The state of Arizona will not wait for the Biden administration to build a border wall on the U.S.-Mexico boundary and instead has chosen to go it alone, erecting its own state-funded barrier to stop an unprecedented flow of illegal immigrants.
Gov. Doug Ducey‘s top advisers announced in a call with reporters Friday morning that construction began “six minutes ago” on a portion of the Yuma, Arizona, border where gaps of land between Trump-era wall projects exist as a result of President Joe Biden’s January 2021 order to stop building the barrier.
“This is an easy solution that Washington, D.C., just continues to fail to act on,” said Tim Roemer, the director of the Arizona Department of Homeland Security. “We’re done waiting for them.”
The state made a sudden decision this week to finish the border wall and said it had not informed the Department of Homeland Security or the White House of its decision to build. The White House and DHS did not return requests for comment.
“Our hope is that they’ll be paying attention to the news today,” C.J. Karamargin, Ducey’s communications director, told reporters.
ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS DETAINED AT BORDER UNDER BIDEN HELD 10X LONGER THAN PERMITTED
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Arizona has acquired cargo ship containers and is stacking the structures in spaces that do not have a 30-foot-tall wall. This first project near a popular area for illegal crossings will cost $6 million and will be completed by next week, officials said. Sixty shipping containers — each weighing in at 8,800 pounds — were brought in Friday and stacked.
The move comes days after the Biden administration said it would end a Trump-era program that had required asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico through the duration of the court proceedings. Ducey officials said Biden’s attempt to end the Migrant Protection Protocols last year resulted in an influx of illegal immigration into Yuma and they were acting now in direct response to his actions.
Last week, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) announced that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security would begin the process of hiring a builder to fill in gaps in Yuma. The U.S. government planned to award the construction contract for the project in September, an aide in Kelly’s office told the Washington Examiner.
Immigration Separated Families
But Ducey’s team expressed that the state had lost all confidence in the federal government, which is why Ducey chose this week to take executive action and build.
“At this point, we are filling that gap and we’ll figure out the consequences. But bottom line is, is that the federal government has a duty to protect the states,” said Anni Foster, general counsel to Ducey. “They failed to do that. We have made every effort to work with them and try to resolve this problem, but the governor can no longer wait for the federal government to take action when we have a community like Yuma, who is being sheltered at 150% of capacity.”
A spokeswoman for Kelly said the state projects are a different location than the four spots near Morelos Dam that the senator previously targeted, which are the most-visited places in Yuma for illegal crossings.
“In December, the federal government announced that they were going to take steps to fill the gaps in the border wall. December came and went. January, February, March. Here we are in mid-August,” said Karamargin. “We’ve been waiting a very long time for the federal government to act on measures they said they were going to do and we haven’t seen any tangible evidence that they’re following through. So we will be doing it ourselves.”
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The state began with a project in Yuma in southwestern Arizona because it has been the most heavily impacted by illegal immigration. From the government’s fiscal 2020 year to 2021, border officials encountered 1,200% more illegal immigrants year to year. This first project comes out of the state’s $335 million coffer for physical barriers and was given to a former federal and state contractor that has a history of working on government projects.
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While the gaps have acted as funnels, forcing migrants to cross into the United States at certain places where they are more easily apprehended and cannot sneak in, the Yuma region has seen significant increases in illegal immigrant apprehensions since construction stopped 18 months ago.
Ducey’s staff said migrants overwhelm law enforcement and previously deported illegal immigrants and criminals are able to cross in nearby areas because no one is around to detect them.
Filling in the gaps was of particular concern now because of how many migrants trek through farm fields on the border and planting season is approaching.
People who wish to claim asylum can still do so by going to a port of entry, the officials said.
Migrants who are taken into custody are overwhelmingly released into the interior of the country, inundating regional airports and bus lines. In May, Ducey began providing buses to transport migrants to the East Coast. As of mid-July, 27 buses carrying more than 1,000 passengers from the border to D.C. had departed.
Biden halted all construction projects in January 2021, leaving 350 miles of funded wall unfinished, including small gaps in long stretches of wall.
