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| AP Photo/Gregory Bull |
Hours before Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey declared “a major step forward to secure our border” with the installation of 130 double-stacked shipping containers, hundreds of migrants found their way around them, belying his claim.
They walked through tribal lands to the edge of a towering wall built during Donald Trump’s presidency to surrender to border agents waiting outside the reservation, expecting to be released in the U.S. to pursue asylum.
Families, young parents carrying toddlers, elderly people and others easily waded through the knee-deep Colorado River before dawn Wednesday, many in sandals with shopping bags slung over their shoulders.
The wall isn’t the issue it was in 2018 when Congress denied Trump funding for one of his top priorities, prompting the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. But last week’s events in Yuma are a reminder of obstacles that the government faces with border barriers: difficulty building on tribal land, most notably in the Tohono O’odham Nation in Arizona, and opposition from landowners, especially in Texas, where, unlike other border states, much property is privately owned.
Ducey‘s critics have seized on images from Univision network showing two containers that toppled during 11 days of construction for unknown reasons. Gary Restaino, the top federal prosecutor in Arizona, used a bilateral meeting in Mexico City to needle the governor Friday, tweeting, “We’re not dumping a bunch of shipping containers in the desert and calling it a wall to get cheap press.” Ducey retorted that ”we’ve taken matters into our own hands” because the federal government hasn’t done enough.
Migrants continue to avoid barriers by going around them - in this case, through a 5-mile (8-kilometer) gap in the Cocopah Indian Reservation near Yuma, a desert city of about 100,000 people between San Diego and Phoenix that has become a major spot for illegal crossings. --->READ MORE HERE
Migrants bypass AZ shipping container border wall:
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