Joseph Hein drives about 20 miles from his Laredo home to the 580-acre Rancho Santo Niño, which has belonged to his family for nearly 100 years.
The 67-year-old makes the trip four times a week, and when he does, he uses the horn of his 2002 Ford Explorer Sport Trac to call his 12 Appaloosa horses to their barn for feeding time.
Hein has been breeding and selling horses for over 40 years at the ranch, which sits on the Webb and Zapata county line. He is often accompanied on his ranch visits by his 16-year-old twin daughters, Alex and Amy, whom he calls his “sidekicks.”
The ranch’s purpose has changed over the years, from raising cattle to goats to horses, but it has always been a fixture in his family.
In recent years, though, Rancho Santo Niño’s location, which includes about a mile of riverbank along the international border, has made it a target as the state, and previously the federal government, vie for the land needed to build Texas’ border wall.
A wall on his property would drive away game, cut him off from his hobbies and ruin the view of the Rio Grande his family has enjoyed since his great-grandfather first bought the land. More important, he says, it would cut off his herd of spotted horses from their only source of water and force Hein to get rid of them along with the income they provide for his family.
And his property taxes would increase if he gave up his horses because he would no longer qualify for an agriculture exemption.
Hein is concerned that he must make a decision soon or he could end up with a wall built on his land anyway — without compensation.
And he’s not the only landowner feeling pressure to sign over the rights to his land amid a historic rise in migrants requesting asylum along the nation’s southern border, escalating accounts of violence in Mexico and debate over how best to reform the immigration system.
The retirement plans Hein made years ago include hunting deer and wild hogs, along with fishing in the Rio Grande and running a horse-breeding business. But all these dreams are at risk because of what he says is the government’s false assumption that his slice of land along the U.S.-Mexico border is a dangerous place.
He says in his lifetime, he has never thought of his family’s ranch as unsafe, and it’s never been a common crossing point for migrants.
“Do you see them running all over the place? Do you think I would bring my daughters if it was dangerous out here?” Hein said, gesturing to the empty brush surrounding him. “What father in his right mind brings his kids to a dangerous situation?”
“This is all about the landowner,” Tricia Cortez said in front of the audience that had gathered on a Wednesday night. “The ones who hold the power are the landowners.”
She explained that signing a right-of-way easement with the state government would give the state permanent access to that portion of a landowner’s property. She stressed that despite the money the state is offering for access, owners’ land would decrease in value once a 30-foot steel barrier is constructed.
“If you do not sign, the government does not have the power to build a wall,” Cortez said. “You all are very powerful.”
Attendees were encouraged to direct anyone who has been in contact with state officials over land easements to speak with the coalition members or to seek legal advice before they make a decision.
Hein has wondered what life and his ranch might look like with a steel border wall running through it. He would no longer have a reason to visit the ranch without his horse-breeding business.
“It would be like going to visit a parking lot. My wife would go crazy having me at the house all the time,” Hein joked, adding that he would lose the best part of his ranch, the lush foliage closest to the river.
“The beauty of the ranch is its life. The wall, people don’t have a concept of what it does. It kills everything. This ecosystem has its own unique wildlife, and the wall is going to destroy most of it,” he said. “Once it’s lost, it’s going to take a long time to get it back.”
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