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BISBEE — Richard Hodges was driving his Jeep along International Road after 8 p.m. one night this past summer when he noticed an opening in the barbed wire fence along one side of his property.
He owns 372 acres near Bisbee Junction. The edge of his land is located on the border with Mexico. Fearing his cows might escape and cross the border, he stopped to close the hole in the fence.
He parked his vehicle so the headlights were shining on the fence. As he was mending the section of barbed wire, he was struck in the chest by a rock. He turned to step out of the way of the lights and he felt another rock whiz by his head.
He walked around to get in his Jeep and he heard rocks rain down on the canvas top of his Jeep. He went home.
 Richard Hodges points to a place where suspected drug runners are illegally crossing from Mexico to the United States and passing through his property near Bisbee Junction. (Jonathon Shacat•Herald/Review) |
Hodges suspects the people who were throwing the rocks are drug runners.
“They wanted me to leave so they could conduct their illegal business,” he said.
His land is regularly crossed by illegal entrants and he strongly believes many of them are smuggling narcotics.
Hodges also has been shot at a few times over the years. He thinks it is unreasonable that he can’t stand on his own property without being threatened with injury or death.
“This is my place,” he said. “I inherited this from my grandparents. My great-grandfather homesteaded it. I’ve been out here all my life, except when I was in school and in the military.”
The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps is building a mile-long fence along one side of his property to divert the illegal traffic. He said the fence is a necessity.
The fence construction on Hodges’ property should be completed in the coming weeks. Chris Simcox, founder and president of MCDC, said he had intended for the work to be finished by now but it was delayed due to the weather and a lawsuit.
Jim Campbell, who donated $100,000 to MCDC to help build border fencing on private property in Cochise County, filed suit against the group for fraud and breach of contract in May in Maricopa County Superior Court. However, the lawsuit was dismissed in September.
Hodges said he is looking forward to the completion of the MCDC fence on his property. He noted a federal fence that will be built parallel to the Minuteman fence there won’t be finished until February or March.
Simcox said the MCDC fence building projects were the “impetus and catalyst” for getting the government to start building a border fence. President Bush signed The Secure Fence Act in October 2006.
Minuteman border fences have already reduced illegal crossings by 60 percent, and stopped all occurrences of high speed drug running along the heavily violated section of the border near Palominas, said Carmen Mercer, vice president of the group.
The group intends to continue to pressure the government to follow through with plans to build the full border fence, Simcox added.
The White House called The Secure Fence Act “an important step forward in our nation’s efforts to control our borders and reform our immigration system,” according to www.whitehouse.gov.
“This bill will help protect the American people. This bill will make our borders more secure. It is an important step toward immigration reform,” Bush said in a statement on Oct. 26, 2006.
The act authorized the construction of hundreds of miles of additional fencing on the southern border; authorized more vehicle barriers, checkpoints and lighting to help stop illegal entrants; and authorized the increased use of advanced technology, such as cameras, satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles, at the border.
The White House said “this act is one part of our effort to reform our immigration system,” but it made clear that additional work must be done. Congress has not passed a comprehensive immigration reform plan.
Ray Borane, the mayor of Douglas, said the border should be patrolled in order to protect the country, but a fence across the entire southern border is not the answer to the illegal immigration problem.
“There is a nice fence in Douglas, but people still jump it,” he said.
The government would need to build a fence on the scale of the Great Wall of China to prevent people from getting over it, Borane said. But, even then, they could still climb it with a ladder.
“The only way to be vigilant on a fence that is 2,000 miles long would be to have people stationed along it,” Borane said.
Hodges thinks the mile-long Minuteman fence on his property and the subsequent federal fence on the nearby border will force the drug smugglers to go a different way or find another location to drop off the narcotics.
He said the fences will help prevent people from entering his property. He is concerned about his cows. He doesn’t want people to damage or vandalize his water source or take baths in the cow tubs.
He is hopeful the fence will stop the illegal activity from interrupting his day-to-day life.
Jennifer Allen, executive director of Border Action Network, a human rights community organization that is opposed to building a border wall, said it is “absolutely understandable” for Hodges to not want the drug smugglers to cross his property.
But she cautioned that once the Minuteman fence on his land is complete, the drug smugglers will cross the border in a different location and the problem will be shifted to somebody else.
“It’s a pattern that will repeat itself and repeat itself,” she said.
And when the federal fence is completed, things will only get worse. She said that making it more difficult to cross the border will cause the drug smugglers to be more highly organized and more heavily armed.
Hodges said he thinks the border fence is a significant part of the solution to the immigration problem.
Some sections of the border can’t be fenced, such as washes and rivers, due to the flow of water during the rain, he said.
“If you can limit the places where people can cross, then you can effectively control those places,” he said. “You can put up electronic sensors or station a man there.”
Over the next three days, Herald/Review reporter Jonathon Shacat is reporting on the discussion and some issues involved in building a border fence, as is being done in Cochise County.
• Today: Building a fence and the arguments for and against it.
• Monday: Some of the possibly good and bad impacts from building a border fence.
• Tuesday: Is a fence along the border the right solution? Groups discuss that topic.
REPORTER Jonathon Shacat can be reached at 515-4693.
marie wrote on Jul 15, 2008 11:44 PM:
if our 'leaders' don't stop pandering to illegals with 'pathway to citizenship' they won't stop trying(at any cost) TO COME HERE. "