"If you lived here, you wouldn't feel sorry for them," said Kyle Best, manager for the Marley Cattle Co., a ranch outside of Arivaca, Ariz., just 11 miles north of the United States-Mexico border.

Covering over 128,000 acres of land, one can not go more than a few hundred yards without encountering trash left by immigrants crossing illegally into the U.S.

Water bottles predominate, but one will also find empty food cans, pieces of clothing, backpacks, shoes, medicine and large sheets of black plastic.

The sheets of plastic pose the greatest threat to the animals that live on the ranch, particularly cattle. Left in the sun for an extended period of time, the plastic will break down and disintegrate into smaller pieces. These may then be accidentally ingested, causing severe complications and even death.

Best said that several cows die each year from eating plastic. Just last week they found one of the ranch's Brangus bulls dead in a shallow watering hole, presumably from a piece of plastic lodged in his stomach.

"It kills them," he said. "They just can't digest it."

The Marley Ranch also boasts some strange items. Every year, several vehicles are abandoned there, left by smugglers. Almost a landmark now, an upside-down van sits rusting in the sun, having flipped over several years ago while transporting a full load of immigrants at high speed down the bumpy dirt road.

Marley cowboy Brandon Price, 30, said he has also found baby strollers out in the desert. This is testament to the increase in the number of women and children crossing the border each year.

"On any given night I can step out my front door and hear babies crying," he said. "Those are the ones we feel sorry for."

Since 2002, a group called "Hunters Who Care" has come out twice a year to clean up some of the worst areas, according to Gabriel Paz, a wildlife manager for Arizona Game and Fish and one of the coordinators for the group's clean up crews. With neon green bags provided by the Bureau of Land Management, volunteers-mostly hunting enthusiasts-clean out several tons of trash each trip.

"It's kind of a good will gesture for the ranch," said Paz. "A lot of ranches allow access to hunters and we just want to help them out."

Although grateful for their efforts, Best said "they don't even make a dent in it."

In addition to littering the ranch, the immigrants also cause other problems.

According to Price, several of the ranch workers do nothing but check stock tanks to see if immigrants have cut the water lines. On a hot summer day, it would only take five or six cows 15 minutes to drink a tank dry. The Marley Ranch runs 13,000 cows.

Immigrants also cut the wire fences that keep the cattle on the ranch. In addition to the cost of fence repairs, it is not uncommon for the ranch to get fined for cattle trespassing onto the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge.


Watch the slideshow below for a tour of the Marley Ranch trash areas: