PHOENIX — One year ago this week, Republican Gov. Doug Ducey started stacking shipping containers at the border to keep migrants out.
Now, Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs' administration is selling off the containers.
But Hobbs' fire sale will never come close to covering the cost of Ducey's do-it-yourself wall.
"We are saying 'Enough'"
In his final months in office last year, Ducey stacked dozens of empty shipping containers near the Mexico border in Yuma and Cochise Counties.
"Arizona filled the gap - literally," Ducey said at a September news conference in front of the Yuma containers.
"With these shipping containers, we are saying 'Enough.'"
Ducey's wall was erected to embarrass the Biden Administration. He criticized the president for moving too slowly to close gaps in the border fence that Pres. Donald Trump put up.
There is no documented evidence that the shipping containers made an impact on the flow of migrants or drugs over the border.
"A political stunt"
Hobbs, a Democrat, inherited the shipping containers when she took office in January. Ducey had begun taking them down after the federal government sued.
"From Day 1, Gov. Hobbs has denounced this political stunt as a waste of taxpayer dollars," the governor's communications director, Christian Slater, said in a statement to 12News.
"Instead, we are putting border security money to good use by giving border communities the funds they need to staff up, improve technology and buy additional supplies for their operations."
Ducey funded the container wall with cash from the Arizona Border Security Fund, created by the Republican-controlled Legislature last year to pay for the "construction, administration, and maintenance of a physical border fence."
Priced to move
Since June, the Hobbs Administration has been selling off the containers with a snappy video created by the state Department of Administration.
-The containers have been "heavily used," "dented" or "cracked."
-They're priced to move, at $500 to $2,000 each, depending on size. The containers were purchased for more than $6,000 apiece.
-Buyers have to purchase the containers sight unseen and pay to haul them away, which could cost more than the price of the container itself, according to the Department of Administration's state communications director, Megan Rose.
Almost all of the containers are stored on the grounds of the state prison at Tucson.
Container sales sluggish
So far, the containers haven't been flying off the shelves.
According to the Department of Administration:
-2,218 containers were made available in June.
-Just 114 had been sold as of Friday.
-Total sale price: $192,000, an average $1,684 per container. The Ducey Administration paid an estimated $6,200 per container.
Recouped less than penny on the dollar
The cost of buying, installing and removing all 2,000-plus containers at the border was a reported $200 million.
To date, the state has recouped 0.1 percent of the cost - less than a penny on the dollar. If every container were sold at the current average rate, the state would claw back less than 2 percent of the wall's cost.
The target market for the containers is governments and non-profits. Private citizens will be allowed to buy them by October.
Judge will rule on damage
The state might not be done paying for Ducey's border barrier.
The federal government sued Ducey over the barrier, and Ducey countersued.
According to the federal lawsuit filed against the state, the containers' installation in the Coronado National Forest damaged the environment.
A judge could decide as soon as the end of August what the state might have to do to restore the area where the containers were installed.
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