Arizona Governor Responds Defiantly to Biden Administration’s Demand

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) will not comply with the Biden administration's demand that he remove shipping containers along the U.S.-Mexico border in the highly-trafficked Yuma sector.

Ducey said that Arizona was forced to act after the White House failed to award a contract to fill existing gaps in the border wall. The wall of double-stacked shipping containers adorned with razor wire was placed on the border in August.

The Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) wrote Ducey's office last week, calling the barrier illegal. USBR said the land belongs to the Cocopah Indian Tribe's West Reservation and interferes with the work of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The Washington Examiner has more on the looming fight:

A spokesman for Gov. Doug Ducey (R-AZ) told the Washington Examiner Tuesday afternoon that the state is carefully considering its response to the Interior Department Bureau of Reclamation's recent letter. The Biden administration demanded the 120 shipping containers stacked in Yuma, Arizona, be cleared out on the basis that they violated U.S. law and were not approved to be placed on federal land.

“As for the letter, we question their legal analysis and we are looking at our options,” Ducey's Communications Director C.J. Karamargin said in a phone call.

Karamargin raised concerns that two months had lapsed between the state's putting up the containers in August and the U.S. government acknowledging them and responding in October — an indication that the government was not taking the issue seriously, he said.

“It took the feds since August to write a letter? If this is any indication of their sense of urgency, then perhaps that explains the problem we're having,” said Karamargin.

An August study by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) estimated that since President Biden took office, nearly 4.9 million illegal immigrants had crossed the border.