Cowboys Call for Immigration Compromise

Joaquin Morales, 12, plants a Mexican flag in the ground before a Cinco de Mayo immigrants' rights rally at Chicano Park in San Diego on Friday, May 5, 2006. (AP Photo/Denis Poroy) (Denis Poroy - AP)

"Illegals cut my fence,

"and it makes no sense,

"'cause there's gates they could go through.

"'Course my cows are hopin'

"that they find 'em open

"to parade Route 92."

Strom's ranch, the Single Star, is sandwiched between Mexico and state Route 92, a good two-hour drive southeast of Tucson. He figures hundreds of immigrants a week make the three-mile trek from the border to the highway, through his straw-tinted grasses, past the Simmentals nursing their calves, under the tower that operates four Border Patrol cameras.

At 74, Strom still struts with the commanding presence of a career Army man. (The ranch name alludes to his rank of brigadier general, retired.) He calls himself a moderate conservative _ "I can't stand (Sen. Ted) Kennedy, and some of the Republicans I can't stand either." A bumper sticker inside his bunkhouse reads, "To Hell With the Whales, Save the Cowboy."

Strom takes a gulp of tea, then enumerates his inventory of immigration horror stories.

"I've run across 15 milk bottles ... half full of milk."

He stops, rises and disappears for a moment, returning with a tiny sandal, perhaps big enough for a 3-year-old. Its flowered embroidery is smudged with dirt. "I have this," he says, setting the lonely shoe down. "And then wedding pictures. Birth certificates."

His fences have been cut but also run over, usually by drug couriers fleeing U.S. authorities by heading back into Mexico.