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Mexican cartels and smugglers who funnel migrants and drugs over the border and into Yuma, Arizona, have begun moving outside of town to areas without a barrier following Gov. Doug Ducey's installation of a shipping container wall this month, according to Arizona officials.
“We are definitely seeing a reduction in the areas where the wall has been closed up,” Jonathan Lines, Yuma County supervisor, wrote in a message Thursday to the Washington Examiner. “One of the enclosures just down from the dam is where the five-year-old drowned in July. It is having the impact that we desired."
"While I was there yesterday there were only two people who tried to cross in that area and then they realized there was no access," Lines continued. "Border Patrol is now able to place human resources in the areas that do not have a wall and focus on trafficking there — 100% a win-win.”
To improve border security, Ducey had ordered construction workers to stack massive shipping containers in five gaps between Trump-era border wall projects. Work was completed Tuesday.
The gaps were left when President Joe Biden took office in January 2021 and canceled the 350 miles of funded wall projects that could not be completed before former President Donald Trump left office.
A team of 48 construction workers spent 11 days installing 130 shipping containers in double layers along 3,820 feet of the border. The containers are each 60 feet long and 9 feet tall, topped with concertina wire.
A Border Patrol agent in Yuma told the Washington Examiner that illegal traffic was increasingly moving to other parts in the border wall system where there was no wall or shipping containers, including several miles south of the shipping containers on the Cocopah Reservation. The Native American reservation did not allow the Trump administration to erect any wall on its land, which the agent said may make it appealing to smugglers.
"The governor did something good for us," said the agent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the media.
Across the southwestern Arizona region, Border Patrol apprehensions have dropped from 1,500 people taken into custody daily earlier this year to as low as 500 apprehensions on some days, the agent said. Border Patrol's parent agency, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, did not respond to a request for comment on the impact of the shipping containers.
A second Border Patrol agent who works outside of Yuma city limits said agents were being "flooded with give-ups," referring to migrants who illegally cross and then seek out and surrender to agents.
A spokesman for the governor’s office said the next step for the state is to determine where illegal crossings are shifting and then closing those gaps and other open spaces.
“The next logical thought is you beef up security in those other areas, and guess what? If you do this in every other place, you might end up with a secure border,” said C.J. Karamargin, Ducey’s communications director. "The city of Yuma, maybe 100,000 people, may be able to sleep a little bit easier knowing that the gaps that were once open aren’t as open as they once were just two weeks ago."
Security at the build sites was increased after two of the 8,800-pound containers toppled over last week, Karamargin said. Karamargin suspected criminal mischief was to blame, while others speculated the wind blew the containers over.
The five gaps were filled in at the cost of $6 million. The money was allocated in the state's 2023 fiscal budget.
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