Arizona recently started building its own wall to fill the gaps along the Yuma sector of the southern border, and it is a truly innovative solution to mitigate the ongoing crisis.
The state is using stacked storage containers welded together to barricade the open areas in an efficient manner. Work began almost immediately on the project after Republican Gov. Doug Ducey announced it, and the progress made within days was visually stunning.
These before-and-after photos came just three days after the original announcement:
Now, that’s called getting things done.
In the fiscal year 2022, the Yuma sector has seen 259,895 migrant encounters, according to Customs and Border Patrol data. This high figure is reflective of a broader trend across the Southwest, which has had 1.8 million encounters in total since September 2021, surpassing the previous fiscal year.
While some are asking why this could not have been done sooner, the real question is why the Biden administration has neglected to support its hard-working border patrol agents and Southwestern communities. It’s true that the Department of Homeland Security announced in July that they would fill gaps along the border in Yuma, as RedState reported, but the state decided that it’s better not to sit around and wait for them to fix the problem.
Ducey and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have received flack from Democrats for their state-based responses to the border crisis, particularly with their decision to bus migrants to East Coast cities. However, these Democrats, like Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser or New York City Mayor Eric Adams have not mentioned the toll that a massive influx of people has on small towns without nearly as many resources as their big cities.
There was some criticism regarding the storage container method, as two of the containers fell over in a storm, and the governor’s office quickly refuted the story.
“Let’s be clear: this incident took place prior to completion of placing and securing the containers to the ground. After fully securing them, the containers are linked together, bolted in place and welded shut,” The 9th Floor account tweeted. And, based on the fact that all the other containers around them were still upright, it does seem to be a logical explanation for what happened.
Politicians can debate about the immigration system all they want, except it does not change the fact that an exceedingly high number of people coming across the border makes life difficult for both authorities and locals alike.
Arizona deserves praise for taking bold steps to make the border region a better place to live.