction]
While Ducey's lawsuit does not address environmental concerns, groups like the center say work in the Coronado National Forest endangers threatened or endangered species like the western yellow-billed cuckoo
and Mexican spotted owl
, as well as to big cats, including the occasional ocelot.
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The biologically diverse region of southeastern Arizona is known for its "sky islands."
or isolated mountain ranges that rise more than 6,000 feet (1,828 meters) above “seas” of desert and grasslands.
Wildlife cameras in the region regularly photograph black bears, bobcats, ringtails, spotted skunks, white-nosed coatis, and pig-like javelins.
McSpadden said the work has downed oak and juniper trees and found spools of barbed wire and other construction debris on national forest land.