Arizona Ranchers Inundated by Flood of Illegal Immigrants

Felipe sat along the highway, knees tucked under his chin, eyes fixed on the endless stretch of land ahead.

He’d been hiding in that land nearly 24 hours with seven men he met on the bus ride from Veracruz, Mexico. He had endured searing heat, jagged mesquite bushes, even the stench of cow dung as he lay waiting.

But here he was, surrounded by Border Patrol agents--about to be sent back.

He was 16, but appeared years younger with the fuzz on his upper lip and the fear in his dark eyes. When asked where his parents were, his eyes reddened and he looked away quickly.

“No tengo,” he whispered. “I have none.”

Another in the group explained that Felipe’s parents had died. He didn’t say how or when, only that the boy’s uncle had dipped into his savings to send Felipe to America in search of work and a better life.

But here he was, on the side of the highway--tired, hungry, defeated--the path to that life just beyond a barbed-wire fence.

Twenty miles north across the same stretch of land, on the other side of the fence, George Morin works cattle on 7,000 acres amid the mountain ranges of southeastern Arizona.

He bought his first cow when he was 9, and started working the land in the 1980s when the copper mines began to close.

Now the hardened rancher is ready to walk away. He is being driven out not by drought or low prices, but by the flood of people trekking across his property--people like Felipe, in search of their own promised land beyond the border.

The rancher and the boy came to this place for the same reason: to make a life for themselves and their families. But success for each now is harder to come by, in part, because of the other.

Double Adobe is one of a handful of ranching communities just north of Douglas, Ariz., the busiest entry point in the United States for illegal immigrants. It’s not even a town, really, just a collection of ranch houses and horse trailers off country roads named for those who settled here--families like the McBrides and Andersons and Rodriguezes.

Many have been here for generations. But their years of tilling the land left them unprepared for what they now face: man, not nature, destroying their property and livelihoods.

“I’m going to Colorado,” grumbles Morin, whose 49-year-old face shows the wear of a man who works the land. Deep lines snake under his eyes and alongside his nose. The occasional smile reveals a missing tooth.

His grandpa started as a dairy farmer here in 1921, and Morin has lived in these parts since he was 2 weeks old.

Now, he says, “You can have this damn state back.”

Thousands of illegal immigrants are crossing daily from Agua Prieta, Mexico, into Douglas and up through the ranchland beyond. In June alone, 18,061 were apprehended by Border Patrol agents, 5,408 more than in June 1998.

The day Felipe was caught, he was one of 605 people stopped and returned to Mexico. There’s no telling how many made it through.

The explanation for the surge is simple: Heightened enforcement along traditionally busy crossing points such as San Diego and McAllen, Texas, has funneled the traffic in between.

Border Patrol brass say the influx was expected and they’re already working to shift agents to the Arizona border.

Ranchers, however, were caught by surprise.

Illegal immigrants have cut through their land for years, knocking on doors seeking water and food. But the sheer numbers have grown to be frightening and destructive.

Some ranchers, like Morin, plan to leave. Others are trying to fight back.

“It’s just escalated to the point where you can’t leave anything unlocked anymore,” Morin says. “It’s just changed; the whole country’s changed.

“Believe me, I do feel sorry for some of those people,” he says. “But I’m getting to where I don’t have much sympathy anymore. I’m hoping they’ll draw a line in the sand up in Colorado and say, ‘Whoa.’ ”

Felipe’s group left Veracruz eight days before they were caught.

After a 40-hour bus ride, they arrived in Agua Prieta, pooled their money and bought a beat-up Ford truck that was driven across the border and parked at a hospital just west of Douglas.

They crossed on foot at 8 p.m. on a Sunday and headed for the brush north of the hospital parking lot, where they spent the night with cattle grazing off the mesquite that concealed them.

At 7 p.m. the next day, they picked up the truck--and were stopped five minutes later on their way out of town.

Here, there’s no river separating the United States and Mexico, only a three-mile fence that’s been sawed and burned and welded back together again. Head far enough east or west, and you can simply walk around it.

Once in Arizona, it’s almost impossible for them to avoid ranch country. They slip through the barbed wire or simply cut it, and move north under the cover of mesquite bushes and cactus, sometimes hiking as far as 25 miles.

They come at night, when temperatures dip into the 60s. They come during the day, when temperatures soar past 100.

Like Felipe’s group, they hide in the brush near a road until the “load car” pulls up. They pile in and screech away, headed for Phoenix and elsewhere.

While Felipe was headed to Agua Prieta, Morin was in Colorado scouting land. He returned to find his ranch turned into a garbage dump, only the latest sign it was time to pack up.

Plastic grocery bags, used by immigrants to carry their clothes, clung to his trees. Water bottles, some still half-filled, were tossed next to his cattle.

In the last three years, Morin has had to sell off more than 60% of his herd due to drought. Now he fears they’ll eat a plastic bag, get their intestines twisted and die.

Just down the road, at Helen and Robert Hoffman’s place, an illegal immigrant gave birth in a water basin next to their home in April. On other days, thirsty immigrants drain water from their storage tanks.

Then there are the fences. For miles along the three main roads near Double Adobe, they’ve been trampled and cut, allowing cattle to get loose.

Another neighbor, Jan Edgerton, spent one recent morning rounding up 26 cows that escaped when a group of illegal immigrants left her gate open.

“It’s a pain in the butt, I’ll tell you,” says Robert Hoffman, 74, who has lived on the same road since 1953. “You’re not allowed to shoot ‘em, but I keep threatening to hang ‘em on these fence poles.”

For ranchers, it’s more than a nuisance; it’s a threat to their wallets, to their entire way of life.

“There’s been several million dollars’ worth of fence damage,” says Dan Greene, one of 12 Border Patrol agents on so-called ranch patrol. That was formed this summer when ranchers began complaining they needed help. In its first three weeks, the unit apprehended 4,000 immigrants on ranches around Douglas.

Greene has firsthand knowledge of the ranchers’ problem. He helps out on his uncle’s land, 50 miles north, where six calves have been slaughtered in the last year, apparently by immigrants desperate for food.

For many, he says, the situation will be “the final straw that broke the camel’s back.”

For Morin, it already is.

“I’ll be out of here by July next year,” he promises. “I don’t really want to leave this country, but you’ve got another half million coming and God knows how many more behind them.”

People here know he’s right.

Even Felipe knew it.

As he sat along that highway, the Border Patrol ready to send him back, he nodded hesitantly when asked if he was scared.

“He doesn’t know what he’s going to do,” said another in the group.

But as he scrambled up and was escorted away, Felipe turned back for one last look at the land before him, and for the first time he smiled.

He knew what he was going to do.

He knew he’d be back.