Border Crackdown Unnerves Ranchers

Karl Sanders once lived peacefully on his Sacred Mountain Ranch here, raising horses on Native American holy grounds a few hundred yards from the U.S.-Mexico border.

Then came Operation Gatekeeper. Since then, Sanders said, he has seen a steady but slow trickle of undocumented immigrants turn into a flood.

The other night, Sanders said, he heard voices and muffled footsteps. His rangy ranch dog began “making a big fuss, telling me there’s all kinda people out there that shouldn’t be.” He went outside, fired off a few shotgun rounds into the air, and suddenly the night came alive.

“It was pandemonium. All hell broke loose,” Sanders said. “There were people stampeding everywhere like a herd of cattle. The dog exploded barking. My hair stood on end. I had to get ahold of myself.”

It is eastern San Diego County that critics of Operation Gatekeeper point to when they charge that the intensified crackdown along the western border of San Diego County has not succeeded in diminishing the flood of illegal immigrants since it began in October 1994. These critics say the stepped-up enforcement to the west has merely turned the tide eastward. Immigration officials acknowledge that there are some difficulties in that portion of the county, and say they are in the process of beefing up enforcement here.

In the lonely canyons of what residents call the “back country,” the border has ceased to be a geographic abstraction. It has become a living, breathing force that changes after the sun goes down.

Now some people in these parts are trying to fight back. Ranchers-turned-activists are banding together into grass-roots groups to publicize their concerns and demand solutions to what they see as the problem: illegal immigrants who start campfires that spread into the brush, cut holes in fences that let cattle escape and leave trash strewn like confetti in their wake. The ranchers blame smugglers for killing dogs and robbing houses along the well-traversed trails.

“I have reported this time and time again to our local Border Patrol, and all they can ever say to me is, ‘Gee, I wish we had more manpower so we could take care of that,’ ” said Ed Tisdale, 57, a cattle rancher who owns the 140-acre Morning Star Ranch near Boulevard, east of Tecate. “They look at me like I’m some kinda crank. All I’m trying to do is make a living and not lose my livelihood.”

Border Patrol spokesman Ron Henley said staffing levels in what locals call the East County have doubled since Gatekeeper began and there are now 193 agents between the communities of El Cajon and Campo. The Boulevard substation that patrols Tisdale’s area, he said, has only 17, a figure he said reflects the “growing pains” of the push eastward.

Henley said Thursday that the patrol is trying to reposition agents from other areas to cope with “the main focus of the storm”--Tecate and, farther east along the border, Jacumba.

“The Border Patrol has not neglected East County,” he said. “As soon as manpower comes out of the academy, we’ll assign agents there. But you can’t overwhelm journeymen with trainees who haven’t had a chance to get acclimated.”

Before Operation Gatekeeper, Tisdale said, maybe 50 illegal immigrants a week moved across his ranch. On Tuesday night, he estimated, 75 to 100 trudged across the property. Or that’s what it sounded like, because ranchers, being wildly outnumbered, rarely venture out to take a head count.

Tisdale said he used to check his fence twice a year. Now, he says, he checks it twice a day. “You could lose your whole darn herd through one of those gaps if you don’t pay attention,” Tisdale said.

His wife, Donna Tisdale, 43, is co-director of a grass-roots group called Alien Traffic Opposition, whose acronym, ALTO, means stop in Spanish.

Tisdale said family members run into people almost daily who they suspect are illegal immigrants. The Tisdales’ daughter, Tracy, 17, has met groups of strange men while walking alone to school. Her son’s fiancee pulled a gun recently on two men she thought were illegal immigrants after they kept insisting she sell them a car.

Border Patrol spokesman Scott Marvin said officials do not discount the reports that dogs are being clubbed, poisoned and stabbed, and said he believed smugglers may be responsible.

That was the suspicion in Jamul when two family dogs were poisoned with strychnine July 18, according to Laura Wright, founder of Citizens for a Safer Jamul, which began in February in response to illegal immigration woes. Pam Guy said her mother’s two 10-year-old Australian shepherds were poisoned on Easter Sunday in Boulevard.

The new activist groups have not attracted universal support, however. Some people in the area say their sympathies lie as much with the illegal immigrants.

“They get bit by rattlesnakes. The women get raped. I feel so sorry for them,” said Jessie Renteria, 53, a U.S. citizen with a grape and citrus farm on the Mexican side of the border near Tecate.

“They are just poor frightened people looking for safety. I just try to help them,” said a young American woman from a large Latino ranching family, who did not wish to be named for fear of alienating white clientele from the Tecate business where she works.

Indeed, for the illegal immigrants, these harshly beautiful desert mountains are a treacherous, boulder-strewn caldron where rattlesnakes lurk and the cool rosy dawn quickly gives way to a pitiless, blistering sun. Sixteen immigrants have succumbed so far this year, the Mexican consul in San Diego said. The most recent was Hector Daniel Torres, a 23-year-old man from Guadalajara, who died of severe dehydration, exhaustion and exposure after two days in the Otay Mountains, consulate officials said.

Illegal immigrants must also contend with thieves who prey on them as they wander for days through empty canyons and gulches, often without food or water. And the undergarments found scattered about in the morning hint darkly at other crimes that may explain the screams of women that sometimes pierce the night, Sanders and other ranchers said.

For those with a stake on both sides of the border, the disruption has upset the peaceful coexistence of a once-sleepy backwater that now seems to have the world at its doorstep.

“Tecate used to be a quiet little town. The truth is, a lot of people don’t like what is happening,” said Fritz Oak, a Mexican American born in Tijuana who lives in Tecate. “But to the Mexicans, well, it’s their own people.”

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Heading East

Critics charge that a crackdown on illegal immigrants has turned the tide toward east San Diego County.