WESLACO – In CHANNEL 5 NEWS Special Report: “Paying the Price,” we reported how a Honduran woman went missing on private ranch land in Brooks County.

Human rights activist Eddie Canales said the woman is one of hundreds who die in the brush. He said the biggest obstacle to finding remains of missing people is getting access to do searches on private property.

Landowners are speaking out about being associated with the number of people dying. The count of bodies found this year in Brooks County so far is 41.

“We just think the landowner shouldn’t take the blame on this,” Susan Kibbe said. She represents most of the landowners in Brooks County. She’s the director of the South Texas Property Rights Association.

Kibbe said the deaths that happen on the vast ranches are tragic, but property owners don’t deserve any blame.

“Somehow the U.S. is blamed for their deaths, or ranchers are blamed for their deaths, or others are blamed for their deaths,” Kibbe said. “When they know when they come into the country illegally, they’re taking this chance.”

A Honduran woman went missing on one of the largest ranches in south Texas. We tried to contact the landowners to get permission to be on the property. No one called back.

Kibbe said the owners called her after our report aired. She said Border Patrol and the local sheriff’s office have access to the property. No one else has the right to be there.

“So we really feel like the landowner is doing all they can that’s reasonable, that they know it’s law enforcement doing on their property,” she said.

Kibbe said people dying on ranches are not the biggest problem. “This is after the fact. This is a symptom of the overall issue,” she said.

The main issue Kibbe said is people in the country illegally are fleeing from their homelands. She said human rights activists should change their focus from the ranches to Central America.

“I think if they want to help these people, they need to go down and help them in their countries,” Kibbe said.

The South Texas Property Rights Association is calling on congress to secure the border, enforce current laws, reform immigration laws and create a guest worker program. Kibbe said those things will keep people from dying. Congress has that power, not landowners.

Here is the context to understand why so many risk the trip to the North:

Mexico and Central America are a demographic disaster, producing persons needing employment as economic decline and automation, worldwide, destroy jobs by the millions. Conservatively there are populations south of the Rio Grande that equal half in number of the United States, about half children and all lacking education and skills for the job markets of today and much less for the jobs of the future.