Most area ranchers won’t benefit from donation-funded fence because federal lands don't qualify

NOGALES — A state legislator pushing a bill to establish a donation-funded border fence on private property is getting a hat tip from area ranchers, though they wouldn’t benefit from the plan. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Steve Smith, a Maricopa County Republican, would set up a website to collect donations for construction of a border fence on private property (with landowner’s consent). It would also require the state to use prison labor as well as private contractors to build the fence cheaply, and invite other states to get in on the plan. The bill, SB 1406, has cleared all previous hurdles and now awaits only a full House vote before moving to the governor’s desk. Local ranchers said they would be all for a state-built border fence, except they wouldn’t qualify because their ranchlands along the border are owned by the federal government. “I don’t think there is anyone on private property (in Santa Cruz County) who doesn’t have a fence,” said Dan Bell, a third-generation rancher near Rio Rico who holds grazing leases on U.S. Forest Service land along the border just west of Nogales. “I think, in my estimation, pretty much all the private land has been fenced, and the obstacles now have become the federal land,” he said. Bell noted that in most of the border in Santa Cruz County is owned by the U.S. Forest service, and the other parts, mostly near the city of Nogales and a patch near Lochiel, have already been fenced. And it’s not just in Santa Cruz County, said Patrick Bray, director of Arizona Cattlemen’s Association. The organization has not taken a position on the bill because none of its members would qualify to have a fence built on their land, Bray said. Most don’t live right on the border, but lease mostly federal land along the line for grazing. Bray appreciates the effort of the state to take on the issue, but said the problem is so vast that the states cannot solve it — a solution has to come from the federal government. “The state is looking for ways to help out,” he said. “But you cant just dump a bunch of money into infrastructure and expect the border problem to be solved.” ‘No fence at all’ About one-third of Arizona’s border with Mexico is private property, according Smith, the bill’s sponsor. Smith did not return calls from the Nogales International, but said in committee meetings that his primary focus would be to build in the Tucson Sector, of which Santa Cruz County is part. J. David Lowell, of Atascosa Ranch, lives in western Santa Cruz County and the Tucson Sector and has seen plenty of the problems created by illegal immigration and drug smuggling, though he doesn’t actually own land abutting the border. “If I did own the land, I would enthusiastically ask them to build a fence,” Lowell said. Lowell said the border isn’t secure, and it’s messing up his ranching and putting him and his family in danger. Immigrants and drug smugglers constantly cut through his barbed wire fences, and though he’s never had a violent encounter with immigrants on his land, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed on Lowell’s ranch last year. “There’s been a lot of shouting and writing about the border, but the fact of the matter is there are some places along the border with no fence at all,” he said...more