As President Joe Biden’s open border crisis continues, South Texas Rancher Cole Hill testified before the Texas Senate on border security earlier this month, requesting Texas expand Operation Lone Star—Texas’ border security effort—and halt the ongoing invasion.
Hill told Texas Scorecard earlier this year that the destruction of property and immense safety concerns turned his family’s life upside down.
Indeed, as the number of U.S. Customs and Border Protection encounters with illegal aliens rapidly climbs toward 2 million this federal fiscal year, Texans are sounding the alarm regarding the devastation to property, livelihoods, and human life.
“I live down four miles of gravel road and two locked gates, and it’s not because I want company,” said Hill, highlighting how on Biden’s inauguration day. “I started getting hordes of illegal aliens coming into my house.”
The only reason that we’re here is because this administration has clearly, obviously, intentionally, abandoned us. … They’re destroying the border, border security, all of it.
Hill and his wife are raising three children with 8,000 acres of backyard, but the kids can’t even play outside.
“My wife and children cannot—do not—go outside anymore if I’m not with them. My three little kids used to ride around the ranch on the mule, on our side by side, they bring me lunch or whatever. They can’t do that anymore,” said Hill. “They can’t go anywhere without any kind of supervision.”
He explained they aren’t even safe at home, because when he’s out on the property working, illegals have attempted to enter the house with his wife and children.
Additionally, a few other houses on the property for hunters and guests have been broken into by illegals “well over a dozen times by now.”
After chasing illegals out of one house, Hill went over to the hunting lodge, where he found “the backdoor kicked in. Whenever I went in the front door, all the illegals went running out the back door.”
They had gotten into the gun safe, pulled out two shotguns and a rifle, and were in the process of loading it whenever I walked in the front door.
“Thank God I got there exactly when I did,” said Hill. “Because if I’d have been 30 seconds later, they could have blown my head off whenever I walked in the door. And that’s very obviously what their intentions were or else they wouldn’t have been loading the damn guns.”
Although Hill said Operation Lone Star has helped “somewhat,” he needs more support because the ranch is on the eastern edge of OLS operational boundaries.
“So brush crews, whatever we need to do to expand Operation Lone Star, let’s get it done. It’s out of control, and it has been for well over a year.”
