Howard Buffett's Border War: A Billionaire's Son Is Arming Individuals Along the Mexican Border

Howard Buffett, center

By Beau Hodai

On February 6, 2016, around 8:30 p.m., someone standing in the blackness of the Arizona desert night took several pictures. The images depict a group of three friends standing proudly, armed to the teeth, striking their best badass poses.

According to metadata generated by the iPhone that took the pictures, the trio stood atop a hill situated approximately 4,000 feet from the rust-brown steel wall cutting off the hillsides of Cochise County, to the north, from those of Sonora, Mexico, to the south.

In the first available photo, Howard Graham Buffett appears with two men, likely Macon County (Illinois) Sheriff’s Office Deputy and K-9 handler T.W. Houk and Decatur (Illinois) Police Department Detective and K-9 handler Chad Larner.

Buffett is the eldest son, and heir apparent, of Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and Chief Executive Warren Buffett, the third wealthiest man in the world, with an estimated fortune of $84 billion.

Over the past several years, 64-year-old Howard Buffett — using wealth supplied by his father ­— has been waging his own border war in Cochise County. This has included the arming of a private volunteer group, importing privately employed enforcement personnel, and funding the chemical defoliation of a substantial portion of the county’s border with Mexico...

Howard Buffett’s primary charitable organization, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation is based in Decatur, Illinois. The foundation is purportedly interested in matters of “food security” and “conflict mitigation,” and has exhibited a growing preoccupation with “public safety” in recent years. Decatur is the seat of Macon County. Buffett, who has a deep interest in agriculture, owns several farms spread through Macon County and central Illinois.


The sole financial underwriter of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation is Warren Buffett, who donates roughly $150 million to $180 million to his son’s charity annually, according to tax records.

 Read the rest here.

RW note: IF Buffett is doing this on his property, that of friends or others that want to protect their own property, I have no problem with this. If he is doing it as some kind of private attempt at "national policy" or even "county policy" I have a big problem.

Buffett does own the Christiansen Ranch in the area but it is unclear as to the extent his private anti-immigration effort goes beyond the protection of those with private property in the area that want such protection.

It should be noted that this does strike me as the effort of a bored billionaire's kid, given that if it was simply about protecting his ranch, he could hire security to do this for him and he wouldn't need to be out himself wandering the Mexcian border armed to the gills.