No Longer the Promised Land

Mennonites lose Texas ranch on which they had staked all

David Klassen pumps $2 worth of gas into a farmer's battered pickup, takes the money and eases back onto the hood of his car. He wipes his greasy hands on his blue jeans and squints into the bright west Texas sun. "Maybe I'll go back to Mexico," he says. "I don't know. I've talked to the lawyers and the immigration people, and I just don't know who to believe any more."

Klassen, 35, a mechanic and part owner of a gas station in Seminole, Texas (pop. 7,000), is an illegal alien from Mexico. But he is different from the hundreds of thousands of Mexicans who annually sneak across the border. Klassen is a Mennonite, one of 650 members of the reclusive religious sect who settled in the dusty plains country in the spring of 1977. Through a combination of bad advice and their own gullibility, the law-abiding Mennonites have since found themselves stranded on the wrong side of the law.

It all began at a Mennonite caucus in Canada where the church members decided that they would look for a new promised land, a remote country in which to found a farming colony. Such migrations are nothing new to the Mennonites, who number about 600,000 worldwide. Founded in 1525 in Zurich, Switzerland, and named for Menno Simons, a Roman Catholic priest who became their most famous leader, the group insisted on voluntary adult baptism, which earned it the hostility of both Catholics and established Protestant churches. Devout and pacifist, the Mennonites repeatedly had to flee persecution; some groups from Germany and The Netherlands ultimately migrated to Russia and then to the New World. This time, however, the reasons for moving were more secular. The Canadian Mennonites were tired of the long, cold winters, while members of an offshoot colony in Chihuahua complained of being harassed by their Mexican neighbors.

Bishop Henry Reimer, the Mennonites' spiritual leader, visited farm land in Missouri and Oklahoma before deciding on west Texas--in part because someone in Texas apparently assured him that his people would automatically receive U.S. citizenship if they bought land there. Settlers from both Canada and Mexico then sold their homes, pooled their savings and paid $455,000 down ($264 an acre, about $70 more per acre than the going price) on the $1.7 million, 6,400-acre Seven-O Ranch outside of Seminole, a town that calls itself "the city with a future." They drew lots for the land, planted a crop of cotton and converted art old ranch building into a school. Says Frank Wiebe: "All my life I have thought about the time when I would have my own land. It was like a dream come true."

Then the troubles started. First came the letters from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. They informed the unsuspecting Mennonites that contrary to what they had been led to believe, they had entered the country on 60-day tourist visas and would have to leave. Although their first crop had already been planted, they were forbidden to work, even for themselves. The Mennonites won a temporary reprieve when the INS extended their departure deadline in order to let them harvest their crops. A second reprieve came when Senator Lloyd Bentsen, at the urging of the Seminole community, introduced a special bill into Congress on their behalf. It stated that although the Mennonites did not meet existing INS conditions for immigration (such as relatives already in the country or job skills that Americans do not have), they should be allowed to stay.

The Mennonites got their first crop in, but it was not much of a crop. For one, oil companies owned the water rights to the greater part of their land, and that limited their ability to irrigate. They could not meet a $225,000 mortgage payment. This month the ranch was put up at public auction, and former Owner Dennis Nix and his bank bought it back for $1,151,000. After losing most of their life savings, the Mennonites still face deportation, since it is considered doubtful that Bentsen's bill will pass.

Who is responsible for the debacle? "It just doesn't make sense to me that a group of law-abiding people like the Mennonites would come in here on tourist visas and settle down and start farming," says Seminole Mayor Bob Clark. "They were just getting some bad advice--or someone was deceiving them." Says Reimer: "Rumors, rumors, all is rumors. But I cannot explain to them myself how it happened." Says Seth Woltz, a real estate appraiser who helped sell the Mennonites the land: "They had very few questions about the deal when we closed it. As far as their immigrant rights--what do I know about immigration?"

Lawyers have advised the Mennonites that no laws were broken and that they must live with their mistake. But the group has deposed Reimer, a drastic step for their communal church. Many Mennonites, disillusioned with their church hierarchy, have also stopped attending Sunday services. "I'll tell you the truth," says Klassen. "Us Mennonites are not true Christians any more because of all this trouble. There's no love between us."

Despite the deportation sentence hanging over them, the Mennonites have moved off the Seven-O Ranch and settled in or near Seminole. They live in small frame houses or trailers scattered about town. Mennonite schools have sprung up. While the women in their traditional loose-fitting dresses do the baking and sewing chores, most of the men, who have taken to cowboy boots and hats, labor as welders, mechanics and carpenters. "They are the hardest working people I've ever seen," says one Seminole resident. "I thought those kind of people had disappeared."

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