Tex-wrecks border
Farmers rail at danger, damage by smugglers
Farmers in Texas have had it with human traffickers streaming illegal immigrants across the border under President Biden’s watch — saying that “coyotes abandon people, steal vehicles, vandalize property and threaten the safety and livelihoods of farmers and ranchers” — and now they want the White House to write them a check for the damages.
The largest organization of farmers in America has taken action behind the scenes this summer to recoup the money that its members have had to fork over during the first six months of the Biden administration to cover all sorts of issues prompted by the spike in illegal migration at the US-Mexico boundary, where more people are being apprehended while attempting to illegally enter the country every month than at any other time in the past 21 years, according to federal data.
Texas Farm Bureau president Russell Boening told The Post that his group’s farmers, including those who live hundreds of miles north of the international boundary, are seeing human smugglers drive vehicles through their fields of crops, residences broken into, and families left stranded on their property.
The activity has reached a level where farmers are desperate for federal help to stop the crime and cannot sustain the financial hits.
Faced with calls by members to represent their concerns to Washington, the American Farm Bureau Federation, all 50 state bureaus, and the Puerto Rico Farm Bureau sent a letter in early June to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, asking the Biden administration to address what local communities were experiencing.
“Coyotes abandon people, steal vehicles, vandalize property and threaten the safety and livelihoods of farmers and ranchers. They are often criminals who smuggle drugs and firearms into the country, frequently leaving them on farmers’ and ranchers’ property, causing unrest for farm and ranch families,” the letter stated.
The White House agreed to a virtual meeting in late June and farm bureau officials pleaded their case before top federal officials, explaining not only how landowners across Texas were being impacted by rising illegal immigration but the need for financial assistance because of the disaster.
Boening said the financial implications are not yet known, but they include things like broken fences, stolen pickup trucks and ruined crops.
Every time a vehicle rams through a fence, the repairs cost between an average of $1,000 and $4,000.
Richard Guerra, a fourth-generation rancher in Roma, Texas, said the biggest expense is the result of fever ticks being brought into the country that can infect livestock.
Some of the costs sustained by landowners can be reimbursed by insurance companies, but for lost crops and fences that need to be rebuilt several times a week or month, the landowners are often on their own, and that is where they are looking for the government to help in a way similar to how the Federal Emergency Management Agency aids people affected by natural disasters.
“We don’t have a direct way to do it,” Boening said. “I mean, if the administration is going to come up with something, it’s going to have to be administered and run by them.”