"I think in my head I'm going to feel trapped," said Pons, who lives on the 1,000-acre property of sabal palms, oxbow lakes, and citrus groves he manages for the Nature Conservancy's Southmost Preserve. "I need to have something that is much easier for me to have to ram to get through" if necessary.
Pons' concerns illustrate one of the complications in the government's five-year-old effort to build a secure barrier along the border that would keep out illegal activity from Mexico without causing worse problems for the people living in the region.
In this lush area, the Rio Grande's wide flood plain precluded building the fence right on the border, so it was set back more than a mile in places, running behind the levees. The result is a no-man's-land of hundreds of properties, and the people who work on them, on the wrong side of the divide.
The arrival of the gates will reveal whether the government's solution for this border fence problem will work. Can sliding panels in the fence controlled by passcodes allow isolated workers to cross when they need to while keeping intruders out?
Pons hopes the gates will open fast. "Because when is reinforcement going to show up?"
Some landowners also worry they'll become kidnapping targets for smugglers seeking passage through the 18-foot-high metal fence.
Violence has surged in Tamaulipas, the Mexican state bordering this part of Texas, in the last two years. Last week, the State Department issued a new travel warning urging U.S. citizens again to avoid traveling there.
Residents in this rural area often see groups of illegal immigrants passing through or smugglers toting bundles. In October, the border patrol caught a high-ranking member of the Gulf cartel's Matamoros operations who had crossed upriver.
