Arizona’s governor is creating a border wall with shipping containers - BBC

Amid increasing controversy, absorption is mounting to a arguable program from Arizona's politician to physique a partition of shipping containers on the US-Mexico border.

The makeshift obstruction is being built by Governor Doug Ducey successful his waning days successful office.

Construction began earlier this year, with Mr Ducey saying it was an effort to "secure" the border.

Critics accidental the task unlawfully cuts done tribal and national lands.

With conscionable weeks near until Mr Ducey leaves office, enactment crews operating on Arizona's eastbound borderline with Mexico person been making advancement connected the barrier, which consists of double-stacked shipping containers and razor wire.

That advancement has precocious been slowed by days of protests from biology groups, who accidental that the obstruction poses a information to autochthonal taxon and earthy h2o systems successful the region.

Incoming politician Katie Hobbs has yet to determine what to bash with the containers.

In Arizona's Santa Cruz county, Sheriff David Hathaway said that helium plans to apprehension operation crews moving connected the obstruction if they scope his county.

"The country wherever they're placing the containers is wholly connected national land, connected nationalist forest," Mr Hathaway told section quality presumption Fox 10.

"It's not authorities land, it's not backstage land, and the national authorities has said this [is] amerciable activity."

The BBC has reached retired to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office for comment.

Still, the inaugural has the enactment of the sheriff of adjacent Cochise county, who said successful a connection that helium believes it volition "deter transgression and halt transgression behaviour".

Federal agencies person called the obstruction unlawful and ordered authorities officials to halt the work.

In response, successful precocious October, Mr Ducey filed a suit claiming that the authorities has the close to instrumentality enactment to enactment an extremity to an "unprecedented crisis" successful which "countless migrants" are crossing the border.

"The effect is simply a premix of drug, crime, and humanitarian issues the authorities has ne'er experienced astatine specified a important magnitude," the suit reads.

The national authorities is asking for the suit to beryllium dismissed.

The governor-elect, Ms Hobbs, has been opposed to the obstruction but it's unclear if she plans to region the containers aft her inauguration connected 5 January.

While she had antecedently suggested that the containers would beryllium re-used to make affordable lodging options for low-income residents, past week she said she was looking astatine each options and warned that she "doesn't cognize however overmuch it volition outgo to region the containers and what the outgo volition be".

The statement astir Mr Ducey's borderline obstruction comes amid record-breaking numbers of migrants arriving astatine the US-Mexico border.

In the 2022 fiscal twelvemonth that ended successful September, a full of 2.38 cardinal migrants were detained astatine the border, marking a 37% summation implicit the anterior year.

Officials successful a fig of mostly Republican-led states person harshly criticised the Biden administration's handling of what immoderate person termed a migrant "crisis".

Earlier this year, 3 states - Texas, Arizona, and Florida - announced initiatives to determination migrants to Democratic-led ones, which they person accused of being "sanctuary" jurisdictions that neglect to enforce migration laws.