Jack T. Jeffreys, a Border Patrol supervisor, by a marker on the border west of Columbus, N.M.

COLUMBUS, N.M., Aug. 17 - If James Johnson were any closer to Mexico, he would be in it.

And if there is a front line in the border crisis stretching from California to Texas, it may be the 14 miles of wide open boundary that the Johnson clan shares with their Mexican counterparts to the south.

As many as 500 immigrants a day use their ranch and farmland as a welcome mat, they say, with bandits and smuggling guides making some areas too dangerous to visit. Fences have been torn down, they say, crops pilfered and cattle watering tanks fouled with human waste.

Every day, just feet from their property, old school buses and vans with windows blacked out disgorge luggageless passengers who disappear into the derelict Mexican village of Las Chepas and re-emerge on distant hills sloping back down on the American side.

"There goes another busload," Mr. Johnson, 30, said as an approaching gray van boiled a cloud of dust on a Mexican gravel road almost within touching distance, then rolled out of sight. "They'll be passing my place tonight."

Often thought of as a federal or international concern, illegal immigration has reached such a pace along parts of the border that officials are now expressing fear for the people who live and work there. On Aug. 12, Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, citing the kidnapping of three immigrants by bandits on the Johnsons' land, declared a disaster in four counties he described as "devastated by the ravages and terror of human smuggling, drug smuggling, kidnapping, murder, destruction of property and death of livestock." Several days later, Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona followed suit.

The concerns come as the volume of illegal immigration has increased dramatically in both states, funneled there by stepped-up enforcement in California and Texas. Border Patrol figures for the 53-mile-long Deming Station area that includes the Johnsons' land show that 31,134 people were apprehended through July of this year, compared with 29,168 for all of last year. The patrol says there have also been more than 16,580 times this year when people turned back under the gaze of border agents.

In 2002, the patrol noted 13 cases of people driving through, over or past vehicle barriers. This year, there have been 330. Robert Velez, a Border Patrol agent, said the bodies of 11 illegal immigrants, apparently dead from exposure, have been found in the brush so far this year, compared with five in the Deming Station area in all of 2004.

In Columbus, a fast-growing town of 2,000 at an official Port of Entry with Mexico, Police Chief Clare A. May said two shots were fired at him Aug. 9 while he examined a suspected smuggler's car at the Family Dollar store, a popular immigrants' rendezvous point.

Chief May said he hoped some of the $1.7 million in emergency money made available by the governor's declaration could go for a fourth patrol officer and some investigators, or at least for vehicle maintenance and gas.

In Animas, 60 miles from the border, Sheila Massey said she and her husband had recently been roused at 2 a.m. by illegal migrants breaking into their farmhouse. "One said he was looking for work," she recounted. "I said you don't look for work at 2 in the morning. What we've lost is our sense of security."

Luis Barker, deputy chief of the Border Patrol in Washington, said that "we're not where we want to be" but that "when we apply pressure in one sector, we see a shift elsewhere."

Mr. Barker said New Mexico was "a priority corridor - we're putting our resources in that location." Seven poles towering over the desert have daylight and infrared cameras - 10 more are coming - and the sandy trails are seeded with buried sensors.

Mr. Barker said the Department of Homeland Security, the Border Patrol's parent agency, was not embarrassed by the emergency declarations made by the two governors and welcomed the chance to cooperate with state authorities.

But that is of little comfort to the Johnsons, particularly James's uncle and aunt, Joe and Teresa Johnson, ranchers who say they have had brushes with smugglers. Particularly scary, they say, are the forbidden zones on their own land, first settled by the family in 1918 in the marauding days of the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, who plundered Columbus.