In the ongoing battle between the federal government and states along the southern border, the Biden administration sent a letter to Arizona demanding the state remove several dozen shipping containers the state has placed in gaps along the Mexican border.

At issue here isn’t just the border… well, just the border with Mexico. It also has to do with Native American reservation lands.

Via The Hill:

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said in a letter on Friday that several of the double-stacked shipping containers lay within its lands and those of the Cocopah Indian Tribe’s West Reservation without their permission, violating federal law and constituting trespassing.

The bureau requested that the state remove the 80 shipping containers on its lands near Morelos Dam and another 42 containers on tribal lands, as well as halt the addition of new containers to federal or Indian trust lands.

The Bureau of Reclamation said U.S. Customs and Border Protection has awarded a contract to close two gaps on its lands near the dam and anticipates awarding another contract to close two other gaps in the area, noting that it demanded the containers’ removal so the project can continue “without unnecessary delay.”

And while violating federal law and trespassing are both serious, so is the national security risked posed by a porous, open border that has featured millions of immigrant encounters and hundreds of thousands of “gotaways” – people who evaded U.S. border patrol.

We are now 18 days into October & the federal government still has not released border numbers for the month of September, the final month of fiscal year 2022.

Sept. numbers are expected to finish FY’22 w/ 2.3 million + migrant encounters, not including 599,000 known gotaways.

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) October 18, 2022

The Biden administration has long been at odds with border states like Arizona and Texas, which are taking the brunt of the effects of the illegal immigration crisis. As the border gets flooded and immigrants either slip away or are relocated by the federal government, many of the towns and cities along the border are getting overwhelmed and can’t handle the influx.

The issue in Arizona would very likely have not been a problem had the Biden administration enforced the border in the first place, but states have since taken various steps to raise awareness while also attempting to secure the border themselves – with little help from the Biden administration. That this particular measure, putting shipping containers in the gaps of the wall, isn’t the fault of the state of Arizona but the Biden administration, which came into power so opposed to the very existence of the Trump administration that they worked to undo everything the previous administration did.

That has left the border in crisis as America went from a country that was working on securing its border to a country that neglected it.

And, while it is certainly very understandable that the indigenous groups don’t want state governments working on their lands without permission, the problem for everyone involved is the economic and security risk posed by people coming in through the border freely and just wandering off, unchecked, into American territory.

That is a situation that has to be resolved as soon as possible.