Arizona Governor Doug Ducey (R-Ariz.) is refusing to yield after the Biden Administration demanded that he dismantle a makeshift border barrier that the governor has set up entirely using the state government.
As reported by the New York Post, Governor Ducey ordered the state’s Department of Emergency and Military Affairs (DEMA) to stack over 100 metal shipping containers, each one measuring 22 feet high, along the southern border in stacked pairs, mostly in the Yuma region. This crude but effective method created makeshift 44-foot-high barriers that filled several gaps between the border wall that had been partially constructed by the Trump Administration.
In response, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation sent a letter to state officials demanding that the containers be removed, as their placement is allegedly a violation of federal law due to not being approved first by the federal government. But DEMA sent a letter back in response, declaring that “the containers will remain in place until specific details regarding construction are provided.”
“It took the feds since August to write a letter?” said Governor Ducey’s Communications Director C.J. Karamargin. ”If this is any indication of their sense of urgency, then perhaps that explains the problem we’re having.”
Ducey’s actions were done out of protest of the Biden Administration’s deliberate efforts to not enforce border security, as Biden himself had campaigned on an open-borders approach to immigration that included letting in as many illegal aliens as possible, and promising to give them all taxpayer-funded benefits such as free healthcare, education, and housing.
One of Biden’s first actions after taking power was to order an immediate halt to the construction of the border wall that President Trump had started, thus leaving numerous sections unfinished. Of the areas left incomplete, Yuma has seen some of the highest levels of illegals crossing the border since Biden’s presidency began. From Fiscal Year 2021 to Fiscal Year 2022, there has been a 208 percent increase in illegal immigration through Yuma alone, according to a report released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.