Republican leaders in Arizona have shut down a demand from the Biden administration to remove a temporary border barrier made of shipping containers reinforced with razor wire.
Arizona officials say they aren’t removing the wall until Biden does his job and plugs the gaps, Fox reports.
Arizona tells Biden to kick rocks
The Biden administration says that the temporary barriers are illegal — an ironic accusation considering Biden’s refusal to enforce immigration law.
But Arizona is having none of it. Officials responded that “the containers will remain in place until specific details regarding construction are provided.”
Biden has completed some sections of wall near Yuma to fill in gaps, citing hazardous conditions near the Morelos Dam, but his administration insists they aren’t “finishing the wall.”
The Constitution charges the federal government with protecting states from foreign invasion, a duty Biden has audaciously refused to honor since he entered the White House and immediately began canceling his predecessor’s strict immigration policies, including his border wall.
Illegal immigration has repeatedly hit records on Biden’s watch, with over 2 million immigrants arrested at the border this fiscal year.
Biden’s dereliction of duty
The Biden administration told Arizona they will eventually get around to building “temporary mesh fencing and mechanized bollard vehicle gates” in 2023 and that Arizona is interfering with that pending work.
But Arizona’s governor Doug Ducey (R) says the state wants a permanent solution and will not wait on Biden to provide it.
“They want us to take down shipping containers and leave gaps open for who knows how long so they can put up what sounds like a chain link fence,” Ducey’s office told the Washington Examiner. “They’re asking to take down something so they can do something that we’ve already done. What Arizona needs is a permanent solution.”
The standoff comes as Republican governors such as Ducey and Texas’ Greg Abbott have been bussing immigrants to so-called “sanctuary cities” in protest of Biden’s open border and the effect it is having on border towns.
Arizona’s Yuma sector is among the most heavily trafficked sections of the southern border, with over 280,000 immigrant encounters this fiscal year alone — and that doesn’t include September’s unreleased figures or the untold numbers of migrants who slipped past undetected.