Arizona Governor Doug Ducey caves to Biden’s demands to dismantle border wall

The project of installing approximately 3,000 containers at a cost of $95 million was approximately a third complete, but protesters held up the work recently over concerns over the wall’s environmental impact.

According to court documents filed Thursday with the US District Court in Phoenix, Ducey reached a settlement with the Department of Justice in which Arizona agreed to stop construction of the border wall on national forest lands and agreed to remove all previously installed shipping containers and associated equipment, materials, vehicles, and other objects in the US Border Patrol Yuma Sector.

The Arizona border with Mexico is 373 miles, which is 19 percent of the total border Mexico shares with the US. California's border with Mexico is only 320 miles, comparatively.

The Biden administration is more concerned with the environmental impact of a border wall, but not the social impact of illegal immigratino. In order to not damage natural resources in the area, Arizona will work with officials from the US Forest Service and Customs and Border Protection.

The agreement comes a week after the Biden administration sued Ducey on behalf of the Bureau of Reclamation, the Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service and two weeks before Democratic Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs is scheduled to move into the governor’s mansion.

Hobbs previously called the wall of shipping containers a political stunt and a "waste of taxpayer dollars."

Before the suit was filed, Ducey told federal officials that Arizona was ready to help remove the containers because they were placed as a temporary barrier, but he wanted the federal government to follow through on its announcement the previous year to fill the remaining gaps in the permanent border wall.

Ducey spokesperson CJ Karamargin told Fox News, "For more than a year, the federal government has been touting their effort to resume construction of a permanent border barrier. Finally, after the situation on our border has turned into a full-blown crisis, they’ve decided to act. Better late than never.”

Karamargin added, "We’re working with the federal government to ensure they can begin construction of this barrier with the urgency this problem demands.”

Title 42, which limits those hoping to enter the US had been set to expire Wednesday before a lawsuit brought by conservative-leaning states asked the Supreme Court to keep them in place.

The Biden administration has asked the court to lift the restrictions barring further illegal immigrants entry into the US, however, it remains unclear when the court will rule.