Arizona Gov. Ducey keeps stacking containers
Republican presses forward with disputed border barrier as his term comes to an end.
SAN RAFAEL VALLEY, Ariz. — Work crews have erected hundreds of doublestacked shipping containers topped with razor wire along Arizona’s remote eastern boundary with Mexico as Republican Gov. Doug Ducey prepares to leave office.
Until protesters slowed, then largely halted, the work in recent days, Ducey pressed forward with the barrier over the objections of the U.S. government, environmentalists and an incoming governor who has called it a poor use of resources.
Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, said last week that she was “looking at all the options” and hasn’t decided what to do about the containers after her Jan. 5. inauguration.
She previously suggested that the containers be repurposed as affordable housing, an increasingly popular option for homeless and low-income people.
“I don’t know how much it will cost to remove the containers and what the cost will be,” Hobbs told Phoenix PBS TV station KAET in an interview Wednesday.
Ducey’s wall effort began in late summer in Yuma in western Arizona, a popular border crossing point, with scores of asylum seekers arriving daily. The containers there filled areas left open when former President Trump’s 450-mile border wall was built.
Federal agencies have told Arizona the construction on U.S. land is unlawful and have ordered it to be halted. Ducey responded Oct. 21 by suing federal officials over their objections, sending the dispute to court.
Environmental groups say the containers could imperil natural water systems and endanger wildlife.
“A lot of damage could be done here between now and early January,” said Russ McSpadden, a Southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity who has regularly traveled to the site since late October.
Ducey insists that Arizona holds sole or shared jurisdiction over the 60-foot strip on which the containers have been placed and has a constitutional right to protect residents from “imminent danger of criminal and humanitarian 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 the state sued the U.S. government. “We’re not backing down.”
The federal agencies want Ducey’s complaint dismissed.
Border security was a focus of Trump’s presidency and remains a potent issue for Republican politicians.
Hobbs’ GOP rival, Kari Lake, campaigned on a promise to deploy the National Guard to the border on her first day in office. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who has been reelected to a third term, has pushed to keep building Trump’s signature wall on the mostly private land along his state’s border with Mexico and has crowdsourced funds to help pay for it. He also has gotten attention for busing migrants to Democratic-led cities far from the southern border, including New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington.
Ducey’s move comes amid a record flow of migrants arriving at the U.S. border.
U.S. border officials have stopped migrants 2.38 million times in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, up 37% from the year before. The annual total surpassed 2 million for the first time in August and is more than twice the highest level during Trump’s presidency, reached in 2019.
Remote San Rafael Valley — site of Ducey’s latest construction — is not typically used by migrants and was not contemplated in Trump’s wall construction plan. McSpadden said he has not seen migrants or Border Patrol agents there, just hikers and cyclists.
The construction there stretches from oak forests in the foothills of the Huachuca Mountains southeast of Tucson and across the valley’s grasslands.
As of the middle of last week, cranes had transported more than 900 metal containers down a dirt road freshly scraped into the landscape, then stacked them up to 17 feet high alongside waist-high vehicle barriers of crisscrossed steel. Workers bolted the containers together and welded sheet metal over gaps.
Still, yawning gaps remain in the container wall, including a span of several hundred yards on terrain far too steep to place the containers. In some low-lying wash areas, there are gaps nearly 3 feet wide.
Environmental activists demonstrating at the Cochise County site in the last week largely stopped the work by standing in front of construction vehicles.
One recent day, a dozen demonstrators sat atop stacked containers or in camp chairs near tents and vehicles where they sleep.
The work in Yuma cost about $6 million and wrapped up in 11 days, with 130 containers covering about 3,800 feet. The Bureau of Reclamation told Arizona that it violated U.S. law by building on federal land. The Cocopah Indian Tribe also complained that the state did not seek permission to build on its nearby reservation.
The newer project is far more extensive, costing about $95 million and using up to 3,000 containers to cover 10 miles in southeastern Cochise County.
The U.S. Forest Service told Arizona to halt its work in the Coronado National Forest and recently alerted visitors to potential hazards posed by construction equipment involved in the state’s “unauthorized activities.”
The Center for Biological Diversity has sided with the federal government’s position that the construction violates U.S. law.
While Ducey’s lawsuit does not address environmental concerns, advocacy groups say the work in the Coronado National Forest imperils endangered or threatened species such as the Western yellow-billed cuckoo and the Mexican spotted owl, as well as big cats, including the occasional ocelot.
The biologically diverse region of southeastern Arizona is known for its “sky islands,” isolated mountain ranges rising more than 6,000 feet above “seas” of desert and grasslands. Wildlife cameras there regularly photograph black bears, bobcats, ringtails, spotted skunks, white-nosed coatis and javelinas, or peccaries.
McSpadden said the work has toppled oak and juniper trees, and he has found spools of razor wire and other construction debris on national forest land.
Environmentalists warn of the dangers of placing the containers atop a watershed of the San Pedro River that floods during the monsoon season each summer. Just south of the border lies a protected area called Rancho Los Fresnos, home to the beaver, a threatened species in Mexico.
Biologist Myles Traphagen of Wildlands Network told a briefing on border issues last month that much of the damage caused during the Trump administration’s border wall construction was never fixed. Last year, he mapped the Arizona and New Mexico sections of that wall to highlight damaged areas. A report this year highlights areas the group considers priorities for reconstruction.