by Hugh Holub
The ranchers in the border zone have been frustrated for a long time about how much illegal activity goes on through federal lands at the border. It has steadily gotten more and more dangerous out on the range due to the drug cartels. None of the ranchers I’ve talked to are willing to have their names used in a story for fear of retaliation.
Part of the recent secret video showing illegal entry and drug smuggling on the border was shot in the borderlands near Nogales. It should not be any surprise that if you set up a camera in one of the canyons near the border you will see lots of illegal activity. That’s because the Border Patrol is not sitting there to catch the illegal activity. Doubtless given the amount of electronic surveillance at the border, the Border Patrol’s video tapes would be extremely shocking to see how much illegal ativity is actually monitored, but not responded to because agents are not close enough to react. This is a point made over and over again by border ranchers.
Border area ranchers have had to deal with illegal entry and drug smuggling for years. Except where the Border Patrol has set up a Forward Observation Base (one of them is on a ranch west of Nogales), the borderlands are a dangerous place.
One rancher described how his cowboys are aware of drug cartel and human smugglers perched on hilltops near the border, spotting when the Border Patrol is absent, so they can run their loads of drugs or chains of people through the line. The rancher believes the cartel spotters are using satellite phones to report since cell phone service is non-existent on most of the ranch.
“We just go about our business being cowboys hoping the smugglers will leave us alone,” said the rancher.
Up until Douglas rancher Robert Krentz was murdered by a suspected drug smuggler or spotter, the ranchers and their cowboys always offered aid and assistance to illegal entrants who got into trouble on their ranches.
But since the murder of Krentz, the cowboys all over the border region have been instructed not to have any contact with illegal entrants out of fear they will be murdered.
All the ranchers I’ve talked to are armed. But they joke that “a 94 [Winchester rifle] is not match for a 47 [an AK 47 carried by drug smugglers]”.
They fervently hope they will never encounter a convoy of smugglers armed with automatic weapons on their ranches. When they see suspected illegal entrants or drug smugglers, they head off in the opposite direction.
Some ranchers have given up their federal leases on some lands simply because continuing to run cows in those areas was too risky. They also joke about how the cartel and the anti-ranching environmentalists win in that case. “Some of the environmentalists would rather have illegal entrants and drug smugglers out there instead of our cows,” said one rancher. He then joked that maybe the jaguars and wolves should be trained to eat drug smugglers.
There are also stories about how the drug cartel has been buying up ranches on the Mexican side of the border to protect their smuggling zones. Even though the boundary of the US ranches abuts Mexico, there was a long history of cooperation between ranchers on both sides of the border. That is disappearing...
Several of the ranches have installed drinking foundations at their watering tanks in the canyons north of the border, so illegal entrants don’t die of thirst. It is an amazing site to be in one of these remote canyons near the border and see drinking fountains.
Some of the ranchers have installed “side step” gates on their fence lines. The reason for this is they got sick and tired of people cutting their fences.
However, on one of the ranches, the Border Patrol installed sensors at the side step gates, rendering them useless. The illegal immigrants continue cutting the rancher’s fences...
Read the complete article at the Tucson Citizen.
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