David Maung/CNS

Sue Krentz weeps after seeing a rainbow near her cattle ranch outside Douglas, Ariz., July 26. Her husband, Rob, was shot to death in March while working on the ranch 30 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.

Widow of slain rancher struggles in the heart of immigration debate

DOUGLAS, Ariz. — Sue Krentz is a conflicted woman, coping with many strands of the complicated, apparently unsolvable quagmire of what has become normal life near the Mexican border.

She grapples, for instance, with the calls for a humanitarian approach to immigrants that she hears at St. Luke’s Catholic Church.

Related: Nearly five months later, investigation
into Krentz murder continues

For decades, her family has shown compassion to those who cross the Krentz ranch on their way to find jobs to support their families, she explained, providing water and other aid before calling the Border Patrol. But it pains her deeply that there was no similar compassion from whomever Rob Krentz, 58, encountered while out on his ATV March 27.

That day her husband of 33 years, who had “a big, big heart,” was shot to death on their ranch northeast of Douglas, as he made his rounds of the property accompanied by his beloved dog, Blue, who also was shot and had to be euthanized.

Cochise County Sheriff’s Department investigators continue to work the case, a spokeswoman for the department said in early August, but no developments are expected to be announced any time soon.

For Sue Krentz, there’s much to deal with while grieving, adjusting to losing her husband suddenly and coping with routine tasks such as filing insurance claims and remembering to pay the payroll taxes.

When he died, the Krentz family’s everyday struggles became fuel for an already volatile debate about illegal immigration. With Rob Krentz as its supporters’ icon, the Arizona Legislature quickly passed a controversial bill to mandate local enforcement of immigration law, making “illegal presence” a state crime, though under federal law it’s a civil violation.

The murder drew attention to the battle against what Sue Krentz calls an invasion of trespassers who cross their property on their way inland from the border, leaving trash, sometimes stealing property and injuring or killing cattle. The Krentzes and other ranchers had tried for years to interest the government and anyone else who would listen to their stories of cattle killed and other property damaged, and of being accosted on their land by gun-wielding smugglers.

Now, the attention was too much, too late.

“It got so I couldn’t even turn on the TV without seeing my family in the news,” she told Catholic News Service in a lengthy interview in and around her ranch and the nearest city, Douglas.

Controversial bill

Krentz supports SB 1070 and had long backed such legislation, she said. However, she believes the main responsibility for fixing border problems lies with the U.S. and Mexican governments, the latter by doing more to help its own people support themselves in their own country.

“Not only are they pushing out their workforce, but they’re pushing their history and their culture and their values out of their own country,” hurting their own homeland, Krentz said.

But by the time SB 1070 was enacted July 29 (in an abridged form, after a judge blocked its most controversial sections), there was a constant drumbeat of news reports, talk radio and political posturing in Arizona, much of it referencing Rob Krentz’s death.

When she considers the situation objectively, Krentz recognizes that “there could’ve been any incident that could’ve caused this issue to escalate,” and her husband’s murder just happened at the right time. But every mention of the bill now stabs at her heart. “They couldn’t just let Rob pass in peace.”

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. “I was just worried about getting his hip replaced. Our goal was to get him back on his feet so that he could ride,” she said, explaining that Rob drove an ATV around the property after horseback riding became too difficult.

“I was hopeful that by August or September, he’d be riding again.”

There would be time to visit the grandchildren in Wyoming over the summer.

Just a few days before he was killed, Krentz said, Rob laid out a plan. “He said, ‘I’ll tell you what, on Mother’s Day we’ll go up (to Phoenix) on Saturday and we’ll see your mom and we’ll stay overnight, then we’ll come back to Tucson on Sunday, and you put me in the hospital (for hip surgery) on Monday morning. That’s what we’ll do,’” she said. “That’s the kind of guy he was. He wanted to see my folks. He wanted me to see my folks.”

Instead, the spring became a bad dream.

“It’s like ‘Groundhog Day’ every morning,” she said.

Krentz is angry at the governments of the United States and Mexico for not addressing the flow of “illegals,” as she calls the people who come to the United States without documents. The violent way Rob was killed baffles and pains her — “I’m not used to that kind of violence’’ — though she’s not particularly fearful for herself.

“If they’re going to kill you, they’re going to kill you, so there’s no use being afraid,” she said. “What are you going to do? Shoot everybody that comes by? You can’t live in total paralysis.”

Clinging to faith

A lifelong Catholic, Krentz has turned to Mary “to get me through this.” Especially in the last months of sleepless nights, she rises at 4 a.m. to catch a recitation of the rosary, followed by Mass on the Eternal Word Television Network. Through the day, she fingers three items on a chain around her neck — Rob’s wedding ring, a small Holy Spirit dove and a Miraculous Medal medallion.

But she chafes when Fr. Gilbert Malu, pastor of St. Luke’s, preaches about the Christian responsibility to honor the human dignity of every person, no matter their legal status. “Where’s my human dignity. Where was Rob’s?” she asks, her voice rising.

It irks her when anyone — particularly in the church — suggests that human rights might trump some laws, such as one that’s existed since 1983 making it a federal crime to knowingly transport someone who’s in the country illegally. “That’s the law!” she said. “Get a grip, 1070 has nothing to do with it.”

She listens to Glenn Beck on the satellite radio in her car, hearing his discourses about the threats of illegal immigration and his attacks on those within the church who are leading the campaign for comprehensive immigration reform. Beck has said “social justice is a perversion of the Gospel” and is “code” for Marxism, communism, and Nazism.

Whether she agrees with him or not on some issues, Krentz sympathizes with those who feel they must come to the United States and worries for them.

“I understand that people are desperate,” Krentz said. “I understand that people are terrified. I understand that people have nothing; that they’re looking for a better life. But I also understand that there’s a criminal element that’s testing us.”

Though some say it encourages people to cross the border illegally, it doesn’t bother Krentz that groups such as the Tucson-based No More Deaths and various church organizations place water in the desert along trails known to be used by migrants.

“Sometimes I wonder if they’re putting out enough,” she mused.

“Just because I’m white and conservative does not mean I’m a Ku Klux Klanner,” she said. “It does not mean I’m not compassionate with people in need. It does mean that they cannot run over me.”

For the mid-July interview, Krentz graciously gave a tour of her family’s stomping grounds. After meeting at St. Luke’s, she showed off where she and Rob lived as children during the school year, in homes that backed up to each other on 11th and 12th streets. During the summers, the Krentzes and her family, the Kimbles, spent their time on ranches 30 miles outside of town, which also back up to each other.

She drove past Douglas High School, where Rob was on the Bulldogs’ state championship football team in 1968, pointed out the storefront that once housed his German immigrant great-grandparents’ butcher shop and paid a visit to Mayor Michael Gomez.

Gomez and Krentz are allies in his unsuccessful efforts to pass a resolution through the city council calling for Congress to “secure the border,” a phrase both use frequently. When pressed to define what that means, neither is able to explain what will constitute “secure” in their minds.

Her tour continued east of town toward New Mexico on the Geronimo Trail, a washboard dirt track through miles of open desert. She pointed out where the two-layer border fence in the city petered out and segued into a stretch of X-shaped vehicle barrier that wouldn’t be much of an obstacle for someone on foot. Border Patrol SUVs dotted the graded dirt road every few miles, some located near dry washes where thicker brush and culverts provide hiding places for people crossing the desert.

Long before her husband died, the peace and sense of security that had been a part of Cochise County ranch life for generations of the Krentz and Kimble families had been gradually eroding.

Beginning in 1996 when the Border Patrol began cutting off the most heavily traveled areas for illegal crossings near San Diego and near El Paso, Texas, undocumented migrants began crossing the border farther out in the desert. Cochise County quickly became a favored route. There, even a beefed-up staff of Border Patrol agents that began arriving a few years later can’t possibly keep eyes on the county’s 80-plus miles of rough, hilly desert.

At one edge of the Krentz Ranch along Highway 80, Krentz pulled over to investigate why there were a dozen or so Border Patrol vehicles clustered inside her cattle fence. Agents explained that they had just picked up 10 people walking across the ranch, in 100-degree heat at mid-day.

“People have to be awfully desperate to even attempt this. I’ve seen women here with their babies, and their babies are thirsty,” she sighed. “I get so mad. I get mad at the (Mexican) government for not taking care of their own people.”