Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, agreed on Wednesday to take down a makeshift border wall and halt construction in a settlement with the Department of Justice, according to a court filing.
Per Fox News, the Biden administration filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Bureau of Reclamation, the Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service, with the aim of removing the wall made up of old shipping containers between Mexico and Arizona. The suit argued that the installations occurred illegally on federal land.
“For more than a year, the federal government has been touting their effort to resume construction of a permanent border barrier,” Ducey’s spokesperson, CJ Karamargin, said in a statement Thursday, per CNN.
“Finally, after the situation on our border has turned into a full blown crisis, they’ve decided to act. Better late than never. We’re working with the federal government to ensure they can begin construction of this barrier with the urgency this problem demands.”
The New York Times noted that this agreement comes at the heels of a federal judge’s decision to block Title 42, a policy that allowed migrants to be turned away at the U.S.-Mexico border and denied asylum.
CNN reported back in August that Ducey, who didn’t think Washington was prioritizing issues at the border, issued an executive order, instructing the Department of Emergency and Military Affairs to use shipping containers to fill in the gaps at the border. No permits were obtained, the report added.
“Arizona has had enough,” Ducey said at the time. “We can’t wait any longer.”
His office touted this as merely a “temporary solution to an ongoing problem.”
“From our perspective, the shipping container mission is a success. Not only have we plugged gaps in the border barrier, but we got the federal government to do their job,” Karamargin said last week, according to AZ Central.
Democratic Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs, who is set to take office in two weeks, has criticized the wall in the past months.
“I want to use our state’s resources not for things that are political stunts but that will actually solve the problems,” Hobbs said in an interview before the midterms this year.
“I am very concerned about the liability to the state of Arizona for those shipping containers that they’re putting on federal land. There’s pictures of people climbing on top of them. I think that’s a huge liability and risk.”