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- As a fourth-generation rancher on the border with Mexico, John Ladd has spent decades on the front lines of the immigration debate.
- He credits Trump with drastically reducing the flow of migrants crossing his property, which once numbered in the hundreds a day.
NACO, Ariz. — John Ladd sleeps better knowing Donald Trump is in the White House.
Not just in some figurative sense. When Ladd lays his head down at his ranch house a mile and a quarter from the U.S.-Mexico border, he no longer worries about hundreds of trespassers a day trampling his pastures, tearing up fencing or setting his cattle loose.
He doesn’t fret as much as he once did about stumbling across a dead body — 18 have turned up over the years — or finding a migrant sitting in his living room, which happened once back in 2002.
“The amazing thing is as soon as Donald Trump got elected, the border issue of illegal entries coming into the U.S. has dramatically stopped,” the 69-year-old Ladd said, overstating things somewhat. “And we’re delighted with that.”
Back in the White House for just over a month, Trump has rapidly and ruthlessly delivered on his promise to turn America upside down, firing government workers en masse, eliminating whole agencies and slashing certain programs to the marrow.
The promised benefit — a leaner, less costly and more efficient federal government — is purely theoretical at this stage.
But one place where Trump’s return to power has been tangibly felt, and greatly welcomed, is here in the far southeastern corner of Arizona, where the U.S. and Mexico sit uneasily side-by-side. After growing to record levels under President Biden, illegal border crossings began falling during the final months of his term, a trend that has accelerated since Trump moved back into the Oval Office.
Ladd’s 16,400-acre ranch, which has been in the family since the 1890s, stretches for 10½ miles along the border. It’s three miles from there to State Route 92, a trek through mesquite and grassland, floodplains and furrows that serve as a rough-hewn pathway to the two-lane blacktop and the interior that lies beyond.
At its peak, Ladd said, as many as 700 migrants a day passed through his property. That number fell drastically during Trump’s first term, then shot way back up during the Biden administration, despite hidden cameras, motion-detecting sensors and the installation of soaring steel fence posts — the border wall, as it’s known — across the southern length of his ranch. Today, under Trump, daily crossings have fallen to around 10 or so, Ladd said, and Border Patrol agents tell him they’ve grown bored.
He paused alongside the wall, the rust-colored soil at his feet spreading for miles around, his view bracketed by the San Jose Mountains to the south and a majestic limestone bluff to the north. The stillness was so profound it was almost a physical presence.
“If we didn’t have to deal with the border,” Ladd said, “there’s no finer life.”
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In a large corral carpeted with hay and cow patties, Ladd pulled up two metal chairs, taking care to brush one off for his guest. He then talked about the last several decades watching from the front line as the nation’s contradictory, cross-purposes approach to immigration haphazardly played out.
For a long time, Ladd said, he started each day with an inventory to see if anything — a vehicle, farm equipment — was stolen. He checked to see if anyone was hiding under a car, in a truck bed, in one of several outbuildings — “always looking over your shoulder” — before helping wrangle any cows wandering where they shouldn’t.
His beef-raising operation involves rotating cattle through nine enclosed pastures, from birth to market. Ladd said half of each day was spent mending barbed-wire fencing that was yanked down or cut open overnight. He sank a small fortune into repairs, Ladd said, before finally giving up. He also spent a lot of money hauling away trash; roughly 20 tons over the years.
Most people, Ladd said, have no idea what it’s like living on the border, under constant siege. It’s not just fear of the cartels engaged in human smuggling. Something as small as a gate left open could wreak havoc — and carry hefty liability — if Ladd’s cattle wandered into traffic. “As long as they don’t have illegals in their backyards,” he said, “people don’t care.”
Outside the corral, a Red Angus peered in before ambling over to use a tractor for a scratching post.
When it comes to the country’s dysfunctional immigration system, Ladd went on, there’s plenty of blame and hypocrisy to go around. (He confesses to some of the latter himself.)
Clinton, Obama, the Bushes, he said, rattling off past presidents, all promised to fix the problem. None did. Even Ronald Reagan, Ladd’s all-time favorite president, disappointed. If anything, he said, Reagan made things worse by signing a 1986 law granting amnesty to about 3 million people who came to the U.S. illegally. Then he failed to deliver the border enforcement he promised, or the crackdown on employers who hired undocumented workers.
“It’s a scam,” Ladd said, differentiating between what politicians say and what they do. “Republicans want cheap labor. Democrats want cheap votes. Americans want cheap tomatoes.”
And who can blame them, given how accustomed America has grown to the fruits of a low-cost, undocumented workforce?
Ladd said one of his sons, who grew up on the ranch and now lives in Phoenix, recently needed some palm trees cut. He went to three landscapers, Americans all, who wanted between $600 and $1,000 for the job. He hired someone, presumably in the country illegally, who agreed to do it for $100.
“He said, ‘Dad, I have to ‘fess up to you,’” Ladd recounted with a small laugh. “He said, ‘What would you have done?’ I thought, ‘Hell, I’d have probably hired the guy, too.’”
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Ladd piloted his dust-streaked pickup along the border wall, discussing each stage of fencing as though it was a tree ring marking a distinct political era.
The 13-foot-tall barrier built under Clinton, which replaced a chain-link fence that separated the U.S. and Mexico. The 18-foot-tall blockade installed under Obama. And, finally, topping them all, the 30-foot pillars put in place under Trump, which completed the wall across Ladd’s property.
He noted where smugglers had blowtorched openings big enough to crawl through and pointed out the spray-painted notation of when those gaps were closed. In some places, away from surveillance cameras, there were as many as half a dozen repairs.
The difference Trump has made fighting illegal immigration, Ladd suggested, is in tone — harsh, threatening, unwelcoming under any circumstances — and policies like “Remain in Mexico,” which forced migrants seeking asylum to stay in that country while their cases were processed. That’s proved a greater deterrent than any physical blockade.
Ladd doesn’t agree with each and every one of Trump’s words or deeds, but he does more often than not. “I admire him,” Ladd said, “because he says stuff that nobody else will say. I admire him for having the fortitude to say it.”
And when the president utters obvious falsehoods, like claiming Ukraine was responsible for Russia’s invasion? “I don’t like Russia, but I agree with Trump going to Putin to end the war,” Ladd said, adding a poke at Ukraine’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Or when Trump claimed that Mexico would pay for the border wall, which hasn’t happened and was never remotely plausible? “I don’t take him literally,” Ladd said, as he rolled past the steel stanchions reaching into a cobalt-blue sky. “Sometimes I don’t think he takes himself seriously, either.”
It remains to be seen whether the drastic drop-off in illegal border crossings will continue. It’s not unusual for traffic to fall this time of year. And some migrants may simply be waiting to see how court battles over Trump’s immigration policies play out.
But for now, Ladd is enjoying more peace of mind than he’s had in years. And he ranks Trump just behind Reagan as his all-time favorite president.
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