PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona will tear down a makeshift wall made of shipping containers on the Mexican border to settle lawsuits and political disputes with the U.S. government over trespassing on federal land. .
The Biden administration and Republican Gov. Doug Ducey will stop Arizona from setting up containers in the Coronado National Forest, the only national forest along the border, according to court documents filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Phoenix. An agreement was reached.
The agreement also removes containers already installed in Arizona’s remote San Rafael Valley in southeastern Cochise County and in the Yuma area, where the U.S. Reclamation Service has easements on the Cocopa Indian Tribe Reservation. I am asking you to All this must be done by January 4th without damaging natural resources. State agencies should consult with representatives of the U.S. Forest Service.
Ducey has long claimed that the shipping container was the tem.Polarie fixtures. Even before the lawsuit, he wanted the federal government to say when it would close the remaining gaps in the permanent border wall, as announced a year ago.
“For more than a year, the federal government has touted efforts to resume construction of a permanent border barrier. ” said CJ Karamargin, a Ducey spokesman.
“We are still working out the final details regarding cost and launch date,” Karamargin told the Associated Press.
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection official did not immediately return a message for comment on Thursday.
The resolution comes two weeks before anti-construction Democrat Katie Hobbs takes office as governor.
the federal government filed a lawsuit past A week against the Ducey government on behalf of the Reuse Department, Department of Agriculture and Forest Service.
The federal government “is obligated to open up timelines to Arizonas and all Americans,” Ducey wrote last week in response to news of pending federal lawsuits.
The $95 million cost of deploying up to 3,000 containers was about a third of the way through, but the work was recently postponed by protesters concerned about its environmental impact.
Meanwhile, restrictions on asylum seekers wishing to enter the United States were set to expire Wednesday Before conservative-leaning states sought the Supreme Court’s help to keep them. The Biden administration asked courts to lift Trump-era restrictions, but they didn’t do so before Christmas. It is not clear whether a judgment will be made on
