Texas ranchers hope ladders will save fences









FALFURRIAS, Texas If you can't beat 'em ... help them over?

That's what some South Texas ranchers are doing to keep illegal immigrants from cutting their expensive fences to avoid Border Patrol checkpoints.

They're installing ladders along the fences in the hope that migrants will take the easy route and save their fence lines.

Scott Pattinson owns one of a group of ranches just south of a Border Patrol highway checkpoint about 75 miles north of the U-S-Mexico border near Falfurrias.

He says just the wood used in the fences costs 100 dollars a foot, and the wire and other materials cost ten dollars a foot.

Texas ranches can be so large it could be days before owners notice the hole in the fence, long after the livestock possibly escapes.
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