Critics: Elite rangers not welcome at Texas border

McALLEN, Texas – Rancher Mike Landry recently came upon a group of unarmed men dressed in camouflage burglarizing his guest house and stealing a truck from his 11,000 acres in Terrell County, rugged country bordering the Rio Grande in West Texas.

A couple of shots over their heads from his hunting rifle kept nine of them, all Mexican citizens, in place until Border Patrol agents arrived.

"It has really gotten to be pretty spooky," said Landry, who has run cattle in the area for 29 years.

Stories like Landry's seem to bolster Gov. Rick Perry's recent decision to send elite teams from the state's top law enforcement agency, the Texas Rangers, to remote borderlands to help them with security and deter a spillover of the gruesome drug-war violence plaguing Mexico. But Landry's situation never grew violent, and many other ranchers, sheriffs and politicians along Texas' 1,200 mile border with Mexico found the governor's announcement puzzling.

"We have landowners all along the border who are finding their farms and ranches overrun by smuggling operations," Perry said in an announcing how he would spend a fraction of the $110 million the Legislature approved this year for border security.

Since security was tightened at checkpoints in cities like El Paso and Laredo, immigrants and smugglers have been squeezed into places like Terrell County. The county sits between Big Bend National Park, which is too arid for safe passage, and Del Rio, another high-security spot.

Though traffic is up, people in those areas say they fall far short of being "overrun."

Perry's critics note that border crime has been falling in recent years....