A10 EZ M2 THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAy, MARCH 7 , 2020
2015 with the promise to build a
border wall, many of the threats
that drove his argument were
beginning to fade, at least in the
malpai region.
mcDonald thought the group’s
close cooperation with the Bor-
der Patrol would s pare t he region
from having a section of wall.
The group was confident t hat the
government would look at the
falling arrest and seizure num-
bers for that stretch of border
and see no need for a 30-foot-
high barrier with flood lights
across the desert.
“But everything from D.C. just
comes in a one-size-fits-all,” mc-
Donald said.
rich Winkler, the current di-
rector of the malpai group,
whose family’s ranch backs up
against the Peloncillo range, said
he, too, is a proponent of strong
national security. And he does
not question the need for tall
fences along other parts of the
border.
“I’m sure it’s appropriate in
urban areas,” Winkler said. “But
what is its effectiveness out
here?”
Winkler wonders how any
trafficker motivated and daring
enough to hike for days through
the mountains with little food or
water would let the barrier be
much of an obstacle, given that it
can be scaled with ladders and
ropes or cut with household
tools.
Glenn said his family reluc -
tantly a greed to sell groundwater
to the wall contractors, worried
that if they refused, the govern-
ment would use its eminent-do-
main powers to drill a well and
take the water.
The water that contractors are
using to make concrete comes
from the same aquifer that feeds
artesian springs and seeps onto
the San Bernardino National
Wildlife refuge, created in 1982
to protect the region’s largest
natural wetland. In recent
weeks, remote video cameras on
the refuge have captured pumas,
bobcats, wild turkeys and other
animals streaming through the
last remaining gaps in the barri-
er before construction crews fin-
ish the job.
At the southern end of the
Glenn family’s ranch nearby,
there is now a construction site
spreading through the ocotillo
and mesquite, humming with
heavy equipment. Tractor-
trailers with Texas license plates
rumble along the dusty Geroni-
mo Trail road loaded with new
steel panels.
Kelly Kimbro, Glenn’s daugh-
ter and a hunting guide like her
father, said the structure will cut
off wildlife, threatening decades
of conservation efforts. And in a
place of open vistas, where there
are few visible signs of human
impact, the project has inflicted
a kind of psychological injury
bigger than the structure itself.
“There are places that should
have a wall,” Kimbro said. “A nd
there are places that should
never have one. It breaks my
heart to see it.”
[email protected]gunshot wounds, Glenn and a
neighboring rancher tracked a
single set of footprints south -
bound toward mexico through a
wash. They stopped where the
footprints crossed the border.
Krentz’s attacker was never
fo und.
His son, frank Krentz, still
raises cattle on the family home-
stead where his f ather was killed.
He is one of the few malpai
ranchers who support Trump’s
plan to build the wall here.
Now 37, Krentz said he grew
up riding horses and running all
over the mountains, describing
his childhood as a time of total
freedom. That world was lost
with his father’s killing, he said,
and it is something that he said
his children will never exper -
ience.
Krentz acknowledged that
th ere have been tensions among
the malpai families about the
border wall, but he said other
members are respectful of his
views. He said he agrees with the
critics who say the barrier will
not stop determined border-
crossers from getting through,
but he said it will be worthwhile
if it brings a degree of security
and peace of mind.
“The malpai are trying to keep
open spaces, but open spaces are
a viewscape,” Krentz said. “Why
should citizens be scared be -
cause one tool wasn’t used?”close cooperation
The Krentz killing was a cat -
alyst for conservatives pushing
tougher border security. Within
weeks, Arizona legislators ap -
proved the “show me your pa-
pers” law, SB 1070, giving police
the ability to demand proof of
residency during traffic stops
and other routine en c ounters. It
was one of the most restrictive
state immigration laws in the
country.
The slaying also changed the
relationship between the malpai
ranchers and the Border Patrol.
Supervisors became far more
attentive to their concerns, de-
ploying more agents and increas-
ing patrols, mcDonald and other
ranchers said. It was a new
period of close cooperation.
The government also added
more “vehicle barriers,” fash -
ioned from old railroad tracks.
The barriers allowed wildlife to
travel freely, but they made it
nearly impossible for smugglers
to drive across the border.
“The vehicle barriers cut
drive-throughs by 80 percent,”
Glenn said.
But the biggest change came
when several Western states be-
gan decriminalizing mari juana.
The market for lower-quality
mexican-grown cannabis
shrank, and malpai families saw
fewer backpackers trekking
through the Peloncillos.
The cartels were switching to
harder drugs — metham -
phetamine, cocaine and opioids
— typically bringing those loads
through official vehicle entry
points in hidden compartments.
By the time Trump launched
his presidential campaign intwice at his home. mcDonald
turned toward the window,
where the winter sun was slip-
ping below the canyon walls, his
boots shifting on the plank floor.
“If mcCain were still here, he’d
have stopped that wall,” he said.‘The jaguar was a sign’
malpai co-founder Warner
Glenn was hunting in the Pelon-
cillo mountains near the border
in 1996 when he followed his
baying hounds to a rocky out-
cropping above a ravine. Glenn
was expecting a mountain lion,
but the animal was much larger,
with black spots.
He took out his camera and
became the first person to photo-
graph a wild, living jaguar on
U. S. soil.
The photo was a watershed
moment in Western conser -
vation, and for Glenn and others,
it was an affirmation that the
malpai project was working to
protect a truly special place. “The
jaguar was a sign that we were
doing the right thing,” he said.
The mountain range, which
straddles the Arizona-New
m exico line, is among the few
that connect to the much larger
western Sierra madre mountains
of mexico. for the elusive jaguar
and other North American mega-
fauna, the range is a crucial
biological corridor, allowing ani-
mals to migrate north through
remote areas with few people or
roads.
Glenn’s jaguar photo and
sightings and remote-camera
fo otage of big cats since then
have thrilled conservationists
who argue that the American
West can be brought back from
decades of overgrazing, mining
and habitat loss.
But the same features that
make the Peloncillo range attrac-
tive to roaming jaguars also
appeal to drug smugglers. With-
in a few years of Glenn’s s ighting,
mexican traffickers were s ending
marijuana couriers with back-
packs through the mountains
nightly.
After delivering their loads at
highway drop-off points north of
the border, the smugglers often
would hike back along the same
mountain trails. Some would
raid homes and ranches along
the way before slipping back into
mexico. Thefts, vandalism and
break-ins became routine.
If Glenn’s encounter with the
jaguar was an electrifying mo-
ment for the malpai conserva-
tion effort, the low point came in
2010, when rob Krentz, one of
the group’s members, was killed
on his family’s ranch by a sus-
pected trafficker near the tiny
community of Apache, Ariz.
Krentz’s slaying shattered the
notion that the violence of mexi-
co’s drug war would remain
south of the border. Krentz had
been warning authorities that
the m igrants coming through the
area were no longer primarily
seasonal laborers looking for
work, noting that more-sinister
elements were moving in.
After Krentz, 58, was found
slumped in his f our-wheeler withsite where bulldozers and exca-
vators are building President
Trump’s border wall, mcDonald,
67, said he feels defeated and
filled with regret. Decades of
political wrangling and consen-
sus-building — his life’s work —
are being flattened.
“I feel like I’ve let down the
generations to come, because
we’re going to have that ugly scar
out here,” mcDonald said. “It just
makes me sick.”
Though Trump often has de-
picted border residents as the
biggest b eneficiaries of his s igna-
ture project, the arrival of con-
struction crews and heavy equip-
ment to this region has brought
mostly bitterness and resigna-
tion. Trump’s barrier is turning
longtime friends against each
other and is dramatically — and
perhaps permanently — altering
one of the wildest and most
storied areas of the American
West.
The malpai founders, several
of whom are conservative re-
publicans like mcDonald, insist
they continue to support strong
border security, pointing out
their many years of close cooper-
ation with the U. S. Border Patrol
in reporting illegal activity and
granting access to their proper-
ties.
What they oppose is the deci-
sion to put the massive steel
barrier here, where they say it is
unnecessary, wasteful and de-
structive. Border Patrol officials
argue that the new fencing will
safeguard the country for de-
cades to come, but many of the
ranching families who live here
— and who have spent their lives
trying to strike a balance be-
tween wildlife and cattle, tradi-
tion and regulation — say they
have been pushed aside.
The 20-mile stretch of border
east of Douglas, Ariz., where the
crews are working was once
among the busiest places for
illegal crossings. But it has been
quiet for years, with just a few
arrests each month, the families
say. Their claims are supported
by internal U. S. Customs and
Border Protection reports ob-
tained by The Washington Post
that show the area is not a
priority for the Border Patrol; it
was not among the top 15 loca-
tions where the agency said it
urgently needed new barriers.
The Trump administration is
building here anyway. The presi-
dent is running for reelection on
a promise to com plete more than
500 miles of new border fence by
early next year. While progress
has been extremely slow in Te x-
as, where nearly all of the land is
in private hands, this area along
the New mexico-Arizona border
has s een the p ace o f construction
accelerate.
The malpai region has few
property owners, relatively flat
terrain and easy access to large
tracts of land under federal con-
trol. T hough it might n ot b e a top
security priority, it is one place
the Trump administration can
build quickly.
roy Villareal, chief of the
Border Patrol’s Tucson sector,
acknowledged that the malpai
region has been quiet from a law
enforcement perspective in re-
cent years, but he said it would
be a mistake to assume that it
will remain that way.
“What I do not want to have
happen is a resurgence, and once
again h ave us become t he epicen-
ter of the Southwest border,”
Villareal said in an interview.
“When we look at the placement
of wall, we take into consider-
ation our past, our current
needs, and start looking at the
future.”
“The border is dynamic, and
can change in a heartbeat,” he
said.
mcDonald and other founding
members of the malpai g roup are
skeptical of the Border Patrol’s
security arguments. They see
political expediency instead.
The group had worked closely
with federal agencies for more
than two decades to align inter-
ests and minimize conflict, over-
coming decades of mistrust to-
ward the government. That rela-
tionship ended up lulling the
group into a false sense of trust,
mcDonald said.
Border Patrol officials had as-
sured the malpai families that
their span of border was not a
priority for the barriers, mcDon-
ald said. By time the agency
informed the group of the con-
struction plans, it was too late to
challenge the gov ernment.
“I should have spoken up earli-
er,” mcDonald said during an
interview in the living room of
his modest ranch home in a
narrow canyon a mile from the
border. “maybe if we had fought
them politically, we could have
made a difference.”
The late senator John mcCain
(r-Ariz.) had been a friend, mc-
Donald said, and was a guest
ranchers from a
Administration sees progress, but ranchers see defeat
PHOTOS BY CAROLYN VAN HOUTEN/THE WASHINGTON POSTGlenn said his family reluc tantly agreed to sell groundwater to the
wall contractors, worried that if they refused, the government
would use eminent domain to drill a well and take the water.Warner Glenn at h is ranch along the border with Mexico outside
Douglas, ariz. In 1996, he became the first person to photograph a
wild, living jaguar on U.s. soil. “The jaguar was a sign that we were
doing the right thing,” he said of ranchers’ conservation efforts.5 MILES10808018118629Span where
30-foot-tall barriers
are replacing
existing
fencingSpan where
30-foot-tall barriers
are replacing
existing
fencingPlanned
30-foot-tall
barrierPlanned
30-foot-tall
barrierDouglasDouglas
MEXICOMEXICOU.U.S.S.Antelope
WellsAntelope
WellsRoRodeodeoBowieBowieAnimasAnimasAnimas
Mtns.Animas
Mtns.San
Bernardino
NWRMalpai-area ranches
with conservation
easement protectionMalpai-area ranches
with conservation
easement protectionAgua
PrietasAgua
PrietasLoLordsburdsburgrgARIZONAARIZONASOSONONORARA CHIHUAHCHIHUAHUAUANEW
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illoMountainsPe
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illoMountainsChiricahua
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O^ TRAIL^ ROADGERO
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O^ TRAIL^ ROADSources: Dept. of Homeland Security, Malpai Borderlands Group and Peak Map
LARIS KARKLIS/THE WASHINGTON POST