Posted on 03/30/2005 1:24:18 PM PST by thorshammer
March 30, 2005, 2:09PM
TOMBSTONE, Ariz. — Hundreds of volunteers, some of them armed, are expected to take up positions along the Mexican border Friday and begin patrolling for illegal immigrants — an exercise some fear could attract racist crackpots and lead to vigilante violence.
Organizers of the Minuteman Project said the civilian volunteers, many of whom were recruited over the Internet, will meet first for a rally in this one-time silver mining town, then fan out across 23 miles of the San Pedro Valley to watch the border for a month and report sightings of illegal activity to Border Patrol agents.
Minuteman field operations director Chris Simcox described the project as "the nation's largest neighborhood watch group" and said one of the goals is to make the public aware of how porous the border is.
Jim Gilchrist, a retired accountant from Aliso Viejo, Calif., who organized the project, said that some volunteers will carry handguns, which is allowed under Arizona law, but are being instructed to avoid confrontation, even if shot at.
Still, law enforcement officials and human rights advocates are worried about the potential for bloodshed.
Critics contend the project may attract anti-immigrant racists and vigilantes looking to confront illegal immigrants. At least one white supremacist group has mentioned the project on its Web site.
"They are domestic terrorists that represent a danger to the country and could promote a major border conflict that will have serious ramifications and consequences," said Armando Navarro, a University of California-Riverside political science professor and coordinator of the National Alliance for Human Rights, made up mostly of Hispanic activists.
Michael Nicley, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol's Tucson sector, said the volunteers are "not the kind of help the Border Patrol is asking for."
Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever said he fears immigrant smugglers might open fire on the volunteers.
"I wouldn't anticipate that people of that persuasion would act or react any differently to anybody, citizen or law enforcement alike, if they were confronted and felt like their cargo was in jeopardy," he said.
The project's organizers gave assurances the volunteers will be closely monitored. "If it gets to a situation where someone's life is in danger," said David Helppler, Minuteman security coordinator, "I will end the project."
Project organizers said they expect 800 to 1,000 volunteers. How many might actually show is unclear; similar efforts in the past few years flopped. One of them drew only about a half-dozen people.
The Homeland Security Department planned to announce today that is is assigning more than 500 additional patrol agents to the porous Arizona border to help keep out potential terrorists and illegal immigrants, The Associated Press learned.
About 155 agents will be immediately sent to Arizona, according to department officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The 370-mile Arizona border is considered the most vulnerable stretch of the 2,000-mile southern border. Of the 1.1 million illegal immigrants caught by the Border Patrol last year, 51 percent crossed into the country at the Arizona border.
Some people in this town nearly 30 miles north of the Mexican border, best known as the site of the 1881 shootout at the OK Corral, are eagerly awaiting the volunteers' arrival.
Tombstone Mayor Andree De Journett thinks of the volunteers as tourists and said they could boost the local economy.
"I've met five or six of them, they haven't been too bad so far," he said, estimating that 500 extra visitors for a month could mean $10,000 or more spent locally.
Marilynn Slade, Tombstone's city clerk, said the more attention drawn to illegal immigration, the better.
"The vast majority of the people feel that the feds should be dealing more aggressively with the problem," she said. "There's a huge, huge cry down here."
Did he mean ILLEGAL immigrant smugglers or are the smugglers themselves legal immigrants?
Yes, he did. He probably also said exactly that - illegals. He is not getting a fair shake from the press, but then, who expected that? Larry and I are friends after a fashion and the articles quoting him over the last few days are not accurate.
This statement facinates me - it is worthy of some extensive consideration.
Consider a very highly probable situation. The Undocumented Border Control Agents (UBCAs) are merely observing some young drug smugglers coming across the border with their drugs. Since the UCBAs don't know they have drugs, they have to treat them as committing a non-felony, so they let them alone, but call the Border Control Agents (BCAs), and keep them informed of their location.
Before the BCAs get there, the smugglers observe that they are being observed, and open fire on the UCBAs. Hopefully the UCBAs will have this recorded (VCR, DVD). Discharging a weapon at a citizen is a felony. If the perps then flee, they are now suspected "fleeing felons".
The nearest 100 UBCAs now have the perfect legal right to defend themselves, to return fire, to perform a citizen's arrest, and even to kill them if they do not disarm and surrender. If one of the UBCAs is injured, in spite of the pleas of the leadership, that is exactly what a bunch of them will do. There will then be a race between the fleeing perps, the UBCAs trying to catch and/or kill them, law enforcement, and the BCAs trying to get there before the perps are killed.
The MSM would then have a field day - headlines like "Blood on the Border", no where reporting the perps started this by firing on the UBCAs. Interviews with all concerned flooding the airways. The UDBAs will be castigated at having "created the conditions for violence".
Fox interviews the UBCAs, replays the video of the perps firing on them; maybe the video of the perps firing on them when surrounded.
Liberals will whack out, and try to craft legislation to disarm citizens near the border. Republicans will finally have to address the immigration problem, because there is nothing that would prevent the same thing happening again.
Unless an UBCA gets seriously injured ... it will be really fun to watch.
It will not get ugly.
The illegals will just wait or go to a different locale.
That's not what they are saying here, they are saying they are coming to take action against the locals. READ THE ARTICLE !
This Armando Navarro????
The one who penned:
La Raza Unida Party
A Chicano Challenge to the U.S. Two-Party Dictatorship
Armando Navarro
??????
If you read the goals of La Raza it looks like the pot is calling the kettle black.... just who really are the "domestic terrorists"???
(takes one to know one).
Yeah, that's the one.
He threatened to come down here and take action against us a year ago...and was missing-in-action.
Sounds like all blow and no show.
Current reports from the border are that nobody is moving.
Normal traffic runs at the rate of two to three thousand crossers a night along a thirteen mile front.
Something is up...
I assume you mean no crossers last night. Where did you get that information?
I talked with a co-worker who spends upwards of thirty hours per week observing the crossing points and notifying the authorities.
The activities of the MUPs (Members of the Undocumented Project) have actually been going on for at least a year now and the trails used by the coyotes are well mapped out.
Thank you for taking the time to bring that to my attention.
It is hard to know the facts now days unless it comes first hand so to speak. I stand corrected :)
No problem! I can't get out and put boots on the ground with the rest of the guys and gals, but I can get information out.
Bush, both of them, have become all talk, no walk. That is why people are going to be taking control of things, independent of the government. Hey maybe that is a good thing?
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