Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey reached a settlement with the Department of Justice, according to court documents filed Thursday with the U.S. District Court in Phoenix. Arizona agreed to stop the construction of a border wall using shipping containers on national forest lands. Ducey has been placing shipping containers along the border with Mexico to fill in the gaps left when the Biden administration put a halt to wall construction.

The agreement stipulates that Arizona will remove all previously installed shipping containers and associated equipment, materials, vehicles and other objects in the U.S. Border Patrol Yuma Sector, without damaging U.S. natural resources. To do so, Arizona will work in conjunction with officials from the U.S. Forest Service and Customs and Border Protection.

The agreement was reached one week after the Biden administration filed a lawsuit against Ducey on behalf of the Bureau of Reclamation, the Department of Agriculture and the Forest Service.

Ducey said the shipping container solution was only a temporary one. There are only two weeks left before Governor-elect Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, assumes office. She called the shipping container wall a political stunt and a “waste of taxpayer dollars.” Apparently the shipping containers being on federal land, as alleged by the DOJ, wasn’t a part of her criticism. Does she think taxpayer dollars spent on illegal aliens is a better use of the money? Shouldn’t she want to stop illegal immigration and secure her state’s border?

Before the lawsuit, Ducey told federal officials that Arizona was ready to help remove the containers. He said they were placed as a temporary barrier. But he wanted the federal government to say when it would fill any remaining gaps in the permanent border wall, as it announced it would a year ago.

“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,” Ducey spokesperson CJ Karamargin told Fox News.

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

The work placing up to 3,000 containers at a cost of $95 million was about a third complete, but protesters concerned about its impact on the environment held up work in recent days.

Political partisans like Hobbs can call such actions as Ducey took as political stunts but the fact is that the Biden administration agreed to work with Arizona to continue to construct a border wall. Ducey said all along that the shipping containers are a temporary stopgap measure. The steady flood of illegal immigrants is increasing and will continue to do so as Title 42 comes to an end. Thousands of potential asylum-seekers have camped out along the U.S.-Mexico border just waiting for the public health initiative recommended by the CDC in March 2020 to end. Title 42 has been an effective tool for turning back migrants at the border.

As many as 1,000 migrants a day are arriving at the Yuma sector of the border, which is where the container wall is located. Those waiting on the Mexican side of the border are well aware that Title 42 will end soon. “We all heard about the 21st. That was definitely my aim,” said 29-year-old Roy from the Dominican Republic. December 21 was the original deadline for the end of the initiative but Chief Justice John Roberts put a temporary stay on the order to lift Title 42 earlier this week. Roy will have to wait a little longer. Roberts will probably bring the request from nineteen red states to stop the order before the entire Supreme Court.

The surge has begun. It is unsustainable for the Yuma area. The mayor is already talking about releasing migrants on to the streets in the next days since the city is running out of room for them. Local officials have already declared a public health emergency due to a spike in winter flu. Roy is hanging with a group of about 50 single male adults.

Roy arrived after a seven-day journey via Guatemala and Mexico City.

‘The economy,’ he said, was the reason for heading to the United States. ‘We are poor people who want to work, develop, and support our families.’

He had other reasons — personal reasons, he said — when asked if he planned to seek asylum.

It was 44F on Tuesday night in the desert air. And his mostly male group, which included Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, Cubans as well as eight Georgians – were dressed in light clothes, tracksuits and shorts.

They had been waiting for two hours at the spot near a gate in the wall, directed there by border officials after they had crossed from Mexico, he said.

‘Help us,’ said one. ‘We need transport.’

They are coming from countries around the world. Looking for a job or better economic conditions is not a reason for asylum, though, and perhaps Roy knows that as he said he had “personal reasons” for asylum. What we do know, though, is that when he successfully crosses the border, he’ll likely be allowed to stay. That is what the illegal migrants count on and it usually happens with Biden’s border crisis.

The humanitarian crisis along the border continues.