Sue Chilton was home alone last year when a group of four migrants with sinister face tattoos appeared on her doorstep.
Recognising the markings, the diminutive 83-year-old refused to let them into the house but put together a picnic for them to eat outside. “Sue hosted MS-13 for lunch,” howled Jim, her husband, referring to the brutal Salvadorian gang.
The Chiltons are fifth-generation ranchers who have farmed cattle on the Tucson sector of the Arizona border for nearly four decades. But their 50,000 acre ranch fell prey to the Mexican cartels, who exploited the undulating scrubland and a five-mile gap in the border wall that Mrs Chilton refers to as “the door”, to traffic migrants and drugs into the country.
