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Judge Alston authorizes removal of Confederate monument from Arlington National Cemetery

The statue will be removed this Friday, Dec. 22, despite the Defend Arlington group's attempt to prevent the change.

Imagen del monumento confederado del Cementerio Nacional de Arlington. Su retirada está programada para el próximo 22 de diciembre de 2023.

(Wikimedia Commons)

Published by
Rosana Rábago Sainz

After days of back and forth over the removal of a Confederate monument from Arlington National Cemetery, federal Judge Alston authorized the removal of the statue known as the Memorial of Reconciliation. The monument will be taken down on Friday despite the attempt by the group Defend Arlington, which filed a lawsuit last Sunday, to prevent the change. They were able to convince the federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order, though it expired Wednesday.

Judge Alston ultimately relented to the order issued by the Biden administration to remove all Confederate monuments. He did so after walking around the area where the statue is currently located and determining that there was no evidence to show that the graves of the 400 Confederate soldiers who rest there had been altered. "I saw no desecration of any graves. The grass wasn’t even disturbed," Alston said in a hearing reported by the AP.

Furthermore, Judge Alston determined in the brief that removing the monument did not put the graves at risk and that the statements he had received to the contrary were "misinformed or misleading":

The information and pictures provided in the Yates Declaration demonstrate that Defendants are taking protective measures and that Plaintiffs’ complaints regarding the removal efforts being likely to damage the gravesites are misinformed or misleading. The Court also personally visited the Memorial and it was clear to the Court that Defendants were making every effort to protect and respect the surrounding gravesites.

Confederate monument removal to resume immediately

Once the ruling is resolved, work to complete the extraction of the Reconciliation Memorial will resume immediately. This was stated by Arlington National Cemetery spokesperson Kerry L. Meeker in a statement reported by the AP:

We will resume the deliberate process of removing the Confederate Memorial from Arlington National Cemetery immediately. While the work is performed, surrounding graves, headstones and the landscape will be carefully protected.

John Rowley, a lawyer for Defend Arlington, said in a statement reported by The New York Times that the organization would respect the court's decision, even though they continued to believe that the Department of Defense had acted incorrectly:

While we respect the Court’s decision, we continue to believe the evidence shows that in its haste to remove the Reconciliation Memorial, the DoD failed to conduct the reviews mandated by law regarding historic preservation and environmental impacts.
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