‘It ought to be criminal’: American border ranchers still reeling from Biden-era ‘invasion’ with little help on the horizon 

“It’s called treason, you know. But D.C. people get away with it,” said Martin Wall, a fifth-generation Texas rancher about what happened under former President Joe Biden. 

Wall said that at the height of the surge, 500 to 600 illegal migrants crossed his land daily, cutting his fences, smashing his equipment, defecating on his property and even breaking into his kitchen.

In Arizona, fifth-generation rancher Jim Chilton saw the same siege and said three people died on his land in 2024 alone. One was murdered. “One of my cowboys riding along on our spring roundup spotted the body, and then the head about 10 feet away,” Chilton said.

Wall, Chilton and several other multigenerational ranchers along the southern border described to Heartlander News how lax border policies allowed a flood of illegal migrants to damage their land, endanger their lives and rob them of the American dream.

“What Biden did was he just gave America away with the millions of people that he let in,” John Ladd, whose family has owned the same Arizona ranch since 1896, said.

The ranchers said illegal crossings have plummeted since President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office. However, they cannot receive federal aid to repair the property damage and are absorbing the costs themselves.

The Biden-era invasion

Wall’s family had leased his Maverick County property before he bought it in May 2020. Nearby, Eagle Pass became “ground zero” of the surge, and the city declared a state of emergency over illegal migration in September 2023.

Wall said Biden’s border policies stripped away the American dream from him and his family. 

Unlike migrants looking for work, whom he described as “good people” that his family once fed, “not one of those people ever asked me for work, ever,” he said. “It was an invasion, pretty much.”

The migrants came from “all over the world,” Wall said. He could not understand their languages, so he would ask where they were from. The answers ranged from “the Congo of Africa” to Russia, China and Somalia.

Discarded panties, “little bras” and thousands of empty Plan B boxes littered Wall’s property, he said. He added that young women would come to his home after being raped by groups of men on the way north.

“My daughter, since she was 14, she’s had to carry a gun on her hip,” Wall said. “She couldn’t ride her bike anymore.”

His family purchased guard dogs after some illegal migrants broke into their home.

The Arizona ranchers described the same invasion. Ladd, whose family ranches 16,000 acres in Cochise County, estimated that about 50 illegal migrants a day crossed his property.

“The four years of Biden was the worst that the border had ever been,” Ladd said.

Ted Noon, a fourth-generation rancher about eight miles from the border, agreed. “It was the absolute worst I have ever seen it,” he said.

Chilton said his five hidden, motion-activated cameras picked up about 1,000 people a year during the Biden administration. He said a Border Patrol intelligence officer told him that 20% of those crossing his land were carrying hard drugs, including meth, cocaine and fentanyl.

“We’ve had actual gunfights on our ranch,” Chilton said. He added that he has evidence that more than 35 people have died on his land over the years.

Peggy Rowley, who ranches near Amado, Arizona, stopped biking on her ranch trails after repeatedly rounding a corner to see four or five strange men while she was miles from home. She no longer drives out alone to drop salt for her cattle.

“It changes your life,” Rowley said. “You never know who’s out there.”

Wall’s son once persuaded him to give water to a migrant who approached them while they were irrigating. The man told Wall to “take care of your boy.” Wall said he took it as a threat before the man explained that he had come from a penitentiary in his home country that had been emptied. “The people over here are not good people,” Wall recalled him saying.

“I think the average American has no clue what was happening in those days,” Noon said. He added that agents were so overwhelmed with processing migrants who surrendered during the Biden years that none were available for enforcement. “We didn’t need any new laws, we just needed to enforce the ones we had. … And Biden’s people were not doing that.”

“It ought to be criminal, the s*** that they pulled … Mayorkas, and all of them,” Wall said, lambasting former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

The Department of Homeland Security released more than 1 million migrants into the U.S. from March 2021 through August 2022, according to a September 2023 agency watchdog report. DHS did not have assurance that it could find illegal migrants in the U.S. after catching and releasing them, and the agency rejected recommendations to address the issue, the report states.

‘A light switch went off’

“Trump, when he went in, it’s like a light switch went off, and it was over,” Wall said, noting that he now sees one or two migrants a month – “lower now than it ever has been my whole life.”

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson told Heartlander News that CBP, DHS and Border Patrol remain committed to halting illegal migration and that the border is “historically secure” under Trump.

During the 2025 fiscal year, apprehensions at the southern border reached their lowest level since 1970, according to preliminary CBP data. For 16 consecutive months, officials have released zero migrants at the border, CBP data states.

Still reeling at the border

But the damage has outlasted the invasion.

“I haven’t been able to have cattle on this place since I bought it,” Wall said, noting that migrants would cut his fences to cross his land, leaving gaps for livestock to escape.

“We would wake up in the morning about 8 o’clock and we would fix fence till about two. We would have to go back and start again, because they would be right behind us, cutting it again,” Wall said. “You can only splice a piece of wire so many times before it won’t stay tight.”

Wall has kept his cattle on leased land miles away, absorbing the extra cost. He said he has suffered about half a million dollars in damage alone, not counting lost income.

Ladd also gave up maintaining some fencing, merging nine pastures into one. “It probably costs $10 to fix the cut fence, but it takes you all day to find where it’s cut,” he explained. “And then you fix it, and two days later it’s cut again.” Ladd said he is waiting to see what happens after Trump’s term to decide whether he will fix the fences.

Rowley said fence cutting continues on her ranch. The problem has led to her cattle mixing with a neighbor’s herd infected with trichomoniasis, a venereal disease in cattle that forces ranchers to send infected bulls to slaughter. She now tests all her bulls once or twice a year. “It’s just an added burden,” she said.

‘Difficult to get any help’

A White House spokeswoman, Lauren Bis, said Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” funded a program to reimburse states that fought the Biden-era crisis.

But the government has made it “difficult to get any help,” Wall said. “I reached out numerous times, and every program is set up for you not to use it.” He described a program that offered financial assistance for repairing his fences but said its eligibility requirements and wait time only added to his expenses.

“You lose all hope of them helping you, because waiting around. … The government’s crazy. I’m still waiting,” Wall said.

When asked whether any program compensates ranchers for fences cut by illegal migrants, Rowley said, “Absolutely not. We’ve even had Border Patrol run through the fences and say, ‘Well, it’s not our fault, we were chasing somebody.’”

Ladd said he had never heard of a program that could compensate him for the damage.

A spokesperson for the Agriculture Department confirmed to Heartlander News that financial assistance is not currently available for repairing property damaged because of the “Biden Border Invasion.”

“Too often, discussions about the disastrous Biden border crisis overlook the Americans who have lived with the consequences every day,” said Nicole Kiprilov, executive director of The American Border Story, which connected Heartlander News with Wall and has documented his family’s struggles. “Ranchers and farming families have endured damaged fences, trespassing, property destruction, security concerns and enormous financial strain as illegal crossings surged. … The people who feed this country should not have to absorb the costs of securing it.”

Texas offers some relief. The state’s Landowner Compensation Program, created under Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, may reimburse agricultural landowners up to $75,000 per incident for property damage from trespassing tied to border crime.

Wall and Ladd said there is little point in suing the government over the damage. Wall said “you won’t win so why waste your time,” and Ladd has already tried. Ladd took part in a lawsuit against DHS over illegal migrants damaging ranchers’ natural resources. “It never got anywhere,” he said.

“We shouldn’t have to live this way,” Ladd said. “Why do we have to get used to living like this?”

Wall’s state representative, Rep. Eddie Morales, and Ladd’s congresswoman, Rep. Adelita Grijalva of Arizona, both Democrats, did not respond to requests for comment.

Offices for Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, both Texas Republicans, responded to questions about aid for ranchers affected by Biden’s border policies with statements on a separate border issue.

(Images: Martin Wall’s Texas ranch, courtesy The American Border Story)