Hello! Jen here!
I just wanted to provide a little "color commentary" from someone who has grown up with this issue.
This post contains background on the border issue from a personal perspective, so read it or don't read it, I'm fine either way!
I was born in Nogales, Arizona, in 1972. Nogales is essentially a huge city, split in half by the international border, resulting in Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora. The home I grew up in was actually five miles outside of Nogales, and although we had 198 acres of ranch land there, we had the geographical "luck" to have the Santa Cruz river running right through our property. This was basically a highway for illegals (Back then we called them "wetbacks," and although that was never a racial term for me growing up, I understand that it has since become one.).
My father was an appellate court judge in Tucson, and a strong Christian. He had grown up along the border, being born in Nogales in 1927, and was fluent in Spanish. We were multi-generational ranchers, and our home always reflected a certain affection towards Mexicans, they were our friends and a huge part of our ranching and border culture, and we frequently hired legal Mexicans from "across the line" for carpentry and other work. However… there were the illegals.
It was not uncommon when I was a girl to see groups of illegals in our backyard, asking for food. They had traveled along the river with their inadequate supplies and water, and then would come up from down in the riverbed, looking for help. (It never ceases to amaze me how ill-prepared these people are for their journey. They plan badly, have no maps, and meager supplies. Lots of them literally think that Los Angeles is right around the corner!) My mother would always feed them, then call immigration. At that point, most of them were more than happy to go with immigration, and some of them would actually
ask us to make the call. If, however, you weren't home when they came up from the river… they would more than likely just break in. We had our house broken into numerous times. I still remember one time coming home from a party to find out we'd been robbed, and rushing to make sure the illegals hadn't taken my beloved stuffed animals lol! :-D Eventually my parents had bars put on the house, then rolling security shutters.
A couple of hours away from our home was our actual cattle ranch. This was not near any cities, per se, although if you look at a map of Arizona, it's where Santa Cruz county and Cochise county meet the border of Mexico. For decades, the international border in this mountainous area consisted of a barbed-wire fence. A fence that was maintained, ironically, by our ranching neighbor, Bud. We used to joke that Bud was the only one responsible for international relations in the area, and it wasn't far from the truth! The fence was cut constantly. Eventually (back in the 80's), Bud got tired of this, and put in a cattleguard. No gate. (What would be the point?) After the cattleguard, people could just drive across. Or at least walk without cutting the fence and letting American cattle into Mexico, and vice versa.
Being a rancher along the border has its own special problems that we just dealt with regularly. Fences were always cut in a matter that would allow for South-to-North travel, you rarely had to worry about other fences. Water was always left on. This was an area where we relied on well-water to fill our tanks and cattle troughs near the ranch houses. The illegals would find taps near the buildings, turn them on, and just LEAVE them on, draining our taps and tanks. That one always miffed me. Showing up at the ranch house and having no water and having to go play, "Where'd the illegals leave it on?" You wouldn't see water flowing from it, because the water was... gone. You literally had to go around and try all the faucets and turn them all off, then wait several hours for the windmill to do its job and once again fill the tanks with water. I never begrudged them taking the water, they needed it! I just never understood why they left it running. I think they had no understanding that it would eventually run out, and they were leaving it "on" to be "helpful" for the next group to come through, at least that's my theory.
It was just assumed that they would break in and take food, and they did. My father, a strong Christian, always left gospel tracts printed in Spanish outside on a table on the ranch house porch, and those would usually be taken as well, at least. One day, about ten years ago, illegals stole our ranch truck. It was a big, huge red dual-cab pickup truck, with a gooseneck trailer still attached to it. They stole it and drove it right through the barbed wire fences back to Mexico. I always wanted to go after it, but I couldn't find anyone willing to go with me, so I didn't. That always bothered me…out of all the break-ins, the theft of that truck left me feeling the most violated. Probably because we actually used it and needed it for our ranch work. It was a huge loss. The thought of it being down in Mexico, "working" for illegals or drug dealers... just turned my stomach. At any rate, after that, we welded rebar fences around the ranch house yard. There had been a spate of vehicle thefts and horse thefts around that time, people stealing transportation to get back to Mexico. This was probably part of the drug trade, an increasingly problematic issue cropping up over the years.
Finally, within the last ten years, the government (for the first time that I had ever seen!) took interest in protecting these remote borders. They put up a welded metal structure all along the border in that area, which completely stopped severely decreased the transport of vehicles (and horses!) across the border. Unfortunately, it forced drug dealers to get more creative, and they would just back up a pick-up truck along the Mexican side of the fence, put a ramp in place, and drive ATV's (All-Terrain Vehicles) down the ramp into the US. Sure, there were Border Patrol in the area, but they'd usually sit up on a hill somewhere with binoculars. They did a lot of good, yes, but…not enough.
There are many more stories I could tell, but those are enough to give you a good idea of the situation along the border, at least the way I experienced it. So how to deal with this problem? Well, I'll just tell you what my dad suggested. Again, an appellate court judge who grew up along the border, was fluent in Spanish, and was a strong Christian (he went home to be with the Lord last year). He would always say, "Build a wall. Make it a big one, big enough that you can drive a border-patrol truck along the top of it. Get the illegals and inmates to build the wall to cut down on labor costs, and get Sheriff Joe Arpaio to be in charge of the labor (Sheriff Joe is the controversial but very effective sheriff of Maricopa County [Phoenix area] who puts his inmates in a "tent city" when he runs out of room and always has a "Vacancy" sign on his jails!).
My dad was also an advocate of putting the military along the border, as am I. I was in the Army National Guard and Reserves for eight years, and I always thought they should put up National Guard training posts along the border. Not so much to have a "military presence," but simply because the National Guard and Reserves are required to do their two-week annual training, and they are used to sleeping in tents, etc… so why not put them to practical use? They actually did put that into effect a few years back, but it was kind of a joke, and it didn't last.
Anyway, I guess that's about it for now… I just wanted to provide a first-hand experience of what it was like to grow up with these issues. Ultimately, I love the Mexican culture and people. I just can't stand the illegals. Seal off the border completely, and make it much easier for them to come across –legally-. Higher walls, wider gates. Okay, that's it! Thanks for reading! –Jen
