Arizona to remove shipping container wall on US-Mexico border
- Arizona governor agrees to remove useless wall of corrugated containers, which snake for 7km along state’s border with Mexico
- In several places, containers do not line up because of the uneven terrain, leaving gaps easily large enough for a person to walk through
Arizona agreed to dismantle a wall of shipping containers at the Mexican border that critics said was an expensive, ecologically damaging political stunt that did nothing to keep migrants out of the United States.
The state’s Republican Governor Doug Ducey spent US$90 million of taxpayers’ money lining up rusting boxes in what he said was a bid to stem the flow of people crossing into the country.
The corrugated containers, which snake for 7km through federal lands like a huge stationary cargo train, divide an important conservation area that is home to vulnerable species, but which is so difficult to traverse that people traffickers routinely avoid it.
Now Ducey, who leaves office early next year, will have to get rid of the 915 containers from the Coronado National Forest.
In an agreement reached Wednesday with the federal government, Ducey’s administration said it will “remove all previously installed shipping containers and associated equipment, materials, vehicles, and other objects from the United States’ properties on National Forest System lands within the Coronado National Forest”.
From close up, the double-stacked container wall looks like the clumsy handiwork of a giant playing with building blocks.