In the borderlands of Arizona, Ross Humphreys’ San Rafael Ranch is 29 square miles of rolling hills and grass. It’s the kind of place where movies are made, and where heifers are free to loll peacefully under the wide open October sky.
“All of the cows on our ranch are calm and easy,” said Humphreys. “It’s part of raising quality food. You want every day to be a good day for your animal.”
Good days for the cows have been tougher lately for the rancher. The price of beef is high, but so is everything else.
“Gasoline prices are crazy,” Humphreys said. “We sold half of our cows in 2021 because of drought.”
In the past three years, two of his wells went dry. One stopped working the same week that federal contractors started pumping groundwater to build a new border wall near the ranch, he said.
“The supervisor told me what the well capacities were,” Humphreys said. “800,000 gallons a day, pumping it into reservoirs and putting it into concrete.”
Border ranchers from New Mexico to Arizona have warned that groundwater pumping to mix concrete and build roads for the border wall threatens local aquifers during an ongoing, punishing drought.
Customs and Border Protection told Here & Now in August that the agency “is committed to working collaboratively with local landowners to ensure that construction activities do not adversely impact their water needs.”
Humphreys isn’t a fan of the administration’s new wall. He calls it a political folly.
“We get to vote in November,” he said. “That’s what we’re going to do.”
Democrats in Arizona believe that a nationwide blue wave can help flip two Congressional seats in the state, including one district that spans Southeastern Arizona.
In 2026, border security is not the key issue it was in past elections, according to opinion polls. A crackdown on immigration was a big part of President Trump’s reelection campaign two years ago, and he was at a rally in Arizona in October, reminding supporters that his policies have sharply reduced illegal border crossings.
“If the Democrats get back into power, they will immediately reopen your borders,” Trump told the crowd in Bullhead City, Arizona.
This week, the White House said 290 miles of new barriers have gone up at the border since the president’s return to office.
“It helps,” said John Ladd, an Arizona border rancher in Cochise County. A second 30-foot wall is about to go up on his ranch parallel to an existing wall. “You know when you climb this wall, you’re in the U.S., so you’re illegal.”
Ross Humphreys sees it differently.
“It doesn’t do anything for me, except it makes my ride to the ranch risky going through the mountain roads with dozens of semi trucks driven by people who haven’t been here before, going through the curves and driving me off the road,” he said, referring to a steady line of trucks driving to the construction site.
On the other hand, he said government observation towers on his ranch have made a significant difference. Humphreys has voted for Republicans and Democrats all his life, and his message to people around the county is that the border region is not as lawless as the president makes it out to be.
“From October to June, I’m out three or four days [a week] on foot just checking everything out,” he said. “I haven’t seen an illegal alien on the ground since 2010.”
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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