For Tony Sedgwick life doesn't get much better than it is now.
"It's magnificent country. It's beautiful. It's green. It's full of wildlife," Sedgwick said.
Ranching runs in his blood. His family has raised cattle in Santa Cruz County for more than a century.
His parents bought Carmencita Ranch three decades ago. From atop the 700-acre spread can be seen the city of Nogales and the Patagonia Mountains.
There's also a bird's-eye view of the border fence with Mexico about a mile below, something that drew the interest of U.S. Customs and Border Protection in 1993.
Back then Sedgwick agreed to lease a 10-foot-by-10-foot space on Hines' Ridge to the agency for $350 a year to park a mobile surveillance tower on his property.
That later increased to $500. Then in 2003 the payments stopped, but the truck never left.
In 2009 the agency was back with another offer for triple the money. Not long after that deal fell through the Department of Homeland Security decided it wanted to buy the quarter-acre piece of prime real estate.
"The fact that they want to take this land for $600 is outrageous. So I said we'd be glad to lease. The response to that was a service of a lawsuit in federal court where they took the property," Sedgwick said.
DHS also offered to pay $5,700 for rights to the 2.5-acre road leading to the land.
Sedgwick looked into suing DHS and found out it would cost a minimum of $40,000.
"As an American, I'm not accustomed to having my hands tied and having no chance to defend myself. I understand the need of a country to protect itself but I think that the need has to be balanced by the rights of individuals with the freedom and liberty we are guaranteed," Sedgwick said.
Thursday morning Sedgwick received a registered letter informing him that the government will likely want more of his land. There was no mention of a specific offer.
"They don't have to take the whole property. They can take a little piece here and a little piece on the next hill and a little piece on the hill after that. I would be left with the stuff in between," said Sedgwick.
Land that Sedgwick had hoped to one day sell might not be worth near what it was.
"It's an enormous tower. There will be a chain link fence around it. There will be razor wire top. There will be lights that will be on all night long. I'm not an expert. But I certainly wouldn't want to buy my dream home in the shadow of a military installation."
CBS 5 News reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment. So far the agency has made no comment.
Some thought the DHS was formed to protect us and provide for our safety. Ha. George W. Bush signed the legislation creating the agency on Nov. 25, 2002. It combined 22 agencies to create the DHS. Prior to that, Bush had formed the Office Of Homeland Security in 2001. Do a little more digging and you'll find planning for the agency started as early as 1995 under Clinton. The attack on Sept. 11 was used as a trigger point to implement what they were already planning.
No one listened to Adj. Major Gen. Cugno of the Connecticut National Guard who testified it was his opinion that homeland defense be conducted by the National Guard, controlled by the nation’s governors, and not via federal centralized control. In his testimony he pointed out the Guard with a "nationwide span of nearly 3300 locations in 2700 communities, should be recognized as the 'existing' forward-deployed military force in this country." Cugno also testified, "Proponents of a strong federal role clearly demonstrated a lack of understanding of statehood and political realities." Oh well.
I also found this interesting:
In an August 5, 2002 speech, President Bush said: "We're fighting ... to secure freedom in the homeland."[9] Prior to the creation of DHS, American presidents had referred to the U.S. as "the nation" or "the republic", and to its internal policies as "domestic".[10] Also unprecedented was the use, from 2002, of the phrase "the homeland" by White House spokespeople.
Lincoln took us from a republic to a nation and Bush has taken us from a nation to a "homeland".
At the Constitutional Convention in 1787, James Madison warned that "the means of defense against foreign danger have always been the instruments of tyranny at home." Was he right?
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