Michael and Christy Brown resisted putting a barrier around their beloved desert home

for years.

But the knights were getting too dangerous.

It was a question of safety.

They needed offense.

My house is about 10 miles north of the border.

The Browns live at the foot of the rugged Watchuka Mountains in Cochise County, Arizona.

Like many of their neighbors, the Browns worry was Havillinas.

Tenacious, borderland omnivores often mistaken for wild pigs.

Their dogs had been attacked.

Their garden was in peril.

Havillina damage is the kind of thing that keeps the Browns up at night.

A purported wave of migrants laying siege to their community is not.

Ten years have only seen a one migrant.

But in late October, Governor Doug Ducey began unloading thousands of shipping containers

on the border in the Coronado National Forest.

The container wall was supposed to thwart an alleged invasion of immigrants on the Browns

doorsteps.

Topped with concertina wire and welded together, the nearly 9,000 pound boxes would be stacked

too high, on land where the Browns chop wood every winter, where they took their sons

hiking and camping as kids, and where they still hike and camp to this day.

This area I've cut wood there for probably 10 years.

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