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TUCSON -- On an isolated ranch 10 miles from the Mexican border in southern Arizona, Tangye Beckham worries about what the night will bring. That's usually when her family's 100-acre ranch begins to crawl with drug and immigrant traffickers from Mexico heading north into the United States.
"They're belligerent, they carry weapons," she said. "It's a nightly problem with them being on the property. They've already tried to break in."
Recently, as she was closing one of her gates in the pre-dawn hours, Beckham found herself surrounded by a group of illegal immigrants and feared being attacked. By running to her car, she said, she was able to get away, badly shaken.
Two mountain ranges away, ranchers Christin Peterson and Sonny McCuistion have the same problem with armed Mexican smugglers crossing their properties. "It's upsetting and there's a lot of them. It hasn't decreased; there's a lot of traffic," said Peterson.
McCuistion, 87, said while out on his horse tending cattle he's seen groups of traffickers, some dressed in camouflage. One time he made a dramatic discovery. "I rode just a little ways and I said, 'What's that outta the bush?' And there was about 1,000 pounds of marijuana under those bushes."
All three ranchers scoffed at claims from Washington that crime along the U.S. side of the Mexican border has dropped dramatically and that the area is safer than ever. "They don't know what they're talking about," McCuistion replied.
Beckham, a flight paramedic and firefighter, urged Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to pay a visit to her ranch.
"I'll show her it's not a secure border," Beckham said. "I'll have her talk to my kids. And they can tell her how afraid they are, that they don't wanna go out after dark."
Southwest border among ‘safest areas in the United States,’ Napolitano says
Texas Department of Public Safety
Officers surround a truck loaded with marijuana in South Texas during a drug bust on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Along the Mexican border, an easy way to get into a fierce debate is to ask a simple question: "How much violence and crime linked to Mexican drug traffickers has spilled over into the United States?"
As it turns out, the answer varies wildly and depends on who you talk to, especially in a presidential election year when border security and immigration are sensitive topics. The argument is further complicated by the failure of federal and state law enforcement officials to even agree over how to define spillover violence and other related crimes.
"The danger in not having an accurate accounting of spillover violence is that we fail to see that our cities, American cities, are permeated by Mexican drug cartels who are heavily armed, who are criminals involved in multiple different enterprises," said Howard Campbell, an anthropology professor at the University of Texas at El Paso who has studied the drug cartels extensively.
The Obama administration, joined by some local officials and sheriffs, claim that because of a sizeable increase in the federal law enforcement presence along the border, crime there has dropped dramatically and the border is safer than it's ever been.
“Everything that we are seeing along our nation’s Southwest border point to a much safer border today than it has been over the last 20 years,” said David Aguilar, acting commissioner for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. “It is not a war zone; it is not a border completely out of control.”
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