by Dan Barry
The music swelled, a singer urged America to “spread your golden wings,” and the lights came on. With the show over, the audience was directed to exit to the left, past white doors and into the hot glare of what seemed like another country entirely.
Ranchers Say Wall Won’t Help Chaos at Border
NACO, ARIZ.—JULY 24, 2016
John Ladd has two old pickups he uses to bang around his ranch, which rambles for 10 miles beside the Mexico line. One’s a red Chevy that not long ago carried the body of yet another border crosser who had died on his property. The other is a blue Dodge with better shocks, and that’s what he is driving now, along an unpaved road in an unincorporated place called Naco.
To his immediate right, cattle roam the mesquite and grass of his family’s 16,000-acre ranch. To his left, a mix-and-match set of interlocking fences slices into the distance, this one 12 feet high, this one 18 feet high, this one a metal mesh, this one a vertical grille, section after section after section.
Mr. Ladd, 61, looks and acts the way a rancher is expected to, with brush mustache, hard squint and matter-of-fact affect, all kept tight under a sweat-stained cowboy hat. Bouncing westward, he points to spots where fencing had been peeled in the past like an upturned can of Spam. In the last four years, he says, more than 50 vehicles have rumbled through fence cuts and across his property.
What is the protocol when you encounter armed drug smugglers driving on your land? “You pull over and say, ‘Adiós,’” Mr. Ladd says. “You don’t get in their way, because they’ll kill you.”
Here is one aspect of everyday life along the southern border, where national demarcations are blurred by the supply and demand for what the United States continues to crave: drugs and cheap labor. The attendant casualties include human rights, property rights, civil discourse and the security of sovereignty.
But is the Great Wall of Trump, as proposed by the Republican candidate for president, the solution to the problems of ranchers like Mr. Ladd? If pixie dust sprinkled into the dry earth could make all the eye-crossing obstacles disappear, beginning with the multibillion-dollar cost, would a concrete divide constructed to Donald J. Trump’s aesthetics (“beautiful,” with “a big beautiful door”) and ever-changing specifications (25 feet high! 35 feet high!! 55 feet high!!!) serve its intended purpose?
The answer heard time and again from Mr. Ladd and others along the border is a weary no.
“The wall?” says Larry Dietrich, a local rancher. “I mean, it’s silly.”
But what if this beautiful wall—and “wall” is the term used in the Republican Party platform—had a foundation deep enough to discourage tunneling? What if the beautiful concrete panels were designed to thwart climbing over or plowing through? And what if it stretched for hundreds of miles, its beauty interrupted only by rugged, virtually impassable terrain?
“It isn’t going to work,” Mr. Ladd says.
Ed Ashurst, 65, an outspoken rancher who manages land about 20 miles from the border, is more assertive, but he needs to address something else first. “I’ll be straight up with you,” he says with a scowl. “If Hillary Clinton gets elected, I’m moving to Australia.”
Time will tell whether the Arizona rancher is forced to blend into the Outback, but his assessment of Mr. Trump’s plan is just as succinct. “To say you’re going to build a wall from Brownsville to San Diego?” he says. “That is the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard. And it’s not going to change anything.”
The solution favored among ranchers is infused with a fatalism that nothing will change—government being government, and the cartels always one step ahead—so why bother. But here it goes:
Intensive, round-the-clock patrols along the border are required for a fence or wall to work; otherwise, those determined to cross will always find a way. But, they argue, if you have boots on the ground, you will have no need for anything so beautiful as the Great Wall of Trump.
It is easy, from a distance, to dismiss the ranchers along the border as right-wing Chicken Littles whose complaints hint of racism. Too easy, in fact.
Ranchers will say they saw people with backpacks trekking across their property last week, last night, early this morning. Some will say they have grudging agreements of access with drug cartels, as long as trespassers stay far from their homes. Dogs bark, motion lights flicker, things go missing.
The unnerving has become everyday life, Mr. Ashurst says, and then he asks my colleague and me where we live. Metropolitan New York, we answer.
Nice, Mr. Ashurst says, still scowling. “But how would you like it?” he asks, referring to the ebb-and-flow parade of strangers, some armed, past his door. “Do you think you’re more important than the poor moron who has the misfortune to live along the border?”
True, the overall number of migrants has plummeted in the last 15 years or so. Here, in what the Border Patrol categorizes as the Tucson sector—about 90,000 square miles, with 262 miles of border—there were 63,397 arrests in the 2015 fiscal year, compared with 10 times that in the 2001 fiscal year.
Paul Beeson, the patrol’s chief agent for the Tucson sector, attributes the drop to an increase in officers and tactical equipment, an improvement in the Mexican economy, and the fencing erected along the border about a decade ago.
But Mr. Ladd and other ranchers say there has been an unsettling swap: fewer migrants, but many more drug traffickers.
Mr. Beeson acknowledges the change in demographics, and the challenge in facing an adversary with comparable intelligence and surveillance abilities. “They don’t have to move their product today,” he says of the cartels. “They can move it tomorrow. They can sit and watch, and they do that. Watching us. Watching us watching them.”
But he says the Border Patrol continues to bolster its “tactical infrastructure”—higher resolution cameras, for example, and an increased use of drones. “It’s unacceptable to us that folks along the border should be experiencing this type of activity,” Mr. Beeson says. “We’re doing all we can.”
It is telling, though, that Mr. Ladd never used to carry a gun or a cellphone. That changed six years ago, when his friend Robert Krentz Jr., known to help people no matter their nationality, was shot to death on his family’s ranch after radioing his brother that he had come upon another migrant in distress. His unsolved murder caused a national outcry, and it led to state legislation intended to crack down on illegal immigration. It also prompted Mr. Ladd’s wife to demand that he carry a cellphone and a Glock.
But, really, what is a Glock going to do?
About 100 miles northeast of Naco, in a New Mexico dot called Animas, a few people gathered recently to sip iced tea and discuss where things stand. The Elbrocks—Tricia and Ed—set the tone by recalling how drug smugglers kidnapped one of their ranch hands a few months ago.
According to the Elbrocks, the smugglers threatened to kill his family, loaded his pickup with packs of marijuana and drove him and the drugs 75 miles to the Arizona town of Willcox. Then they tied him up and abandoned him and the truck the next morning.
A spokesman for the F.B.I. in Albuquerque said the kidnapping remained under investigation. As for the ranch hand, Ms. Elbrock said, “He’s in counseling.”
The fear, the frustration, the sense of being forsaken—it can be exhausting. “Nothing seems to work, because we keep buying what they bring to sell,” said Crystal Foreman Brown, 62, an artist and the host of this iced-tea chat. “But Trump’s fence issue at least brings up the issue that there is an issue. For officials in Washington to act like we’re being silly and hysterical—it’s kind of inconceivable.”
Back in Naco, Mr. Ladd continues his dirt-swirling ride between Mexico and his ranch, along a 60-foot road called the Roosevelt Easement. His family has been in Naco for more than a century—before there was a Naco, in fact. Some say the name comes from combining the last two letters of Arizona and Mexico, but Mr. Ladd isn’t so sure.
Naco is a drowsy dog of a place that seems not to hav
e benefited much from being a sanctioned port of entry to Mexico. Adding to the stillness is a collection of abandoned barracks, built a century ago for American troops who chased after the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa after he attacked the New Mexico town of Columbus.
They never caught him.
Mr. Ladd says his family has sponsored three Mexicans for citizenship—but has seen more border sorrow than joy. Over the years, he says, the bodies of 14 people trying to get someplace else have been found on Ladd property. The last was in September. A party of six got caught in flooding; five were rescued, and the body of the sixth was found several days later.
Mr. Ladd waited for the authorities, but it was getting dark. So he moved the man’s body in his red pickup to Route 92, where a funeral home took custody. He recalls the event in that same measured way that underscores how common the uncommon is along the border.
Rumbling west along the rutted road, Mr. Ladd points to his left and, referring to the cartels, says, “This is where they cut the wall down to drive trucks through.”
He is like an art museum denizen who has memorized the history of the permanent exhibits, commenting on the changing fence designs as he drives, noting the insignia of the military units who installed some of them on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security.
The truck stops suddenly. “Well lookee there,” Mr. Ladd says, pointing to his right. “I got a cut fence.” Snipped again, and Lord knows how many times his cows have wandered off as a result.
The rancher slips white work gloves over his rough hands and reaches for a ball of blue hay-baling string. Soon he is stitching together what has been broken, as gunmetal rain clouds move east from the Huachuca Mountains and the wind whistles through the mesh divide.
PART FIVE
Hard Times
Hard times, hard times, come again no more
Tending the Boulevards of Broken Dreams
FORT MYERS, FLA.—SEPTEMBER 22, 2008
The lawn mower’s whine disrupts the morning peace of Coconut Drive like an alarm clock no one remembers setting. It rises and falls and rises again, as the angry machine cuts across the front-lawn jungle of an attractive house with great location and move-in potential.
Abandoned, in other words. Three years ago, sold for $660,000; today, a ghostly parcel of failure.
The lawn mower returns the grass to short uniformity, then growls toward the backyard, passing a two-car garage housing forsaken gardening tools, a basketball hoop no longer conjuring jump-shot dreams and a door leading to a kitchen with a granite-counter island. Now it begins to clear around an in-ground pool brimming with viscous water the color of cash.
The man operating the mower is not a landscaper making his weekly visit, but a city employee trying to stem the blight caused by a boom in property foreclosures. His name is Shayne Becher, and just two hours into his shift the 90-degree mugginess has saturated his city-issue cotton shirt. But that’s how it is here in Fort Myers, in this season of rain and recession.
Mr. Becher works for the code enforcement division’s rapid response team, which tries to keep up with an ever-growing list of abandoned properties needing to be mowed and boarded up. He is the team’s foreman and its only member; his partner recently accepted the buyout the city was offering to reduce its budget.
So Mr. Becher mows and hammers and sweats from 7 in the morning until 3:30 in the afternoon, five days a week, sometimes with help, sometimes not. He may be unable to reverse the plummeting national economy, but at least when he’s done, these deserted houses have a curbside appeal that neither offends neighbors nor attracts criminals.
With perspiration beading at the tip of his nose, Mr. Becher uses a blower to clean the sidewalk and driveway, then piles fallen coconuts and other debris at the curb for public works to collect. Before climbing into his truck, he pauses to assess his handiwork at what was once someone’s dream house.
“Beautiful,” he says. Then he drives a few blocks to another site of abandonment, on Sunset Place.
Come to Fort Myers, population 60,000, the seat of Lee County. Walk the Gulf Coast beaches. Cruise the Caloosahatchee River.
Witness what happens when banks dole out easy mortgages and homeowners forget that the money isn’t free. Drive down McGregor Boulevard, or Cleveland Avenue, turn left or turn right, and see the empty houses, the overgrown lots, the signs saying AUCTION and FREE RENT.
Celebrate the fact that, according to RealtyTrac, a listing company, the Fort Myers–Cape Coral area no longer leads the country in foreclosure rates; that is so—July. In August the area ranked sixth, with one in every 66 housing units receiving notice of an auction, repossession or loan default.
One of the fallouts is wholesale abandonment. Michael Titmuss, a former Fort Myers police officer who became the city’s manager of code enforcement seven years ago, is seeing new and disturbing trends in the city he loves. Failing condominium associations. Criminals renting deserted buildings they do not own to unsuspecting tenants. More and more no-shows at code enforcement hearings.
“They’re desperate,” Mr. Titmuss said. “They feel hopeless and they don’t know where to turn. They’re good people in a bad position. They perceive themselves as unable to comply, as being surrounded by a pack of wolves.”
He didn’t finish the thought because these days some things are understood: The homeowners walk away, leaving their properties to banks as unwanted parting gifts for having provided risky loans in the first place.
Here in Fort Myers, the code requires that grass be no higher than 12 inches. Otherwise, neighbors complain about property values, rats and snakes receive sanctuary and lurking criminals find easy cover.
If a lawn isn’t mowed, a process kicks in. The city mails a courtesy postcard, saying: Time to mow your lawn, neighbor. After that it sends the rapid-response team—that is, Mr. Becher—to mow. Then it bills the homeowner for the service, though these bills often become liens on property that no one wants and banks are not eager to reclaim.
In July, the city mailed at least 600 courtesy cards—more than three times the number sent out the previous July. Still, codes must be enforced; lawns must be mowed. In hiring Mr. Becher several months ago, Mr. Titmuss passed on strange reassurance: “We will train you. And oh, by the way, we’ve never seen what you’re about to deal with.”
Mr. Becher, 39, is like a lot of people here: He’s from someplace else. He moved a year ago from the small central Michigan city of Greenville, where he was a public works foreman. But his first marriage failed, his patience with small-town nosiness ran out and his side business as a builder came to what he calls “a screeching halt.” Just like the Michigan economy.
Now here he is, driving a Ford pickup to Sunset Place, pulling a gasoline-perfumed trailer that contains two riding mowers, three chain saws, five weed whackers, two hedge clippers and a toolbox. He also has two jugs of water, a ham and cheese sandwich and a pages-long list of properties that need to be mowed or boarded up.
He pulls up beside a small, one-story house. City records include a photograph of this house taken in December 2005 that depicts a white convertible and a black dog in the driveway; today the house is a shell, with gaping holes where air conditioners have been yanked out, probably for scrap.
Mr. Becher sets down a foot-high traffic cone beside the knee-high grass, takes a “before” photograph to document the violation, and mounts his mower. He used to begin every job by tromping through the property, searching for debris or tree stumps that might damage the mower’s blades. But he saw a snake not long ago, he says. “I’m not much of a snake man.”
The mower begins its cringing whine, a kind of keening over these tough times. Mr. Becher expertly maneuvers around corners and bushes, the machine an extension of himself and of bureaucratic efficiency. Until, that is, it lurches to a halt, its gears entwined with a hose hidden in the brush.
“Holy smokes,” he says. Using willpower and a knife, he extracts the snakelike hose and gets on
with the job.
In the hours to come, Mr. Becher will mow two more lots. He will pass sign after sign saying FREE RENT. He will board up several buildings, including one house containing little more than auction brochures, and another, directly across from a public library, containing the detritus of a crack den. He will meet up with a code-enforcement officer, Ron Giddings, who will ask him: “Can you cut 4040 Rainbow tomorrow? It’s next to a day care center, and she’s complaining about rats and snakes.”
But right now, he is immersed in tidying the messiness of failed plans. He finishes mowing, takes a photograph of a job well done, and closes the chain-link fence as though the property were his own.
“Another day in paradise,” he says, standing on this street called Sunset.
Financial Foot Soldiers, Feeling the Weight of the World
NEW YORK, N.Y.—NOVEMBER 3, 2008
“What’s up, Lenny,” a broker on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange says, just before the ringing of the Pavlovian bell that opens the financial market. Lenny answers this morning bid with the customary response: “What’s up.”
Posed less as a sincere inquiry into one’s well-being than as a passing nod to another day in the financial scrum, the greeting can also be interpreted in these uncertain times as a question baldly seeking reassurance: What’s up?
Stocks? Hopes? Layoffs? Blood pressure?
Leaving unexplored the phrase’s deeper meaning, the two brokers melt into a blue-coated sea on the main floor of the exchange, where the Lennys have come to personify the amorphous, temperamental, life-altering thing called Wall Street—an all-encompassing name for the stock market, the economy, your 401(k).