Minuteman Project volunteers arrive, rally, spotlight border debate

Deborah Sattler expresses her opinion to Gabriel Mondragon concerning the open border and terrorism outside Schieffelin Hall in Tombstone on Friday. Mondragon is against the Minuteman Project. They were some of the dozens of people who demonstrated outside of the sign-up meeting place for the Minuteman Project. (Ed Honda-Herald/Review)

TOMBSTONE - Minuteman Project organizers and supporters rallied their volunteers on Friday by pointing the blame for the lack of border security to national elected officials.

They said the president and some members of Congress are trapped in a beltway mentality.

The rally came during a day that saw Minuteman Project volunteers come to sign up for the monthlong border operation.

The number of volunteers processed to take part in a monthlong program aimed at stemming the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs across portions of Cochise County's border with Mexico was not known because of a computer problem organizers had. They said about 400 have arrived. At one point, about 60 volunteers were signing up at the Tombstone Tumbleweed office.

At least 1,000 people have indicated they will take part in the project during April.

Jim Gilchrist, a co-organizer of the event, said it is discouraging what happens in the beltway in regards to securing the border with Mexico.

Bay Buchanan, who leads Team America, an organization dedicated to electing more conservative Republicans to Congress, was more direct, blaming President George W. Bush for the border problems.

"Mr. President, you have failed America," Buchanan said to loud applause from nearly 100 Minuteman Project volunteers at Schieffelin Hall at one of three orientation meetings held Friday afternoon.

Buchanan, the sister and former campaign chairwoman of two-time Republican presidential primary candidate Pat Buchanan, and others spoke at all three sessions.

Calling on Bush to do his constitutional duty, Buchanan said the president's failure has put the nation into continued jeopardy.

As she and others spoke, noise from an anti-Minuteman Project street demonstration could be heard inside the hall. Demonstrators blew whistles and banged pots and pans and makeshift drums.

Buchanan said the president is taking Mexican President Vicente Fox's position that those who want to secure the nation's borders are vigilantes. Bush considers Minuteman Project volunteers as dangerous, when that is not true, she said.

While the president keeps an eye on polls, he apparently is failing to take into account that surveys show Americans want a secure border, Buchanan said.

Before meeting with the volunteers inside the hall, he spoke to the media outside the building.

Although the project is aimed at about 25 miles of the border in Arizona's Cochise County, the volunteer effort is an avenue to show how porous the entire 2,000 miles of the international boundary with Mexico is, Gilchrist said.

As for the project being called vigilantism, he said the current meaning of the word - out-of-control individuals who take the law into their own hands - is not what the volunteers are about.

A vigilante is a person who is watchful, a guardian, Gilchrist said. The project is designed for volunteers to spot people engaged in illegal activities and report them to the U.S. Border Patrol.

As he spoke, Chris Simcox, the other co-organizer, looked out a door and videotaped the media.

Gilchrist said he has received 400 death wishes and 10 to 12 death threats, the latter he takes seriously.

"I can't think of a better reason to die than supporting the First Amendment," he said.

As for being a racist, Gilchrist denied any connection to a hate group, especially white supremacists.

Walking around outside the hall were Arnie and Sharrie Chandler, from California.

Longtime supporters of Gilchrist, the Chandlers said they expect to spend the month supporting the Minuteman Project, which partially is in support of the U.S. Border Patrol.

As volunteers were processed, both wore special tags identifying them as an "Undocumented Border Patrol Agent."

A retired banker, Arnie Chandler said the national leaders at all levels have failed to defend the nation by securing the border.

Yeh Ling-Ling, executive director of the California-based Diversity Alliance for a Sustainable America, also waited to enter the building. If the United States can spend $200 billion on Iraq, there is no reason the government can't cough up the needed money to secure the border, she said.

The problem is the increasing possibility that terrorists will come across the border from Mexico, Yeh said.

When Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., was announced at the pep rally in the hall, the crowd rose to their feet and gave him long and loud applause.

"You are American heroes, not vigilantes," the congressman said to the volunteers.

Recent polls have shown that 80 percent of Americans want the border secured, Tancredo said. Those figures are forcing other members of Congress to see the light with many of them running to the front of the race "to grab the baton," he said, as the audience laughed.

But, Tancredo said, the president remains a stumbling block, although Bush has begun to change his tune.

In the past, Bush told Fox he will do everything possible to change the U.S. border policy, the congressman said. At the recent meeting between the presidents of the two nations, Bush hedged and said he will try to make changes if Congress goes along.

The congressman promised the audience that he will push for more action to secure the border.

To that end, Tancredo said he will lead the effort to strengthen, not weaken policy.

"There will be one hell of a fight," he said as many in the crowd stomped their feet in a sign of approval.

For too long the federal government has been AWOL in doing its constitutional mandate, he said.

The only mandate the Constitution gives the federal government is to defend and protect the nation and that means secured and controlled borders, Tancredo said.

"We need to enforce the laws," he said, adding that includes going after employers who hire illegal immigrants.

For those who volunteer, they are the eyes and ears needed to bring the message of how unprotected the border is, the congressman said.

"It (the amendment) is not a radical idea. It's not a vigilante idea. It is an American concept and the rule of law," Tancredo said.

"The country's watching. The media is looking for Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, the mythical vigilante," he said.

The federal government wants the project to fail by people becoming confrontational, he said.

SENIOR REPORTER Bill Hess can be reached at 515-4615 or by e-mail at bill.hess@svherald.com.

This is the article in the San Diego Union Tribune this morning. It has picture that I was trying to find early this morning but they hadn't posted it online when I looked. The paper has a circulation of over a million.

Civilian posse starts 30-day patrol effort
By Jerry Kammer
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE
April 2, 2005

JOHN GIBBINS / Union-Tribune
It was high noon in Tombstone, Ariz., as Minuteman Project supporters such as Deborah Sattler of Mission Viejo and opponents such as Gabriel Mondragon of Taos, N.M., engaged in a duel of words over the 30-day border project that began yesterday.

TOMBSTONE, Ariz. – In a town made legendary by 30 seconds of mayhem at the OK Corral, the Minuteman Project yesterday launched what organizers say will be a peaceful campaign to reinforce the Border Patrol and to seek public support for a clampdown on illegal immigration.

"We are here to present our case to the American public," said James Gilchrist, the retired Aliso Viejo accountant and Marine veteran who says he has signed up more than 1,000 volunteers for at least part of the 30-day effort in the San Pedro River Valley southwest of here.

In the face of concern from law enforcement and criticism from immigrant advocates, the Minuteman Project intends for small groups to spread out along smuggling routes and call the Border Patrol when they spot groups of immigrants filtering across the border.

In this part of Arizona, the border is marked primarily by a four-strand barbed wire fence that is frequently sliced by illegal immigrants who drive out in taxis from the Mexican border town of Naco.

Organizers insist there will be no attempt to detain possible illegal immigrants. They say volunteers who carry firearms are exercising a right guaranteed under Arizona law.

About 400 volunteers arrived yesterday on the first day of registration, organizers said. Police are not providing estimates of volunteers, and there is no independent means of checking the group's figure.

U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., received a standing ovation as he dismissed criticism from those who have called the Minutemen racists and xenophobes.

JOHN GIBBINS / Union-Tribune
James Gilchrist, a director of the Minuteman Project, walked past supporters and media on the first day of the month-long project in Arizona yesterday.

He took direct aim at President Bush's recent description of the group as "vigilantes." Mexican President Vicente Fox, who was meeting with Bush at the time last week, used the term cazamigrantes – immigrant hunters.

"We are saying to our government, 'Please enforce the law,' " Tancredo said. "That is not a radical idea. That is not a vigilante idea. It is an American concept: the rule of law."

Television commentator Angela "Bay" Buchanan praised the Minutemen for sending a message that "we're not going to sit by and let America slip away" in a tide of illegal immigration.

"Mr. President, you have failed America. Mr. President, do your constitutional duty," said Buchanan, leader of Team America, a political action committee dedicated to immigration policy.

Yesterday's kickoff in this tourist-conscious town was a media extravaganza that mixed the borderland activists – some of them carrying firearms – with the Old West actors who tote fake guns and stroll down the boardwalk in front of Big Nose Kate's Saloon.

"We're used to the gunfights, but it looks like the tourists are getting something extra," said town librarian Jody Hoffman.

Near her desk is a painting of the covered wagons that rolled through this country nearly a century and a half ago. Back then it was Apache leaders such as Cochise, for whom this southeastern Arizona county is named, who expressed bewilderment at the arrivals.

Jim Chase, an Oceanside man who is among the Minuteman Project's leaders, said teams of four would be sent out to observe the border.

In the meantime, many of the volunteers are renting $5-a-night rooms at the Miracle Valley Bible College, about two miles north of the border, and some are camping on the grounds of the dilapidated campus. The group's communication center is set up at the college.

Outside a meeting hall in Tombstone, about a dozen protesters beat pots and pans while a troupe of Aztec-style dancers beat drums and spun rhythmically in the street. Other protesters carried signs reading, "No human is illegal" and "borders kill." Dave Mondragon, 23, of New Mexico hoisted a sign proclaiming, "You're the immigrant."

There appeared to be little tension between the opposing sides. But black-uniformed Arizona rangers, a volunteer group that had been deputized by the town marshal, lined the streets. They are part of a large mobilization of local, state and federal officers who are poised to deal with any confrontation.

Gilchrist acknowledged he cannot guarantee that no troublemakers will infiltrate his group. But as he climbed up a stairwell for an impromptu news conference, he said he embraced the nonviolent credo of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and he turned the criticism back on Washington.

"All I can tell you is that our screening process is a lot better than the federal government's screening process for illegal aliens and terrorists who have killed Americans," he said.

The Minuteman Project's most outspoken critic, University of California Riverside ethnic studies professor Armando Navarro, said he is concerned that rogue elements on either side of the controversy could whip up an incident as sudden as the dust devils that whirl across the desert floor.

"We see the potential for a powder keg situation developing over the next few weeks," Navarro said Thursday evening. He had been meeting with other activists in Agua Prieta, a Mexican border town that has boomed as a jumping-off point for illegal immigration in the decade since Operation Gatekeeper tightened the border at and near San Diego.

The Grand Canyon State makes up less than a fifth of the 1,950-mile international border. But of the 1.1 million people apprehended by the Border Patrol on illegal immigration charges last year, 52 percent were caught in Arizona.

Navarro, a former Army officer and longtime political activist, said he is doing "everything possible" to tamp down the agitation among Latinos who see the Minutemen as guided more by racism than patriotism.

He called the Minuteman campaign "a nativist reaction against us Latinos because we are becoming the new majority."

Mexico City television reporter Jose Martin Samano tried to capture the town's mood as he taped a stand-up report during a shootout at Helldorado Town, a tourist attraction where the good guy always wins in front of fake storefronts and saloons.

"There are two shows taking place today in Tombstone, Ariz.," said Samano, of TV Azteca. "One uses fake bullets. The other is using real arms."

Acknowledging that much of the Mexican press has encouraged the distorted notion that the cazamigrantes are hunting immigrants like so many deer, he said: "The people of Mexico are very worried. . . . They think the Minutemen are real hunters, without pity."

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Minuteman Project volunteers arrive, rally, spotlight border debate

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