David Hathaway, The sheriff of Santa Cruz County in southern Arizona offers Republican Governor Doug Ducey a simple solution to stopping an illegal wall that transports containers along the border. Federal agents should begin seizing vehicles related to the project.
Hathaway’s county lies just west of Cochise County, where Ducey lived. Container drops in the last month and a half Despite federal officials repeatedly telling him his actions were unauthorized and illegal. He vowed to arrest them if they crossed the county line and trespassed on his lawn.
That scenario is unlikely, as the project contract stops the governor’s wall just shy of Hathaway’s jurisdiction. Driving through county communities, hauling 40-foot shipping containers at dangerous speeds behind multi-ton pickup trucks. Hathaway said his department has received complaints from residents of the town of Elgin of Ducie about drivers ignoring stop signs and driving out of control through town, as well as flying past children. It says.
“The quick way to end this is to get a seizure sticker and put it on the side of a $200,000 trackhoe.”
“I have advised deputies to specifically scrutinize the area for speeding, reckless hazards and reckless driving,” Hathaway told The Intercept in an interview Friday — but the sheriff insisted, true Public lands where violations of the governor’s law have been committed, claiming the solution lies with federal officials paid to protect. The process is not complicated. As a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent, Hathaway sketched the response the federal government often takes when targeting ongoing organized criminal activity.
“The way to end this quickly is to get a seizure sticker and put it on the side of a $200,000 truck hoe saying, ‘We are seizing this because it is being used to promote illegal activity. ” he said. “Or he towing a flat bed grabs one of his F350 pickup trucks and says, ‘This vehicle is used for illegal dumping on federal land.'” Ouch. Please hit the spot. “
“I wouldn’t be surprised if they quickly packed up and left,” Hathaway said. We have the ability to confiscate vehicles that are doing so, but no one is doing it.”
after declaring it with Interview with Nogales International Hathaway, a Democrat elected in 2020, said he had Forest Service officials quietly send him in. He thanked them for updating the container walls and standing up for them. increase.
“Surprisingly, the Coronado National Forest police are very excited about what I am doing. They are on my side and keep me informed,” he said. rice field. For the Sheriff, it’s a strange situation. “I sarcastically retorted to them, ‘This is really your business. I mean, this is on federal land. Why are you waiting for the county sheriff in a county six miles away?’ ?”
October 21, Three days before he kicked off his $95 million publicly funded project, he dropped 3,000 shipping containers on Ducey, over 10 miles of near-perfect federal land. filed a lawsuit Against land managers in the Biden administration.
Governor rejects a 115-year legal agreement that the 60-foot border road known as the “Roosevelt Reservation” belongs to the federal government, while in fact the state has jurisdiction over the land. said. Ducey said this mistake, combined with the state of emergency he had declared because Arizona was plagued by foreign invasion, made it difficult for him to take all the time-consuming steps necessary to comply with federal law when starting construction on public land. He argued that this meant that the process of
Since filing the lawsuit, Ducey has laid approximately four miles of shipping containers in Coronado National Forest in Cochise County. The work by a Florida-based contractor with deep Republican ties, Ashbulit, has caused widespread environmental damage, cut off important migration routes for jaguars and ocelots protected under the Endangered Species Act, It is ruining the once calm desert. Landscape with huge metal box walls covered with concertina wire.
The sheriff of Cochise County is Mark Dunnells, a close friend of the governor who appears frequently on Fox News, saying that his county is engulfed in chaos and anarchy. In February, the Arizona Military Emergency Department (the state agency that administers Ducey’s border wall) ordered Dannels’ agency $14.9 million to deter an invasion. As county sheriff, Dunnells has no authority to enforce federal immigration laws.
According to Hathaway, filing a lawsuit to preemptively declare that an illegal activity is in fact legal does not make it legal. What if I shoot you and say, ‘We’re suing, so we can’t stop what we’re doing even if it’s clearly in violation of federal law?'” he asked. Further, the sheriff argued, such lawsuits should not prevent an agency such as the Forest Service from performing one of its primary duties. “If they witness an obvious crime, it’s an obvious crime,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Department of Justice filed a petition to dismiss After Ducey’s lawsuit, the Biden administration has taken no action on the ground to stop the governor’s project.
Hathaway said if a normal person walked into a national forest and dumped a bag of garbage on the ground in front of a ranger, they would get a court order. In the case of Coronado, the situation is much more serious and has no repercussions. “We’re talking about massive heavy rail vehicles with hundreds of tons of material being dumped there and carrying tons of earth and sand, and all this on federal land,” Hathaway said. “This is not state property. This is not private property. It has been declared illegal.”
Late Wednesday afternoon, Hathaway made an unannounced solo visit to provide assistance to a small group of locals and protesters camping at the Container Wall construction site in Ducey. The Land Defenders, the only force to thwart the governor’s devastating march through the national forest, have been an astonishing success, largely bringing the project to a halt over the past week.
“This is disgusting and ugly.”
Hathaway was impressed by their efforts and wanted to say yes. “Oh, it’s great what the protesters are doing,” he said to himself. Sheriffs described the protesters as “extremely brave” and likened their willingness to stop the heavy machinery to “a Tiananmen-like situation.”
For Hathaway, the area surrounding the protesters’ camp has deep personal meaning. “I’ve been going out there since I was a baby,” said Hathaway. The sheriff and his family have a ranch in the area. For as long as he can remember, he’s been riding horses along border roads where Ducey’s trucks run. “Most of my life was where protesters were,” he said. “I know the whole area inside and out like the back of my hand and it’s always peaceful, calm and quiet.”
Although I’ve visited Ducey’s container wall locations countless times, Hathaway’s Wednesday visit was the first time he’d seen a landscape bisected by jagged metal box ribbons. It was: “This is disgusting and ugly.”
