Douglas, Ariz. – Spent shells litter the ground at what is left of the firing range, and camouflage outfits still hang in a storeroom. Just a few months ago, this ranch was known as Camp Thunderbird, the headquarters of a paramilitary group that vowed to use force to keep illegal immigrants from sneaking across the border from Mexico.
Now, in a turnabout, the 70-acre property about 2 miles from the border is being given to two Salvadoran immigrants who two years ago were caught by the group trying to enter the United States illegally.
The land transfer is being made to satisfy judgments in a lawsuit in which the immigrants claimed that Casey Nethercott, the owner of the ranch and a former leader of the vigilante group Ranch Rescue, had harmed them.
“Certainly it’s poetic justice that these undocumented workers own this land,” said Morris Dees Jr., co-founder and chief trial counsel of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., which represented the immigrants in their lawsuit.
Kelley Bruner, a lawyer at the law center, said the immigrants getting the ranch, Edwin Alfredo Mancia Gonzales and Fatima Del Socorro Leiva Medina, would not live there and would probably sell it.
Mancia, who lives in Los Angeles, and Leiva, who lives in the Dallas area, have applied for visas that are available to immigrants who are the victims of certain crimes and who cooperate with the authorities.
Mancia and Leiva were caught on a ranch in Hebbronville, Texas, in March 2003 by Nethercott and other members of Ranch Rescue. The two immigrants later accused Nethercott of threatening them and of hitting Mancia with a pistol, charges that Nethercott denied. The immigrants also said that the group gave them cookies, water and a blanket and let them go after an hour or so.
The Salvadorans testified against Nethercott when he was tried by Texas prosecutors. The jury deadlocked on a pistol- whipping charge but convicted him of gun possession, which is illegal for a felon. He is serving a five-year sentence.