PrintArizona's leaders blow off Biden, build the border wall themselves
As the Biden administration refuses to enforce our nation's immigration laws, border states are being forced to take their sovereignty into their own hands. Texas has been leading the charge, and now Arizona is stepping up.
Arizona governor Doug Ducey announced earlier this month that he was ordering gaps at the border wall in the Yuma Sector to be filled in.
The state plans to use 60 double-stacked shipping containers to fill in more than 1,000 feet of border wall.
The Yuma sector has been especially ravaged by the Biden border crisis. In just one week in July, Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 5,600 illegal border-crossers from more than 40 different counties in Yuma. This included more than 100 illegal aliens with felony convictions.
The Trump administration had previously ordered the wall completed, but Biden halted all further border wall construction shortly after taking office. Ducey reportedly made his decision without contacting either the Department of Homeland Security or the White House, signaling a level of defiance toward this derelict administration.
"If the federal government won't act, we will," the governor said.
It is true that the Biden administration had previously pledged to fill in some of the gaps in the Yuma border wall, likely as a campaign favor to embattled Arizona's Democrat senator, Mark Kelly, who is facing a tough re-election this fall in large part due to the crisis at the border.
However, Ducey is right to go ahead on the project without waiting for the feds, and he's right to criticize the administration's cynical political games.
Joe Biden's attempt to appear as if he is doing something about the border crisis he created is a desperate attempt to save his party's slim majorities in Congress, nothing more. Arizonans have spent the last two years watching their quality of life reduced and their state become more dangerous as a result of anti-border policies being pushed by anti-borders politicians, including Biden and Kelly.
While the state of Texas has received the most attention for bussing illegal aliens to the progressive hubs of New York City and Washington, D.C., Arizona has also bussed more than 500 illegal aliens to the East Coast over the past few months. This tactic has not solved our immigration crisis, but it has forced the blue-state elites who imposed this crisis on us to at least bear some of its costs. Ducey has also sent the National Guard to Yuma on multiple occasions in order to protect its citizens. In late June, the governor signed a budget that included a record $564 million allocated for border security, some of which will be used to finish the wall.
While the humanitarian crisis at the border worsens, the White House continues to create magnets to attract even more foreign nationals to enter the country illegally.
The Department of Homeland Security recently issued a new rule to restart the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Re-establishing DACA is one of the strongest pull factors in bringing foreign nationals to our southern border. It also keeps the cartel-driven human-trafficking business flush with new clientele and increases the number of children abused and killed in this ghastly trade.
If the Biden administration only applied a fraction of its efforts into strengthening border enforcement instead of dangling carrots to encourage more illegal passage at the border, it would be a true humanitarian act instead of the faux compassion in its talking points that actually makes life far worse for the people it claims to be rescuing.
Ultimately, it is tragic that the federal government has been so derelict in its constitutional responsibility to protect our country's borders, but states including Arizona and Texas are increasingly stepping up to the plate. Other states would be wise to follow their lead.
Dale L. Wilcox is executive director and general counsel at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of mass migration.
