Arizona Daily Star: "Feds: Arizona border containers 'unlawful'"

[royable]

https://tucson.com/news/local/subscriber/feds-arizona-border-containers-unlawful/article_a9c832aa-6ce6-11ed-afc7-8309369c416e.html#tracking-source=mp-news

unfortunately paywalled.

PHOENIX — A lawsuit by Gov. Doug Ducey seeking control of land along the border to place shipping containers is “flawed on so many fronts” that it should not be allowed to proceed, lawyers for the federal government say.

Put another way, he said the land at issue — land the United States acquired from Mexico through the Treaty of Guadalupe and, later, the Gadsden Purchase — could not possibly belong to the state because the state did not exist. And Smith said acknowledgment of that federal ownership was a condition on Arizona being accepted into the Union.

All this comes because of Ducey’s highly publicized decision to place a double-high stack of storage containers along the border.

It started in August with the governor ordering his Department of Emergency and Military Affairs to build nearly 3,820 feet of containers near Yuma on land controlled by the Bureau of Reclamation. Then he directed the agency to begin construction of another 10 miles of containers on Forest Service land in Cochise County.

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The article includes a disgusting video showing an aerial view of the destruction adjacent to Coronado National Memorial.

I've been looking for any statement from Katie Hobbs as to what she's going to do about this once she assumes office in January, but haven't seen anything at all specific.

[Kali]

1. what a waste of shipping containers

also the land damage was already done prepping for the trump wall.

[royable]

2. A couple days ago I read that the shipping container work is causing a lot more destruction.

The contractors are illegally making staging areas and extra roads on forest service and other national land, they're blocking washes, destroying full-grown trees, bulldozing, ignoring environmental issues. Whereas small animals at least had been able to get through the slats in the drumpf wall, now even they are prevented from crossing. I know the locals close to the border want relief from their real or perceived threat of the border crossers and smugglers, but this ramrodding and defiance by Ducey in his final weeks of office seems like a terrible way to do it.

What is the mood of the locals in your rural area, a few dozen miles further from the border?

[Kali]

4. Cochise county just made national news for refusing to certify the election

MOST locals are for all the republican bullshit. there are pockets of old hippies and real Democrats, but most people I know either don't care if it doesn't affect them or are of the repuke persuasion. the local environmental activists seem to have more concern about cows on the river than shutting down hundreds of international wildlife migration routes. possibly because it also shuts down the impacts of human migration on the river corridor too. hmmm

[royable]

6. Yes, I saw the certification refusal in the news

and commented this evening on an article applegrove posted about it. I said, tongue partially in cheek,

Fine, don't certify the Cochise county votes, and toss them all out.
Then Kirsten Engel gets more votes than Juan Ciscomani in AZ CD 6, and we get another Democratic representative in Congress.
If the election deniers insist, they can hold another county-wide election to vote on local offices, at taxpayer expense.
And the Cochise County voters will be so disgusted at their election-denying members of the board of supervisors that they'll vote them all out the first chance they get. Win-win!

Of course, even if such a thing could be lawfully done (which. while knowing little about law, I doubt it could be) the election-denying repukes would find some way to twist everything around and make themselves the victims.

As for environmental concerns, it certainly is a complicated situation. And you start to wonder what to prioritize for species and habitat protection and human migration with limited resources when looming over it all is climate change and the upheaval that will bring.

[Kali]

7. it would be hilarious if it allowed Engel to win

[usonian]

3. The article is archived

https://archive.ph/sT7SG

[royable]

5. Thanks! I didn't know about archive.ph.

I'll have to explore it a bit.