Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona seems to be upholding his version of Trump’s border wall promise. The Republican governor made a sad makeshift wall that first showed up on a strip of borderland near Yuma on Bureau of Reclamation Land, and now more recently on U.S. Forest Service land in Cochise County.
Made up of shipping containers, the wall allegedly went up without federal permission, prompting agencies to call for it to be removed because of its unlawful nature. Despite this, in a federal suit filed in October, Arizona asked a judge to stop the federal government from intervening. According to Fronteras, it argued the state should have jurisdiction over the border area without federal intervention.
Campaign Action
In the latest case against the makeshift wall, the Department of Justice has asked the court to dismiss this claim, arguing that the shipping containers were placed on federal and not state land, Fronteras reported.
But where the shipping container wall is placed is not the only issue. Outside of how horrible the idea of a border wall even is, this specific one is not only wasteful but bad for the environment. Alongside the government, Arizona environmentalists have joined the fight against Ducey’s ongoing efforts to install a wall on the state’s Mexico border.
According to KGUN, officials from Coronado National Forest (CNF) warned the public not only about the "safety hazards" but about "unauthorized armed security personnel" in the area where the wall is placed.
“The roads are not designed to handle these large of vehicles. They are designed to handle small passenger cars, trucks. So they are getting impacted by this much traffic," Starr Farrell of the U.S. Forest Service said. "There is a possibility people who are armed out there and so we don’t want any of those conflicts to occur.”
To make matters worse, KGUN noted that the “wall” was also constructed against the Cocopah Tribe’s wishes. Ducey not only filled in parts of a Trump administration border wall but constructed beyond that with his containers. But that’s not all: The “wall” doesn’t only impact people living in the area, but the animals as well.
“We’re seeing an impact to our environment," Farrell said. "These are going in very quickly and because these are getting placed so quickly, normal procedures [didn't take] place. This was an unauthorized project and because of that these containers did not go through a normal process that we would normally do to make sure that area would be able to support the installation.”
According to Arizona Central, the state’s contractor is placing the shipping containers on a line in an area known to have a population of endangered jaguars and ocelots.
Environmental advocates fear the containers will result in “extensive damage” to the animals’ habitats and wreck important migration corridors for larger species while blocking the ability of smaller ones to cross the border.
“That wall is harming endangered species as we speak,” said Russ McSpadden, a Southwest conservation advocate. McSpadden provided Arizona Central with video footage of an ocelot captured by motion-sensing cameras less than 2 miles north of the new wall in 2018 and 2019 to argue his case.
Arizona Central also noted that the areas where the shipping containers are located stretch farther than what was planned for Trump’s border wall. These areas have extensive wildlife, causing many advocates to argue that the shipping containers would be more effective at keeping out wildlife than people.
In order to keep people out, Ducey and his contractors placed gaps with metal sheets in areas with gaps between the containers. As a result, any migrants who might try to cross may get cut by the steel.
How far Republicans will go to keep migrants out is ridiculous.
Why did Democrats do so surprisingly well in the midterms? It turns out they ran really good campaigns, as strategist Josh Wolf tells us on this week's episode of The Downballot. That means they defined their opponents aggressively, spent efficiently, and stayed the course despite endless second-guessing in the press. Wolf gives us an inside picture of how exactly these factors played out in the Arizona governor's race, one of the most important Democratic wins of the year. He also shines a light on an unsexy but crucial aspect of every campaign: how to manage a multi-million budget for an enterprise designed to spend down to zero by Election Day.
Election 2022 is officially in overtime, with a Georgia Runoff. We must get out every last Democratic voter for Raphael Warnock. Click here to volunteer in whatever way possible you can.
Daily Kos is the largest progressive organization online, but we don't have billionaire backers. We rely on readers like YOU. Chip in $5 to help us keep fighting for progressive values.