Posted on 04/10/2005 7:04:41 PM PDT by SwinneySwitch
RANCHO LA MORITA, Mexico — Following the 28-hour bus ride, they trekked for eight hours in the prickly, barren desert until they were 150 yards from the border: a rickety fence comprising four worn strings of barbed wire.
On the other side, the United States.
Tantalizingly close to their intended destination, the 10 friends from a village in central Mexico stopped. They could see something was happening on the American side. There were SUVs. There were men, too.
"You won't be able to get through," Héctor Salazar, an agent with Grupo Beta, Mexico's migrant-aid agency, warned the travelers. "There are dangerous people with guns out there. The best thing you can do is turn around and go home."
Giving the border fence one last look, the group of friends reluctantly mounted an orange pickup. And then they headed back to a town across the border from Douglas, Ariz.
Score one for the Minuteman Project. The ragtag and controversial collection of volunteers has descended on the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona to become temporary de facto border guards.
Last week, hundreds of them — some armed — were expected to begin patrolling Arizona border areas for undocumented immigrants, an exercise some fear could attract racist crackpots and lead to violence.
Jim Gilchrist, a former accountant from southern California who organized the project, said more than 1,500 people registered initially but fewer than 500 showed up. (Critics have said the volunteer counts are exaggerated. Gilchrist and other organizers have refused to reveal the registration list, citing participants' privacy.)
By the end of the week, 380 volunteers remained, but replacements were expected, Gilchrist said.
Some had taken extended leaves from work to watch the border, working 8-hour shifts at designated posts along a 23-mile stretch of it.
Many participants weren't talking much about immigration. What mattered most to them, they said, was stopping terrorists from getting in.
While several of them accused undocumented immigrants of ruining the U.S. language and culture by failing to assimilate, they insisted their actions had nothing to do with race or ethnicity.
"This has nothing to do with Mexicans," burly Houstonian William Breaux said as he stood on the bed of his pickup, overlooking a popular migrant-crossing trail.
But he added: "What gets me is that everybody thinks it's pitiful, poor peons that just want to work. Excuse me, they're raping and murdering Americans."
Organizers of the Minuteman Project said the civilian volunteers will watch the border for a month and report sightings of illegal activity to Border Patrol. Depending on their success, other civilian border patrol efforts are planned elsewhere, including in South Texas.
Organizers in Arizona hope eventually to have volunteers watching 45 miles of the U.S.-Mexican border.
Volunteers have been instructed not to interact with crossers but to report sightings to the Border Patrol.
Andrea Zortman, a Border Patrol spokeswoman in Naco, said the Minuteman Project has been an unwelcome hindrance. Civilians are putting themselves in danger, setting off motion sensors on the ground and "destroying evidence" by walking along popular migrant-crossing trails.
Claims that most rank-and-file agents privately welcomed the outside help are a lie, Zortman said. Agents are fuming over how much harder their jobs have become, she said.
Regardless whether they win massive approval, organizers Gilchrist and Chris Simcox have been able to produce arguably the largest non-government border-protection mobilization in recent memory.
Success or not?
The Minutemen — named for the American colonial volunteer army that was ready to assemble at a moment's notice to fight the British — launched their mission April 1 in Tombstone, the Arizona town famous for Wild West shoot-outs. It took less than a week for project participants to claim success; they were able to draw national and international attention to border-security issues. The event received extensive coverage by news media. Satellite TV trucks filled parking lots and lined the streets of Tombstone.
Organizers said the project already was deterring crossers or sending them to other border areas.
The Border Patrol, which steadfastly opposes the Minuteman Project, acknowledged undocumented migrant traffic along this stretch of the border has slowed significantly since the project's inception. During the first week of April last year, 7,143 illegal crossers were arrested in the Naco-Douglas area, the agency reported. In the same period this year agents stopped just 2,951 migrants, a 59 percent decrease.
But some crossers may have detoured toward western Arizona, which so far this month has seen a 23 percent increase in arrests.
The Border Patrol was quick to dismiss the notion that the Minuteman Project is the reason for dwindling migrant traffic in some areas. Early indicators suggest a recent campaign by the Mexican government to dissuade crossings and a beefed-up Border Patrol in Arizona have been mainly responsible for the slowdown, Zortman said.
Two days before the project was launched, the Border Patrol announced that 500 additional agents would be dispatched to Arizona by the summer.
Project volunteers and Border Patrol agents weren't only separately and simultaneously watching for illegal crossers, but they also were monitoring one another.
Meanwhile, Grupo Beta received two extra agents and has focused its rounds on the border area patrolled by Minuteman volunteers.
The migrant-aid agency, which helped turn back 853 migrants from the area, also has received assistance from 44 state police officers as well as the 12-man roving military unit based in the region, said Bertha de la Rosa Carrizales, who runs Grupo Beta's regional office in Agua Prieta.
Then there were the civil-right advocates. Members of the Arizona chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union., fearing potential civil rights violations, also had dispatched members to observe the citizen patrols. Some wore bright yellow "ACLU Observer" T-shirts.
Volunteer observers, 140 strong, also roamed the dusty Border Road between Naco and Douglas, some taking posts not too far from the designated Minutemen stations.
"It's kind of turned into a movement of its own," said Ray Ybarra, an ACLU representative in Douglas.
That movement is playing out in a mostly desolate, mostly state-owned part of Arizona. What little private land there is mostly is owned by ranchers.
Fred and Robyn Giacoletti own an 800-acre ranch on Border Road in Bisbee Junction that has been in the family for more than a century. As many as 300 migrants traverse their land every day on their way north, they said.
Until now.
Minuteman volunteers have allowed them to finally get a good night's sleep, the Giacolettis said.
"It's unbelievable," Robyn Giacoletti said. "For the first time in 17 years, the dogs haven't been barking all night long. It's been wonderful."
Though many Minuteman volunteers say they understand the plight of undocumented migrants, noting that they, too, would do anything to feed their families, they maintain laws must be respected — including those that govern border crossings.
Curt Stewart said he made the 900-mile drive from his Hill Country home to the Arizona border to let the country's leaders know they'd turned their back on concerned citizens.
"When Bush made it clear that he intended to give illegal aliens a free ride, I knew I had to do something," Stewart said. "Obviously, I wasn't the only one feeling that way."
Disorganized effort
By the organizers' own admission, the first day was utterly chaotic. The schedule was rearranged several times and there seemed to be more journalists than volunteers.
The bare-bones "command center" was a nondescript dormitory room rented from a nearly defunct Bible college with two computers equipped with mapping software and two ham radios.
"What did you expect?" asked project spokesman Mike McGarry. "We're all amateurs. We've never done this before."
On the overnight shift five miles from the border in Palominas, an area said to be dangerous because of heavy drug smuggling, volunteers trained on the job.
After arriving and figuring out who would take charge, they spent an hour mulling over their strategy and frantically trying to synchronize radios bought at nearby Wal-Mart and Kmart stores. The chosen team leader, a weary-looking Nebraskan, decided to sit on his lawn chair and let others take up hideout spots further up the gravel trail.
"I don't really know how to operate this thing," he muttered to himself as he fidgeted with a walkie-talkie.
Later he apologized profusely to three Border Patrol agents who showed up after receiving a call of migrants spotted in the area. False alarm.
Then, a rumor: Members of the vicious, Los Angeles-based Mara Salvatrucha street gang had threatened to attack the volunteers.
It never happened.
Some volunteers say the mission has had an air of paranoia attributable to unfamiliarity with the area. Most here never had been to the border before and had little knowledge of its volatile nature.
It was a phenomenon that Kerry Morales quickly sized up. The South Texas rancher has seen migrants crossing through her land for more than a decade. She's been threatened often and once nearly strangled, she said.
Unlike many of her counterparts, she never believed the rumored threat of a gang attack.
"Many people are already naturally wound-up," Morales said during a night shift. "And then fear breeds more fear. Rumors start flying, and they feed on each other."
Project organizers say they told three volunteers to leave because they brandished rifles; though they can carry guns, they're not allowed to take them out.
Another resigned for violating the no-contact policy. He fed one migrant, then had him pose for a picture holding a T-shirt that read, "Bryan Barton caught an illegal immigrant and all I got was this lousy T-shirt."
Meanwhile, at the main bus terminal in Agua Prieta, Mexico, Moisés Garcia had heard enough tales of the vigilantes to realize he wouldn't make it across the border.
"I thought I had enough to worry with the Border Patrol. Now with these other armed people out there, it's just too much."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- hrozemberg@express-news.net
"How is the night life in Panama?"
Great. Not as active as I used to bem. Married now, ya know.
Thanks for the ping. BTTT!
"The Border Patrol was quick to dismiss the notion that the Minuteman Project is the reason for dwindling migrant traffic in some areas.=
Numbers talk and BS walks.
"The Border Patrol was quick to dismiss the notion that the Minuteman Project is the reason for dwindling migrant traffic in some areas.=
Numbers talk and BS walks.
>>Hey you are stealing my idea.(it's o.k. though)<<
I recalled reading your idea but had no idea who to credit it to.
I broke it up into sections, private property and federal/state lands.
Would you like to take over this task of informing as many people as possible about it?
Travis posted the pictures a hundred times, then emailed me and said attach them into the post
I'd really appreciate it if you did.
Not for GW personally. Just to safeguard a foreign supplier. We import a lot of oil from Venezuala and Chavez has been threatening to shut off that supply. China has been buying up a lot of what is on the world market which is one reason for the spike in prices.
If it's a trade-off between Mexican oil and unlimited illegal immigration, we're getting the butt end of the deal (as usual). Mexican illegal immigration costs California 9 billion every year, and our gas prices are almost at 3 bucks a gallon now.
Agreed. Short term benefit, long term loss.
That's a great point - I actually hadn't thought of that .. but you could be right.
Now .. this Minuteman project gives the President the APPROVAL to get tough with immigration. Interesting ..??
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