Mitchell Oakley: Defending property, way down in Texas

I’ve never been to Texas, so it is hard for me to write intelligently about the state, its landscape, and the issues at its southern border, which also is the United States’ border.

I know it is a huge state with large farms where farmers grow such crops as sorghum, wheat, hay, corn, rice and cotton while ranches raise a variety of cattle from the Texas longhorn to the beautiful black Angus with the Charolais and Hertford mixed in.

Private ownership accounts for 83 percent of all parcels along the border but only 36 percent of total acreage, according to app.regrid.com/pages/border. The government owns about a third of the land. The federal government is the largest landowner, by both acreage and the number of parcels, the website said.

What is easier to write about is the thought of living along that border on a farm or ranch without having to worry about drug cartels and other nefarious issues that most of us don’t even think about in a day’s time. We’d have to worry about, or maybe even become a victim of, break-ins and thefts. Or we might find evidence where illegal aliens crossed the border and cut holes in our fences that would require repeated repairs.

What would you do?

I read a story recently in The Epoch Times about a rancher initially charged with first-degree murder before being reduced to second-degree murder. The 75-year-old man was indicted for the death of Gabriel Cuen-Buitimea, an illegal alien. After a trial that resulted in a hung jury that favored an acquittal, George Alan Kelly was released, and prosecutors have elected not to try him again.

According to the story, the encounter involved trespassing. Ballistic evidence couldn’t conclude that the bullet came from Kelly’s rifle. I cite this story as just one more reason why living at the southern border is hard on Americans who must tolerate those illegally crossing the border. None of us want to see others harmed.

Nearly every day farmers and ranchers along the Texas border may be faced with often tough and emotionally quick decisions to protect their person or property.

That is why only legal immigration should be allowed. That’s why we have an immigration law, the last adopted in 1965. That’s why our president must insist on a closed border and the use of the process we have in place to allow legal immigration.

Here in North Carolina, we are at least 1,800 miles or more from the issue. Most of us wake up each day without one thought of the border — at least until we hear about buses that are loaded and the illegal entrants headed our way or to some other city in the country.

We can then see the toll it takes on our own infrastructure. Just like Mayor Eric Adams in New York City has learned, housing and feeding non-Americans is a huge burden on the country, especially to a city that can’t afford to make the monetary outlays.

Some states are taking matters into their own hands by passing laws that deal with illegal aliens within their borders. Some laws are more stringent than others. In North Carolina, the General Assembly is trying to make it mandatory that sheriffs in the state cooperate with federal ICE authorities if they had someone in custody living in the U.S. unlawfully. A similar law was vetoed by Democratic Governor Roy Cooper in 2022. He is expected to veto HB 10 should it become law. But Republicans may have the votes this time to override his veto.

Yes, way down in Texas they are defending their property at the border. While the rest of us live a life that never gives much thought to what our fellow Americans endure, we have an impotent government that neither a president nor a Congress can effectively lead for the best interests of the American citizenry.