IMAGES FROM THE BATTLEGROUND

Ranchers 75 Miles From Tucson Say Bad Border Policies Have Resulted In A
Daily Invasion Of Drugs, Death, Pollution And Violence

Lyle Robinson's Tres Bellotas Ranch sits in a cradle of hills right on the
Mexican border. It's a pretty place. Sprawling Mulberry trees shade the
brick house and oak trees--bellotas in Spanish--decorate the surrounding
landscape. This time of year, during the monsoon season, the oaks drop
acorns that cowboys and others working this land, 13 miles southwest of
Arivaca, have prized as summer snacks for centuries.

It hardly seems possible that such a peaceful-looking spot could be the
scene of anything momentous. But it is.

Everyone in America has a stake in what's happening on the Tres Bellotas.
Everyone in America should know about the events that play out daily on
this remote ground, and on neighboring ranches, because they explain our
present and foretell our future.

This is a place where all the rhetoric from the president and his
government about homeland security crumbles to pieces on the hot ground.
The Tres Bellotas is a battleground in the relentless, ugly, nonstop
invasion of drugs and illegals across our southern border.

It will happen again tonight. Robinson knows this, because two invaders
showed themselves earlier on this beautiful July morning, shortly after
breakfast. Walking openly, without fear of harassment, the two men walked
from Mexican soil into the United States through the wide-open
international border gate 200 yards below Robinson's home.

They were rolling a tire that needed air, and reaching the house, they
asked one of Robinson's cowboys for permission to use the ranch compressor.

These men, coyotes making final preparations for a night smuggling run of
either drugs or people, displayed no menace. They were polite. So was
Robinson's cowboy. He said by all means, muchachos, fill your tire.

But it was a Vito Corleone kind of request, one the cowboy couldn't refuse.

Robinson's ranch has no phone, no electricity and is, in his own words, a
no man's land, where surviving means doing what's necessary, including
maintaining cordial relations with the bad guys.

If they want air for their tire, you give it to them. If they want water,
you're better off handing it over, because if you say no, they may break a
water line to get it. If they want you to open the gate across the dirt
road that runs between your home and your horse corrals, you open it. Why
fight it? If you refuse, they'll just cut the lock.

Six months ago, Robinson looked out his window and saw something
incredible--a traffic jam on the Tres Bellotas, with 15 pickup trucks
backed up at this second gate, 150 feet from his house. The pickups sagged
under the weight of the illegals they carried, probably 20 in each, 300 in all.

When Robinson walked out, the coyote asked him to open the gate to let them
pass. Robinson did so, and off the group went, driving north.

So this long convoy of invaders entered the United States by driving
through two open gates, encountering no law enforcement to check papers. Or
screen them for infectious diseases. Or punch in computer codes to learn if
they were criminals. Or search for chemical or biological agents. Or search
for suitcase nukes. Or check the names against terror-watch lists.

Or even wave howdy. In other words, they encountered fewer obstacles than
commuters in American cities face driving home from work in rush-hour traffic.

But they don't just enter through the wide-open gate below Robinson's
house. His land abuts Mexico for six miles, and the invaders routinely cut
holes in the four-strand barbed-wire fence separating the two nations.

They break into the country so often along this stretch that Robinson can't
keep up with the fence repairs, an ongoing nightmare in which he is far
from alone. It happens at many spots along our southern border.

Tom and Dena Kay, Robinson's nearest neighbors on the U.S. side, have five
miles of border with Mexico, and smugglers cut holes in their fence about
every three days.

A drug smuggler on horseback, pulling a pack mule, can make such a hole in
10 seconds with a wire cutter, usually without dismounting. He leans over,
snips the first three strands, then coaxes his horse over the bottom wire.
He's in. If he's driving a truck, he can enter even faster than that,
simply by ramming down the fence and barreling on through, which Tom Kay
says happens just as often.

This goes on almost daily, 75 miles southwest of Tucson--invaders from
countries around the world coming across this international boundary in a
time of war, a time when nuts would like nothing better than to sneak into
this country and murder Americans on a grand scale.

The Border Patrol doesn't release a by-nation breakdown of those it
arrests, and the agency is particularly tight-lipped about arrests of
special interest aliens, known as SIAs. These are individuals from the list
of about 35 countries the U.S. considers terror threats. But the Weekly has
obtained SIA arrest figures from a federal law enforcement source who asked
to remain anonymous.

From 2000 through 2003, plus the first nine months of fiscal 2004, agents
in the Tucson sector, and the Arizona office of the Yuma sector, arrested
132 SIAs. The numbers include 10 from Afghanistan, seven from Iran, 12 from
Yemen, 11 from Pakistan and three from Iraq.

Using the common estimate that the Border Patrol only catches one out of
every three who cross, or as some believe, one of every five, we can
calculate that upward of 660 individuals from terror-threat nations have
crossed into our country through Arizona.

Those SIA arrest figures, by the way, include six individuals from Saudi
Arabia, the country that produced 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 maniacs.

Homeland security?

Along the border south of Arivaca, you'd best stand back when you utter
those words, because the subject tends to make folks spitting mad. Even
Robinson, a silver-haired, soft-spoken gentleman, gets a fire in his eyes
when he talks about it.

"It's a joke," says the 67-year-old, semi-retired veterinarian. "Homeland
security doesn't exist."

The contrabandistas have tainted life and corrupted hearts in Arivaca since
before its founding as an American town in the 1870s. The trade is like a
dirty fingerprint on the landscape, and a good bit of it runs along the
Tres Bellotas Road, a dusty roller coaster that wends through canyons and
rock washes from Arivaca down to the border.

It's rough country, all hills and horizon, and perfectly empty, unless you
count soaring turkey buzzards, dust billows in your rearview, and the
white-and-green Border Patrol trucks perched on intermittent hilltops.

Robinson and his wife, Mollie, knew the road running past their new home
was a favorite of smugglers when they bought the place in 1969. But just in
case they didn't, they received a dramatic reminder a few days after
passing papers.

As they sat with the previous owner on the back porch, a proud young couple
enjoying their first days on their new property, a station wagon roared up
from Mexico. "Oh, there goes a marijuana load," said the previous owner in
the most matter-of-fact voice possible.

Robinson admits to being a "little surprised" at the welcome, but not
floored. The couple had seen the prevalence of drugs in their previous
home, Gallup, N.M., and figured they couldn't escape it no matter where
they went.

Even so, even sitting right on the border, they felt completely safe at the
Tres Bellotas. "The first 30 years here, we had so few problems," says
Mollie. "But the last six years, things have gotten really out of control
with these illegals."

One day in 2003, Robinson and one of his cowboys rode their horses to a
hilltop close to the house. To their shock, they saw an estimated 300
illegals congregated in the draw below. The riders watched as the mob
divided into groups of 30 apiece, with one man, presumably a coyote, taking
charge of each one as they prepared to walk north.

"I rode down and talked to them," says Robinson. "They weren't nervous or
acting as if they were doing anything illegal at all. But seeing all those
people on my land, and the way they acted, that's when I knew things had
changed around here."

From then until now, the smugglers have all but taken charge, hijacking a
way of life.

The hilly terrain offers abundant hiding places, says Border Patrol
spokesman Gustavo Soto, and the Arivaca area's proximity to Altar and
Sasabe, both right across the line in Mexico, make it a frequent crossing
ground for drug and people smugglers. "The smugglers have built an
infrastructure in those towns, which they use as staging areas to come
across," says Soto. "They're trying to get to Highway 286 or I-19 up to
Tucson, and the Arivaca road runs between those two highways."

On this hot summer day, as he rumbles across his land in a Jeep, Robinson
talks about what it's like to live in the crosshairs of the invasion. The
indignities include Mexican soldiers camping just south of the
international gate below his house, a supposed show of force in the drug
war. They come about every two months.

But these fellows make lousy neighbors. To kill time during the long days,
they holler and fire off their weapons just for fun, filling the afternoon
air with the rat-tat-tat of gunfire and scaring Robinson's horses.

Once-pristine canyons, narrow, shady oak and rock gorges, have become
depressing dumping grounds for tons of feces, trash and personal items. "I
don't really have anything against these illegals," says Robinson. "But it
really gripes me how dirty they are, and they have no respect for private
property."

The trash includes clothing--leather and denim jackets, Wrangler jeans and
more--some of which is still usable after a good washing. Cowboys in the
Arivaca area often add to their wardrobes by cruising these dump sites, and
now, when Tres Bellotas cowboys go out riding, they joke, "See you later;
we're going shopping."

In one of these dumps, Robinson found a hat with an Islamic crescent on it,
and he rode up on a dead body, a young man, naked, a full water bottle
right next to him. When dehydration sets in, people sometimes go mad and
tear off their clothes before death. Two bodies have been found on his
property this summer alone.

In his corral, Robinson has what he calls his "marijuana horse," an animal
that smugglers turned loose. The pregnant mare has hideous open sores on
her back from being forced to haul bails of marijuana without a saddle
blanket. "There's not much I can do for her now," says Robinson. "Maybe her
colt will be healthy."

It never ends.

One night two years ago, Lyle and Mollie were driving home on with a couple
from Washington state in the car, the man a friend of Lyle's from his days
at Colorado State University Veterinary School.

They encountered a high-speed chase on Black Mesa, 4 1/2 miles north of the
ranch. A pickup filled with illegals was heading south, the Border Patrol
in pursuit, when the smuggler suddenly wheeled off the Tres Bellotas Road
into the desert. Robinson theorizes that coyotes about to be captured often
become reckless, hoping to intentionally injure the illegals they're
hauling, which they can then blame on the Border Patrol.

The smuggler truck sailed headlong through the darkness into a barbed wire
fence. The top wire snapped up over the cab, then down, scalping a woman
sitting in back. The wire literally removed her scalp from the middle of
her forehead to halfway back on the top of her head. She was with her son,
about 8 years old.

As Robinson tells this story, he's sitting at his kitchen table after a
lunch of iced tea and enchiladas. Mollie is cleaning up at the sink. The
sliding-glass door to the front porch is open, and an easy, warm wind blows
in through the screen, bringing with it a faint whiff of the horse corrals
and the chirping of birds.

It seems a scene of ultimate tranquility. But hanging over all of it is a
sense of horror at what the invasion has brought to this land.

A visitor asks how his Washington guests reacted to stumbling upon the Wild
West in modern-day Southern Arizona. "They'd never seen anything so
exciting in their lives," Robinson says with a grim chuckle.

But it gets wilder still.

At 11:30 a.m. on April 22 this year, a Mexican helicopter landed in the
Robinsons' backyard. Arivaca resident R.D. Ayers had driven to the ranch
that morning to visit his injured dog, then under Dr. Robinson's care.

Ayers describes stepping outside the house to see what he describes as "a
military Huey-type helicopter" circling, at the same time that a truck from
the Tucson Fuel Co. was pulling into the yard. The Tres Bellotas gets its
power from diesel generators, and that fuel has to be delivered.

As he approached the chopper, Ayers says six men in black, commando-type
uniforms stepped out. Five had ski-type masks over their faces, and they
wore body armor and carried automatic rifles. On their sleeves, Ayers saw
the word, Mexico.

They stood in a defensive posture around a sixth man, their leader, who
identified himself as a member of the Mexican police. He pointed
aggressively to the fuel truck and asked what it was doing there. Ayers, in
Spanish, told the man he was in the United States, not Mexico, and that he
had no business in this country and needed to leave.

But the commander refused to listen and began walking toward the truck, at
which point Ayers placed himself between the commander and the truck, again
telling him to scram. After a few minutes, the tense confrontation ended
when the commander ordered his troops into the chopper, and they split back
across the border.

Ayers suspects that the Mexicans--one of Robinson's cowboys identified them
as federales, Mexican federal police--were escorting a drug shipment to
Tucson, and wanted to haul it in the fuel truck. Or they wanted to steal
the fuel. The chopper had followed the truck much of the way down Tres
Bellotas Road.

"Men with fully automatic weapons and masks don't just show up to say
hello," says a still-outraged Ayers, owner of a backhoe company and a
former EMT in Arivaca. He added that if he'd had his gun, he might've fired
on the invaders. "I wasn't going to back down. This is my country."

These drug incursions occur with some regularity along the border. The Kays
and Robinson say they're personally aware of three such incursions this
summer alone, and it's worth noting that the men who recently shot two
Border Patrol agents near Nogales also wore black, commando-type gear.

But this episode, like the others, has disappeared into the vapor of
national security. Tucson Fuel refuses comment. The Border Patrol won't
talk about it, saying its agents got to the Tres Bellotas too late to learn
much of anything. The FBI in Tucson took a report the same day and
forwarded it to Washington, but they're not talking, either.

As for Robinson, he was gone from the ranch that day, holding a veterinary
clinic on the Tohono O'Odham Reservation--ironically enough, under a
contract from the Department of Homeland Security. "I really don't know
what happened," he says. "But I know my cowboys were so scared, they hid in
the barn."

The driver of the fuel truck arrived at Tom and Dena Kay's ranch, eight
miles north of the Robinson place, between noon and 1 p.m. that day.

"He was still shaken up, really wild-eyed," says Dena, who put in the first
call to the Border Patrol. Ayers had tried to call, but when he got atop
Black Mesa, the only place in the immediate area where cell phones work,
the call wouldn't go through. He suspects that smugglers had jammed the signal.

At the moment, the Kays' Jarillas Ranch is a bustle of activity. Tom Kay,
63, is working the controls of a forklift with-on-the-ground help from his
two cowboys, Roberto Triana and son, Peter. They're preparing a huge stack
of railroad ties for eventual transportation to job sites around the
13,000-acre spread.

The solar-powered ranch house, located back from the clearing where Tom and
his hands are working, sits on a rise above Tres Bellotas Road, shielded
from its wildness by distance, some apple trees and a strong security gate.

After moving here in January 2003, the Kays spent six months re-doing
everything about the house, except for two fireplaces that remain
untouched. They sandblasted paint off the ceilings, installed a saguaro-rib
ceiling in a hallway, and out front, beneath a tall pine tree, they built a
rock wall around the manicured front lawn.

But the most telling touch is the sign hanging on the porch. Instead of the
traditional Mi Casa Es Su Casa, so common on ranch-country homes, this
message perfectly reflects the Kays' stance toward the illegals and
smugglers who threaten their Eden. It reads, Mi Tierra Es Mi Tierra--my
land is my land.

It's a manifesto, a hope and a bit of a prayer in a place where the
invasion never stops, and its perpetrators receive, in the Kays' view,
encouragement and welcome from water-in-the-desert "do-gooders."

On Arivaca Road on July 9, the Border Patrol busted two members of the
self-described border-help group No More Deaths, alleging that they
violated the law by transporting three illegals. Standing beneath the big
pine tree outside her house, her bull mastiff, Ruby, bustling at her feet,
Dena can't contain her delight that the Border Patrol has finally taken a
stand against the group, which she says "entices people into our country to
die."

"They put these crossers at the mercy of the coyotes, who rob and abandon
all of them, and rape and abuse women," says Dena. "On the Fourth of July
weekend, they found several bodies near here, and I hold these do-gooders
morally responsible for every one of those deaths. They're so damn
self-righteous, and they don't want to hear about all the damage the
illegals are doing. They don't know how we're forced to live and don't want
to find out.

"I invite all these so-called Samaritans to publish their home addresses so
the illegals can go to their homes and defecate on their property and pound
on their doors in the middle of the night and see how they like it."

Dena, 61, grew up at the Tucson's Tanque Verde Guest Ranch--when it was
still a working ranch--taught English at Rincon High School and worked for
15 years as executive director of a domestic abuse advocacy center in
Cortez, Colo.

In the latter job, she dealt with several women whose battering husbands,
illegal aliens, had been deported to Mexico. Within a few months, they were
back doing it again, and from that, she knew how easy it was to sneak back
and forth across the line.

Beyond that, she and Tom had little first-hand knowledge of how
overwhelming illegal immigration had become, and how dangerous. But an
episode early in their time at the Jarillas Ranch initiated the Kays into
the nightmare.

Dena was driving home along the Tres Bellotas when she turned a corner and
ran smack-dab into 15 pickup trucks stuffed with about 25 illegals each.
They were heading toward Arivaca and Interstate 19. When the lead truck saw
Dena's vehicle, the driver jammed the brakes, then all the trucks began
making U-turns on the narrow road, blocking her in.

"Here I am trying to get home at night, and there are hundreds of illegals
and smugglers blocking my path," says Dena, who was unable to move for five
minutes. "I didn't have my gun, and I'm thinking, 'Oops, I hope you guys
don't want to steal my car.'"

The episode ended peacefully when the trucks got turned around and headed
south.

On other occasions, the Kays have watched in astonishment as smuggler
vehicles have rolled past in broad daylight, packed with human cargo. In
one case, they saw a parade of pickup trucks with invaders sitting all
around the edge of the rear bed, their arms locked so they wouldn't fall
off. More stood in the bed, and they were packed in so tightly, it seemed
impossible to breathe. Still more were packed into the double cabs like a
fraternity stunt.

The site provided a stunning visual lesson in the economics of people
smuggling. The Kays figure that each cab-and-a-half truck carried at least
50 people. According to Border Patrol estimates, each illegal pays $1,500
for transportation north. That's a grand total of $75,000 per truck. For,
say, 15 trucks, that's a stunning $1.1 million.

"When I see those trucks, I think of slave ships passing in a harbor 300
years ago," says Tom.

The trucks sometimes roar down the rocky, gouged-out Tres Bellotas Road at
night, with their lights off, at 50 mph. Dena says the nighttime racket can
be especially loud during the Border Patrol's shift change, a time the
coyotes know well. She has even seen mothers cradling babies, six months to
two years old, at the roadside, after apprehension by the Border Patrol,
and the babies are vomiting violently.

"I'm sure they have shaken-baby syndrome from driving this road at such
high speeds," she says. "But as soon as they're released into Mexico, those
mothers will be back with their babies to try again. They have no clue
about the brain damage they've just caused their children."

Dena praises the Border Patrol's efforts to try to control illegal vehicle
traffic on the road. "But they're overwhelmed," she says. "The illegals
come at them from every direction."

The problems they cause are constant. The Kays have repeatedly had their
outside water spigot left on, leaving no water for them to use their
bathroom or shower. Neighboring ranchers have found stock tanks fouled by
shampoo, soap and toothpaste deposited by invaders who use them as their
personal bathroom sinks.

As Dena sits in her spacious living room, the summer light pouring in
through the arched windows, she rattles off these episodes with some
emotion, but not much. She's a thin woman with a gravelly voice and a
fierce determination, a trait she acquired while running the women's center.

There, she testified against spousal abusers in court, in spite of their
vows to come after her if she did. "I've had my life threatened a number of
times," Dena says, shrugging. "I guess I got used to it. When you've been a
victim's advocate, you learn not to give up."

She needs that kind of mettle living outside Arivaca, an unincorporated
town of about 2,000 people.

On a Sunday night in early July, the Kays were alerted to something going
on outside the house by the frantic barking of their four dogs. When Dena
opened the door, she saw three illegals, in aggressive postures, one of
them bare-chested. They asked for water. In Spanish, Dena responded, "You
don't want water. Get the hell out of here. I'm calling la migra."

Like most ranchers, the Kays have given water to polite illegals in need.
But these fellows were bad news. When they didn't respond to Dena's demand
to hit the road, she told Tom, in a voice loud enough for the invaders to
hear, to get her gun. Those words did the trick. "Unless they hear la
pistola, they won't leave," Dena says.

Shortly afterward, to make sure they were gone, Tom went down to the gate
and saw two trucks, presumably carrying the same men, coming down the road
toward Arivaca, their lights off. As they passed, Tom aimed his flashlight
into one of the cabs, and the men waved at him. Tom thinks those trucks
might've carried drugs, but he didn't get a good enough look to be sure,
and the Kays can only guess what those three men had planned while
approaching their home.

Right now, Tom has just come into the living room, taking a break from
working the railroad ties. A lifelong team roper in rodeo competitions, he
spent 15 years running a sign company and athletic clubs in Tucson, his
hometown, before spending most of the '80s and '90s in Colorado. He
operated a small ranch there and ran a manufacturing company. But he's
never had to run a business under the conditions he confronts every day on
the border.

About a year ago, Tom was out riding when he witnessed a running gunfight
in which automatic weapons-toting gangsters blasted away at each other on
National Forest land on the U.S. side of the border, and the fight
continued onto the Mexican side.

And in June this year, Roberto and Peter saw a second gunfight, also with
automatic weapons. This one ended with two bodies being dumped into the bed
of a pickup truck, which then fled into Mexico.

Surprisingly, Tom doesn't consider the violence of the drug smugglers his
biggest problem. It's how ridiculously easy it is for them, and people
smugglers--the two often work together, sometimes within the same gang--to
invade American territory. They simply cut the fence, or run it down, and
they're in.

But that also lets his cows out into Mexico, and that explains the railroad
ties.

In two places, Tom is replacing cuts in his border fence with cattle
guards--the ties will line the pits below the steel guardrails--hoping the
smugglers will drive or walk across the guards, rather than cut his fence.

It's a desperate measure, giving bad guys ready access through America's
back door. But Tom and Lyle Robinson, who also plans to install border
cattle guards, say it's the only way they can maintain control over their
livestock. At up to $1,000 a head, every animal that drifts into Mexico
threatens their ability to stay in business.

"I talked to the Border Patrol and the Forest Service about the fence cuts,
and they said there's nothing they can do," says Tom. "They said do what
you have to do."

Border Patrol spokesman Soto says the agency is aware of the repeated fence
cuts, and has no objections to ranchers installing cattle guards.

But if the agency knows about these constant border break-ins--a clear and
present threat to national security and American sovereignty--why can't it
be stopped? "We have a heavy presence in that area, but it's extremely
difficult to control," says Soto. "In cases like this, we rely on ranchers
to tell us the crossing patterns on their property. We don't have agents
holding hands along the border. They're responding to other calls."

When his cattle do drift into Mexico, Tom sometimes contacts the Mexican
brand inspector in Sasabe, Sonora, for help. But that's time-consuming, and
Tom knows that if he sees fresh tracks and doesn't follow them right away,
his animals might next appear on somebody's dinner plate in Sonora. To get
them back, he saddles up and rides into Mexico with Roberto and Peter to
find them.

In addition to being a national security nightmare, the fence cuts
represent another fundamental outrage--the invaders are severely
restricting how American citizens can use their property. Tom has two
pastures abutting the border, Lyle Robinson three, and both say they can
only use this land if they have cowboys available to ride the border fence
at least once a day to keep the fence up.

The cost? Taking into account all the fences on his property, including the
border fence, Tom spends at least one-third of his time looking for and
fixing breaks.

"Two or three times a week, I have to send my cowboys to the border to make
sure my fence is up, and it's an all-day job," he says. "All of this is
expensive. If I make $40,000 a year running this ranch, every bit of that
profit goes to repairing the damage these people do."

Why stay on land that American law enforcement can't or won't secure? After
all, some around Arivaca already have left. In August 2001, Don Honnas and
his wife, Carolyn, sold out after almost 41 years, in part due to illegals
and drug smugglers.

As they reached their late 60s, the Honnases tired of sleeping with pistols
under their pillows, suffering through 25 break-ins at ranch buildings,
listening to their dogs bark all night and seeing two of their dogs
poisoned. One of their biggest worries, remarkably, was the liability they
might incur if one of their dogs bit an illegal, and the illegal sued.

"But the hardest part was when you call law enforcement, and they tell you
they have nobody to send," says Honnas, now living in Sahuarita. "It was a
difficult decision to get out, but we had to make a move."

For Tom Kay, running a ranch as big as the Jarillas has always been a
lifelong dream, and he'll suffer through the dangers to keep it. "I'm very
watchful and alert when I'm out working, but I'm not afraid," he says. "How
could you be afraid and go to work every day? I'm not going to be afraid."

Whenever he rides his land, Tom carries a .44-caliber Magnum pistol on his
saddle for self-defense, and for predatory lions. And when Dena goes for
walks, she brings Ruby, the bull mastiff, and her pistol.

As far as she's concerned, the gun isn't optional. This is especially so in
light of Border Patrol statistics showing that the common assumption about
who is sneaking across the line and why--the harmless illegal only looking
for work--has shifted significantly in recent years.

From Oct. 1, 2004, through July 24 of this year, Tucson sector agents
arrested 375,000 illegals--37,000 a month. Of that 10-month arrest total,
more than 28,324 had criminal records, 283 for sexually related crimes.
Given this, and the effort it takes to reach their isolated house from the
road, the Kays consider anyone who shows up at their door at night a
threat. But they also know that should a confrontation go bad, American law
enforcement will probably come after them.

"We've all been warned to not even show a gun to an illegal," she says. "A
woman here did that a while ago, just showed it, didn't point it, and the
FBI came to her house and warned her not to do it again, because it's a
federal crime to threaten an illegal. But if I'm alone, what am I supposed
to do? I can't scream, because no one will hear me."

Robinson is also sadly aware of whose side his own government is on when it
comes to defending himself.

"Any rights we might have to protect our property or make an arrest have
been taken from us," says Robinson, who usually doesn't carry a gun and
doesn't particularly like them. "As far as I'm concerned, the smugglers can
run anything they want through my ranch, and I'm not going to get up at
night and look at them, and I'm sure not going to confront them. It's not
my job. Besides, if I tried, and somebody got shot, I'd be the one to get
arrested. The ACLU would probably take the case, and we'd lose our life
savings."

It's early afternoon at the Tres Bellotas, and the sun is blazing over the
desert. Out here, the intense summer heat keeps everyone's eyes focused on
the sky for buzzards, because buzzards might mean a dead body, or body
parts. Lions and coyotes sometimes descend on the corpses of illegals,
leaving the death site a scatter of arms, legs or even a head.

Robinson has something he wants to show a visitor and pilots the Jeep up a
steep hill less than a mile from his house.

The view from the peak would qualify for a postcard, if it weren't for the
mass of litter and glass shards gleaming in the sunlight, and the smuggling
trails that spider-web across the landscape. Some are so pounded down, they
look like roads.

On this wind-swept peak, Mexican land visible across the pathetic little
fence below, Robinson stands silently, examining what can only be described
as a heartbreaking scene. He doesn't react to the debris and the
environmental damage, at least openly.

But friends say the daily insults, the trampling of American law and
sovereignty, the trashing of his property and especially the unwillingness
of his own government to stop it, eats at his gut. Now, there's the latest
chapter in the invasion--the helicopter landing. Robinson says he thinks
about it often.

"I've never felt personally threatened living here until that Mexican
helicopter landed," he says. "I know these Mexican drug people have access
to helicopters, and if they get mad at me, what's to stop them from flying
over the house and dropping a bomb and getting rid of me in seconds flat?
Who'd care? The American government sure doesn't care. It makes me think
how vulnerable I am."

As Dena Kay says, "There's nothing Lyle can do. If he fights back, the
smugglers might burn his house, or he'll get up in the morning and find all
his horses poisoned."

In addition to ratcheting up the stakes, the chopper incident did something
else--it cut off Robinson's fuel supply. Tucson Fuel informed him that it
would no longer deliver diesel to the ranch. Another company made one
delivery and quit, citing the lousy condition of the road. The Border
Patrol has helped by delivering fuel, and they've offered to provide an
armed escort if Robinson can find a company willing to deliver. But
Robinson hasn't decided what he'll do. He's thinking of buying a tanker to
deliver his own fuel, and installing solar power. But that still won't give
him phone service, except with his cell from atop Black Mesa, a 20-minute
drive away.

Two years ago, he and Mollie got an expensive satellite phone and used it
for several weeks, until all of their calls began mysteriously routing
through a Mexican operator in Hermosillo. Even Verizon's technical people
couldn't explain it.

Then a Border Patrol agent told the Robinsons what they already suspected:
It's the smugglers again. They'd probably jammed the signals. The Kays say
the same thing. At times of heavy night traffic on the Tres Bellotas, their
cell phone--they have no land line--sometimes stops working for no apparent
reason.

But Robinson doesn't spend a lot of time calling the Border Patrol. Even
when he's certain a group is coming through --such as tonight's tire
rollers--he usually won't call it in.

"If I were to call the Border Patrol, they'd say thank you and probably do
nothing," says Robinson, adding that he'd have to drive up to Black Mesas
several times a day to report suspicious sightings. "I'd be on the phone
all the time and be frustrated all the time. I can't let it control me and
affect my health. It'd ruin me."

And by the time the Border Patrol arrived, the threat would likely have
passed. When Dena Kay called to report the helicopter incident, it took the
Border Patrol four hours to get to the Tres Bellotas.

As Robinson sees it, the Border Patrol leaves his ranch largely undefended.

Even though the agency has had a horse patrol unit living at the ranch at
times this summer, Robinson says that's unusual. More normally, agents come
to the ranch in the morning looking for tracks, then either depart
altogether or retreat to peaks miles back from the ranch to sit in their
trucks and watch.

This allows the invaders unfettered access through Robinson's property, and
it burns him up.

"Even though I'm only 200 yards from the border, my position is these
illegals should never get here," says Robinson. "If you had real homeland
security, they'd never be able to reach my ranch. But they're pouring
across the line while the Border Patrol sits back on the hills, waiting to
arrest them father back. I'm left here on my own, and it's like a taking of
my property."

No phone, no fuel, and usually no Border Patrol. No man's land. So why stay?

It's the easiest question of all: It's home. The Robinsons raised their
four children at the ranch. Most of their memories are on this land, and so
are their hearts. They even have a ranch graveyard, the final resting place
for several family members.

But Mollie admits it hasn't been easy, even from those first days in 1969.
She had difficulty adjusting to the isolation, and took comfort in the
biblical passage from Luke, in which Jesus said, "No one who puts his hand
to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God."

Mollie did that then, and she and Lyle are doing the same thing now,
keeping their hands on the plow and asking God, through their prayers, to
keep them safe. It's what they have instead of homeland security.

Everyone in America has a stake in those prayers being answered.