Not On Our Land!

February 8, 2008
By Bill Sontag
Feature Writer

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know, What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.

– Robert Frost, “Mending Wall,” 1915

The Rio Grande – Big River – has one identity from its headwaters in the lovely San Juan Mountains of Southern Colorado, flowing quietly past pecan orchards and chile fields of New Mexico, until it hits the El Paso city limits at the far western tip of Texas.

There it acquires a split personality. Still the Rio Grande on the American side of the channel, it becomes the Rio Bravo—Wild River—on Mexican maps and in lore and legend. From where the river flows between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso to its premature death in a vanishing estuary at the Gulf of Mexico, the stream is neither big nor wild except in the memories of the very old or those fortunates who have survived its raging floods.

Now, this fertile, wet, 1,500-mile corridor that lubricated cities into existence—Alamosa, Albuquerque, Las Cruces, El Paso, Del Rio, Eagle Pass, Laredo, McAllen and Brownsville—is deemed an inadequate partition between Mexico and the United States. Author Alan Riding called the sovereignties “Reluctant Neighbors,” but the Rio Grande has been loftily dubbed the waterway that binds two nations. Now, one of those nations has acquired the image—right or wrong—of severing that bond with strategically placed walls.

Robert Frost wrote “Good fences make good neighbors,” but farmers and ranchers along the Rio Grande generally believe, as did Frost, that the maxim fails. “Tell you what, I’m flat, totally against the wall in the Del Rio Sector,” thundered Bill Moody, Galveston insurance and banking magnate and owner of Rancho Rio Grande. Moody’s ranch sprawls like a slender blade across 55,000 acres, lying alongside the river from Del Rio to Quemado.

“I’m not so against it in New Mexico and Arizona, because all they’ve got in most places out there is a three-wire fence. But here we’ve got a river, and what we need are just more border patrolmen and better surveillance,” Moody told LIVE! Wednesday (Jan. 9). “They’ve got some [technologies] now that are very sophisticated and work really well.

U.S. Border Patrol presence dots the landscape of Rancho Rio Grande with men and women in vehicles, unseen motion and heat sensors, and this lonely outpost on a bluff high above the Rio Grande. Inside is a tattered bench seat at a good height for binocular viewing of a wide panorama. At far right, barely discernable, is a Mexican desert trail and river bank scrape used by border crossers. (LIVE! photo/Bill Sontag) (click image to enlarge)

The Rio Grande stretches northward as the boundary of Rancho Rio Grande, bordered in both Mexico (left) and the United States with dense thickets of cane and salt cedar. These two exotics line rivers and streams across south Texas, stealing millions of gallons of water because of their phenomenal thirst. Moreover, if they were eliminated, not only would the river flow into the Gulf of Mexico, but illegal crossings would be vastly easier to spot. (LIVE! photo/Bill Sontag) (click image to enlarge)

By state statute, roads and canals cannot interfere with natural watershed into rivers, so the Maverick County Water District canal flows through deep culverts below several streams emptying from Rancho Rio Grande into the Rio Grande. Walkways of the “siphon” structure are used by illegal immigrants as crossing points. Note the scrape, right, through the river cane. Border Patrol agents rake the fresh soil to better spot recent tracks. (LIVE! photo/Bill Sontag) (click image to enlarge)

Kelsey Johnson, center, pauses for a smoke during corral work on Ranch Rio Grande, flanked by fellow USDA tick riders Manny Galvan, left, and Able Dennis. The men not only ride the border searching for fever tick infestations and quarantining pastures, but help ranchers get infected cattle run through dipping vats of pesticide. (LIVE! photo/Bill Sontag) (click image to enlarge)

 

“The people of Mexico are our neighbors, and this wall just won’t do a bit of good. The main thing is that it’s an unneeded expenditure, and, oh sure, it will impact my livestock. But, Mexico is our neighbor and we don’t want to insult them with a wall that’s not needed.” Moody’s grandfather bought and began to develop Rancho Rio Grande in 1941, and Moody bought it 35 years ago. “I didn’t inherit it, I paid for it myself,” Moody said.

John Kincaid is Rancho Rio Grande’s foreman, living in a tree-shaded grove near the ranch’s corrals since he took this job 17 years ago. A native of Uvalde, Kincaid has ranched nearly all of his 70 years, but he loves this job, making it clear that illegal immigrants crossing Rancho Rio Grande to seek jobs inland are among the least of his worries. Fever ticks, cattle rustling, thieves and drug smugglers take up a lot more of Kincaid’s attention.

All of those challenges have roots on the Mexican side of the river, but Kincaid is not convinced that a wall will solve the problems. Moreover, because of the rough topography—particularly near the river—and a large irrigation canal that parallels the river, Kincaid forecasts major property loss resulting from any federal resolve to build a wall. Thinking of Moody’s reaction, Kincaid said, Thursday (Jan. 17), “He’s going to lose a lot of land, maybe three- or four thousand acres because of where they’d have to build it. He’ll fight it, I think, but I don’t know for sure what he’ll do.”

Now it seems such government determination is weakening, but it may be too soon to tell. With the release on Jan. 8 of a Draft Environmental Assessment, required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Department of Homeland Security announces intentions to build two short segments of fence to stop or slow the progress of illegal entries at Eagle Pass and Del Rio. (See companion story, “Think Americans are united on ‘the wall’ proposals? Not here!”)

Kincaid agrees there are border problems as thorny as the scrub in which Rancho Rio Grande cattle and goats survive, due in no small measure to the vigilance of loyal ranch workers, Border Patrol agents, and United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) tick riders. Illegal immigration is mostly of benign significance to ranch operations, according to Richard Knight, one of several mounted tick riders who systematically roam the border searching for fever ticks on range cattle.

“We run across illegals quite a bit, but we usually don’t have any trouble with them. Ninety-nine percent of them are just looking for a job,” Knight said, pausing from Rancho Rio Grande cattle-dipping. “But the smugglers? We just try to ride away, and call to report ‘em on a radio or cell phone. They’re the ones who could be trouble for us.” Knight said he’s not been threatened by armed smugglers, attributing that to his personal non-interference.

Kincaid explained that smuggling works both directions across the river. “There is no telling how many cattle we have lost to rustlers,” Kincaid said. He recalled one cow found tied to a tree by a rustler on foot who escaped without his bovine booty. The cow was nearly dead from starvation and thirst. “It’s a big problem because there is just so much rough country. It’s a no-man’s land, and nobody lives close to it. It’s rough with all this brush, [river] cane and these canyons,” said Kincaid. So, nearly non-stop patrolling of the ranch by Border Patrol agents is a welcome sight to Kincaid, stopping every one he sees for a greeting and conversations. “We want ‘em here!” Kincaid asserted.

The overarching concern—the real threat to ranch profitability—that nettles Kincaid all the time is the omnipresence of cattle fever ticks (Boophilus sp.) infecting cattle with a protozoan that wreaks havoc on health and production. A 2005 USDA report on the history of the exotic pest describes an 1868 episode in which infected Texas cattle—immune from long exposure—were imported to Indiana and Illinois, resulting in the infection and death of 15,000 head of domestic cattle there.

“Fever ticks are our big problem,” said Kincaid. “They’ll kill cattle and deer, but they don’t bother goats.” The tick riders find Boophilus on Rancho Rio Grande cattle and immediately quarantine the entire pasture where they’re found. Then the herd is rounded up for “dipping,” an involuntary swim through a narrow pit filled with a noxious-smelling pesticide bath. “In 2006, half the ranch was quarantined,” Kincaid said, shaking his head. “And this year, it’s all started again.” The ticks come from cattle swimming the Rio Grande and mixing with Moody herds. “And Mexico doesn’t even try to control it,” Kincaid barked.

That said, Kincaid was quick to reiterate his uneasiness about a wall between the countries. Removing the dense thickets or river cane would be a good start, according to Kincaid. Not only would line of sight between illegal crossings and Border Patrol agents be facilitated, but untold volumes of water would be conserved for downstream use. “We don’t use the water in the river; we try to keep our cattle fenced away from it because of the fever ticks on Mexican cattle. But the Border Patrol flew the whole river one time, and said that if the cane was removed and the moss taken out, the river would flow past Brownsville again,” Kincaid explained.

Is he certain that each Rancho Rio Grande worker is authorized to work in this country? “Oh, yeah, they’ve all got papers. One of ‘em even has family in Mexico and he stays over there, but he’s a United States citizen,” Kincaid replied. He believes there is no sure and lasting solution to the illegal immigration dilemma, but he loathes the thought of a costly, ineffective wall, preferring to see more Border Patrol influence along the river, with less cane and better technologies. “More towers with cameras would be good,” said Kincaid.

Dob Cunningham, owner of Cunningham Stock Farm, Quemado, goes a step farther, agreeing to the proposal for more towers, suggesting that existing towers be maintained in working order. Cunningham, 74, said, “We’re 100 percent in favor of enforcing the border laws, and we allowed ‘em to put up a tower for two cameras to help do that. We don’t charge them for it, but they usually pay about $300 a month or more. But the towers are broken a lot, and they don’t have enough manpower to watch the screens anyway. I think if they’d fund those things the whole system would be a lot more effective.”

As a retired Border Patrol field agent and immigration inspector at ports-of-entry at Eagle Pass, El Paso, Texas, and Nogales, Ariz., Cunningham is not unfamiliar with his theme. “I’ve been on the border all my life except when I was in school or the military,” said Cunningham, Tuesday (Jan. 22). “We’ve been here since 1949, and have the same problems as the Moody Ranch. We’re just not as large.”

Cunningham hopes to never see a wall considered anywhere near his stretch of the river. The Maverick County Water Improvement District No. 1 Canal, a diversion from the Rio Grande on the Moody ranch, north of Cunningham’s place, is his eastern boundary, the Rio Grande is his west. The canal not only services the Eagle Pass Power Plant, its first destination as it parallels the river, but—with lateral canals—nearly every farm, hay field, and orchard over a 100-mile stretch to and well beyond the district’s power plant. Sited as he is between the canal and the river, Cunningham says his place would lose in any sort of wall or fence intrusion.

“If they wanted to build it on our place, floods will just wash it away. As soon as you scratch the surface of the land near the river it washes out. Cenizo, Bermuda grass, and the cane are all that hold things together here. You just run a plow down there, and when a flood comes up, it’ll make an arroyo. If they build it east of us, where it won’t get destroyed by floods, they will cut us off from our own land,” said Cunningham.

Though he holds great respect for the men and women of the U.S. Border Patrol, Cunningham wishes the desperate quest for recruitment was more selective. “They’re taking just about anybody now that’ll make a shadow,” Cunningham quipped.

Frank Junfin, co-owner/manager of Kunafin, “The Insectary,” a scientific production enterprise of biological controls to fight agricultural pests, fiercely opposes a wall or barrier of any sort along his stretch of the Rio Grande. He agrees with Cunningham’s assessment that surveillance technologies have been improperly funded, poorly maintained and not backed up by “boots on the ground” to apprehend intruders.

“They [Customs and Border Protection officials] came to me to put a tower – for cameras, lights, technologies like that – on my land, and they came not wanting to take my land, but to lease it,” Junfin said. “And I said, ‘Sure, let’s go ahead.’ They never even got the funding to put the tower up, and that was five years ago. So how in the world can they afford to build this wall if they couldn’t even get the funding to build that tower? I just wish we knew why aren’t they coming down here, talking to those of us that live and work here, and seeing what we’re talking about,” Junfin said, clearly frustrated.

He and his wife Adele are globe-trotting business owners who live and work on the border between Quemado and Eagle Pass. Snagged, Sunday (Jan. 20), in the San Antonio International Airport before they departed for Johannesburg, South Africa, Junfin was plain-spoken about his opposition to a border wall.

“I have never, ever gotten involved in or talking about political situations like this before—when our government is fighting wars overseas, for example—but when you come over here as immigrants, as our family did, and see our free United States of America doing something like this, it’s a sign that somebody hasn’t done their homework, that they haven’t gotten any feel for how we live here. They’re planning to put this wall down here on the river in flood zones, and they’re just taking people’s land to do it. This just isn’t right!” Junfin said.

Kunafin, with Junfin’s applied science as an entomologist and Adele’s business management expertise, sells sterilized insects, fly and moth parasites in Europe, Africa, around the Mediterranean, and in the Philippines to control pests in crops, dairies, livestock inventories and orchards with biological integrated insect control principles. (For more about this unique border business, see www.kunafin.com.)

“I do a lot of work in Mexico, too,” said Junfin, “and people there are saying to me, ‘What are you people doing up there?’ I travel around the world, so I know that national security is important, and we want that—no question about it. But this wall is not the way to do it. It’s a shame what they’re doing to this country. As I said, I’m not a very vocal person about many, many things, but talking to both cultures on both sides of the border as I have, I just don’t think this wall idea is a healthy thing at all. And we really need to keep some health between these two countries. I just hope there are enough people out there to make sure the government wakes up to understand what they’re really doing.”

Bob Ackerley, owner/manager of Rio Grande Organics, Houston-based pecan growers specializing in organically-grown fruits, nuts, and vegetables, has opposed the concept of a border wall since he first learned of it several years ago when he was getting his business started in pecan orchards south of Quemado, hard by the life-giving Maverick County canal and its laterals.

“My first concerns are the consequences of locating a physical structure on or next to our property, and in any way impeding our farming by literally changing the climate there—the flow of winds, temperatures, impeding the delivery of water, expansion of a road system for DHS to patrol down there, anything that might be less attractive for farming, could marginalize our ability to make a go of this,” said Ackerley, Tuesday (Jan. 22). (More may be learned about Rio Grande Organics at www.riograndeorganics.com.)

But Ackerley harbors the same public awareness aspirations as does Junfin on this emotional issue, sounding his note of caution to the future: “This whole thing is an arrogant symbol of wrong-headed American policy. People need to understand that any fence built in this Del Rio Sector will just be the start of more fencing along the river. Those contractors are going to be pushing to build more, and the Homeland Security people will, too.”