Tension between ranchers and CBP heightens amid push for border wall

[Elderberry]

Medill News by Elizabeth Beyer | Jul 4, 2018

TUCSON, Arizona – More than a dozen ranchers who own or control a combined 100 miles on the border between Arizona and Mexico say the number of migrants crossing their land after they enter the U.S. illegally was on the decline before the Trump administration, but border crossings are now happening more frequently on their land.

But the members of the Border Working Group, a collection of ranch owners or managers in the 262 – mile Tucson Sector of the border, say a bigger, stronger wall isn’t the answer. Instead, they’re pushing for more border patrol agents.

“Before Donald Trump got elected there was maybe one group every two weeks” crossing his land from Mexico, said John Ladd, a fourth-generation rancher whose property lies along the border close to Naco, Arizona just eight miles north of the San Jose mountains. “From 1995 to ‘05 they were catching 200 or 300 people a day on our ranch.”

The number of border crossings on Ladd’s ranch increased from one group of people every two weeks to groups of two or three people per day over the past six months, he said.

In his opinion, a six-foot steel fence, similar to the boundaries currently erected on a part of his land, is all that’s needed to stop border crossings if more agents were assigned to patrol the Mexico-U.S. boundary.

Kelly Glenn-Kimbro, a fifth-generation cattle rancher who maintains 22,000 square acres of land along the border in Douglas, Arizona believes a border wall built to replace existing boundaries will be a waste of money and could hurt the environment.

“The border patrol is assigned to secure the border, our legislators have put legislation in place to secure the border. This ranch and our family does not believe that the government should spend excess money on building another style of wall,” she said. Glenn-Kimbro also believes building a wall will be detrimental to the wildlife and ecosystem found in the area.

A concrete border wall would deplete natural resources during construction around the site, and would impede water runoff once it’s complete, according to Glenn-Kimbro. Both of these factors could permanently alter the land, she said.

“A wall could be surveillance” of the international boundary, she said. “That, we would be open to.”

More: http://dc.medill.northwestern.edu/blog/2018/07/04/tension-ranchers-cbp-heightens-amid-push-border-wall/#sthash.ksWC0Nu4.dpbs