Five years ago, my husband
and I bought a house in the emptiest county in America. We went there because
the night sky is so dark, you can walk in the high desert by starlight and cast
a shadow, so dark you can see distant galaxies and the zodiacal light. Three
types of people live in our rural area: amateur astronomers, ranchers, and
illegal aliens.
If you
climb the mountains behind our house and look south, you look into Mexico. If
you climb those mountains to the top, you are on one of the major drug
trafficking routes into America. If you stay in the desert at the foot of the
mountains, you are in rattlesnake country—the greatest biodiversity of rattlers
in America, and the night path of illegal aliens.
It is not
even a secret that the 60 miles between the border and Interstate 10 are
treated as a no man’s land. We live and vote and pay taxes in America, but the
government acts as if we are beyond the defensible perimeter of the country.
Border Patrol is everywhere, but even with President Trump, they are just going
through the circular motions of catch and release.
They have
high tech listening stations in the mountains, trucks equipped with radar on
the back roads. They know when drugs are moving through, know regular
drop-offs, are adept at finding caches. But if they can’t secure the border,
they can’t keep the families that live here safe—and they don’t even try.
We are the
deplorables. All of my rancher neighbors have guns. Most are Evangelicals. To
Democrats and open-borders Republicans, we are throwaway people. The Other.
Disposable.
The reason
I am not naming names, even place names, is that these are my neighbors’
stories, not mine, and my neighbors—farmers, cowboys, and ranching families,
strong, resourceful, tough people—my neighbors are wary and they are weary.
They fear retribution by the drug runners and coyotes who bring the illegals
across, because they have seen it happen.
All of my
neighbors have had encounters with illegals. Every single family. Everyone
knows dozens of families whose homes have been broken into and worse—loved ones
tied up, kidnapped, threatened, shot, permanently crippled by a hit and run
attack, when they made too much of a fuss to authorities.
They hear a
knock on their door in the dark of night. What would you do?
The Bible
says to care for the stranger. So people here do not pick up a shotgun or
a pistol and noisily cock the hammer—all it would take to say, “Be on your
way.” You can’t know if it is a decent soul out there, thirsty and lost,
abandoned by their “coyote,” or a murderous villain. These Christian ranchers
open their doors in the night. There may be someone in trouble in the desert
out there, so they open their door.
Sometimes
it works out just fine. More and more often, it does not.
Some
ranchers, especially right on the border, have finally admitted it is too
dangerous. They have sold their beloved land, and walked away from a lifetime
of face-to-face relations with neighbors and family, an irreplaceable life,
under a big sky, close to land and community and God.
What else
can they do? They have petitioned their elected officials. They have spoken to
reporters. They have even talked around the kitchen table to the presidential
candidates who make the obligatory visit to the border every four years. Some
politicians really care and some really do not, but it makes little difference.
President Trump is popular here and taken as sincere. But so far, he has been
blocked by our contemptuous GOP elite.
The
defensible border is moving north all the time. The crime starts here, but it
does not end here. It is in your neighborhood, too.
You hear
the stories whenever people get together. I hear them when I am driving with a
rancher friend and we pass a car with someone she knows. It’s the kind of place
where you can stop in the middle of the road and have a chat. Did you hear
about so and so?
Neighbors
are worried about an 80-something widow who always gives illegals food and
water. This time when she opened her door at 3 a.m., the illegals pushed into
the house, tied her up and robbed her. Living by herself was never a
problem before. These are not rural Mexicans looking for work, like when she
was young. They are dangerous criminals. Will she be able to keep her home?
Neighbors
are worried because a crucial member of the community—the man who digs
wells—was waylaid on a distant ranch, taken at gunpoint along with his truck,
his family’s lives threatened if he ever told, and forced to transport a load
of drugs.
Neighbors
are worried because the illegal they spotted crossing their ranch was no
Mexican. They took a photo with a long lens. I look at their photo. It sure
looks like the long, narrow face of a Somali.
Neighbors
are worried because an older couple on an isolated ranch (is there any other
kind?) were in bed asleep, when they heard men ransacking their kitchen. This
was the third time. A few months ago, the wife was forced at gunpoint to take a
pregnant woman to the hospital to deliver an anchor baby. How much longer will
they be able to keep the ranch?
Another
neighbor arrived home from the hour and a half trip to the nearest supermarket.
The ground was muddy, so he carried his five-year-old daughter to the front
door of his small house. When he turned around with a heavy bag of groceries in
each arm, there was an illegal standing in the doorway, between him and his
daughter. The illegal was wearing the man’s clothes, his hat, and was holding
his gun.
Given the
circumstances, the American father ran the guy off with no confrontation. Next
day, border patrol called. They’d caught the thief—could he come by to identify
his clothes and gun. The answer was sure, but it would be two hours, as he was
at a doctor’s appointment. Our neighbor was told, “We’re not allowed to hold
him that long. We’ll have to let him go.”
And they
did.
I take the
story as a metaphor, even though it doesn’t meet the strict meaning of the
term. When someone can walk into your country, enter your house, take your gun,
your hat, and your clothes and the authorities aren’t allowed to arrest
him—that’s not a metaphor for losing your identity, your home, and your
country.
It’s the
real thing.
Photo credit: Don
Bartletti/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
About the Author: Karin McQuillan
Karin McQuillan served in the Peace
Corps in West Africa, was a social worker, and is now a writer and regular
contributor to American Thinker.
https://amgreatness.com/2018/05/18/outside-the-defensible-perimeter/
