HEREFORD, Ariz. — Growing up in the Martinsburg and Bladensburg area in the 1940s and ’50s, Forest Butler didn’t expect to spend the vast majority of his adult life living along the United States-Mexico border where drug smugglers would use his property as a shortcut to the big cities like Tucson and Phoenix.
The Brown Ranch, owned by Butler’s wife, Alice, and her sister, sits on 2 1/2 miles of the U.S./Mexico border and their home is just one mile from the previously poorly marked border.
“We’ve had all kinds of problems here,” said Butler. “Back in the early days, the 1950s, prohibition was still going. Illegals would run rum from Mexico to Hunter Canyon.”
The use of Brown Ranch as a connector road between the back streets of Mexico with the bright lights and big cities in the United States worsened dramatically.
“In the last 20 years or so, we’ve had a lot of illegal drugs and illegals move through here,” he said. “You used to be able to trust them. Now when they come across they want to steal whatever they can and they just have no respect for us.”
He went on to tell tales of border bandits who would break in and hold the residents hostage.
“Some of them think they will take this part of the U.S. back from us because it used to belong to Mexico,” he said.
Until 1947, there was no fence along the border there at all. When an actual “border” was erected, it was a seven-wire, barbed wire fence that stood 6 feet tall.
In the 60 years since then, the steel posts have deteriorated and the fence has broken, leaving nearly no protection from Mexican citizens crossing illegally into the United States at Hereford, Ariz., either by car or on foot.
“The U.S. government didn’t do anything to maintain the fence. Farmers had to do that to keep their cattle in the U.S. If they got out, you couldn’t go into Mexico and retrieve them because the Federales, they would lock us up.”
He said they would have to keep an eye out for illegal traffic and then fix the fence, as many as two or three times a day.
Speeding Mexicans rumbling across your pastures doesn’t sound like a lot of trouble but it certainly made for extra work on the ranch.
“When they crash through the fencing, we have to fix that and make sure our cattle don’t get out,” he said. “That’s a whole lot of time doing things we shouldn’t have to do.”
Butler says there are several different types of fencing up along that area of border but nothing really has stopped the pedestrian or vehicle traffic from Mexico. At least not until the Secure Fence Act was enacted in 2006. The act directed The Department of Homeland Security to construct 700 miles of more secure fencing along the border. That’s just one-third of the 1,950 miles of border. Most of this project was implemented on federal land, he said.
The 2 1/2 miles of border on Brown Ranch is owned by the Brown sisters but an easement was granted to the government.
“We own the property but they tell us what they are gonna do,” he said. “They only have an easement on that property. Most other pieces of land (the government) has purchased. They just don’t even ask you what you think.”
The fence, according to Butler, is 8-by-8 inch steel tubing that is approximately 1/4 of an inch thick. There is a 4-by-8 foot solid steel plate at the top of the fence that he estimates to be about 3/16 of an inch thick.
“The whole thing sits 18 feet above the ground and is buried 6 feet. It is concreted in with wire mash and rebar,” Butler said.
A hinged gate is installed along the fence in case a fire truck needs to get across the border.
“Fire will start in Mexico but they won’t do anything about them, just let them come across and burn things up here. If we send a truck over the border it protects what we have,” Butler said.
Even with the new border fence nearly complete, Butler wonders about its effectiveness.
“Oh, I think it will stop vehicle traffic here. If they want to drive across, they’ll just go up to where there is no fence. I laugh at it for the simple reason they can climb over it anyway, all they need is an extension ladder and a rope,” he said.
Butler’s other concern is the border patrol staff and their capabilities. He was open about his opinion that they are often more of a nuisance than a help. He describes many of these agents as AK47-toting “Rambo characters” with bayonets and side arms.
“They seem to have no idea what they are doing,” he said. “A lot of them are from New York and they don’t even know how to drive. They come out here and get lost. They think they own the place and tell everyone what to do.”
“That certainly doesn’t make you feel safe,” he said.
There is, however, one border patrol agent with which Butler was very impressed. He is Lee Morgan II, a retired U.S. Customs Service Agent who penned the book “The Reaper’s Line: Life and Death on the Mexican Border.”
“This book is for anyone that wants to know the truth about life along the border,” Butler said. “[Morgan’s] plain spoken like I am. Everybody had respect for him.”
For now, Butler is just going to take a wait and see approach on the success of the border fence but he certainly shouldn’t lose any time out of his day fixing the border fence.
