The sign reflects the belief of some extremists that there is a Hispanic conspiracy to reconquer the southwestern U.S. and rename it Aztlan.
Posted on 08/17/2005 4:33:08 PM PDT by Happy2BMe
Uncivil Defense
The Minutemen stumble into instant opposition in Texas.
We are not vigilantes, and we are not anti-immigration.”
Chris Simcox was talking to a fresh group of recruits for the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps. The organization, which has made headlines nationwide in recent months for its armed “citizen patrols” along the Arizona border, is branching out into Texas. The meeting at a ranch near Hillsboro on Saturday was the first of several training sessions scheduled across the state this week, and a reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram dutifully recorded Simcox’s statement.
But charges of vigilantism, anti-immigration rhetoric, and racism, nonetheless, are exactly what the group has faced since it began its patrols and started organizing in Texas. In fact, you might call the meeting outside of Hillsboro a case of the group not starting up, but starting over in Texas.
The group’s first Texas president resigned because he believed some members were just as interested in booting Hispanics out of political office as in keeping illegal immigrants out of the country. Another member angered a Texas sheriff with loose talk about shooting illegal aliens. The King Ranch, one of the largest in the United States, won’t let the Minutemen patrol any of its land along the border. And the Southern Poverty Law Center recently wrote, in its Intelligence Report magazine, about finding members of a violent neo-Nazi organization among the ranks of the group’s Arizona recruits.
The Minutemen, it seems, may be facing a rough ride here in the Lone Star State.
Al Garza, the new president of the Texas Minuteman chapter, said his volunteers are only filling a void created by the federal government’s inability to stop illegal immigration. “The ones they should be concerned about is their own ... government,’’ Garza said in a recent telephone interview. “If their elected leaders were doing their jobs, we wouldn’t have the Minutemen.’’
U.S. Customs and Border Protection has about 11,000 agents patrolling the Mexican border. Even so, thousands of people elude the authorities every day. By some estimates, as many as 4 million people enter the country illegally in some years, and the problems they bring with them sometimes wreak havoc on lives and property. Just last week, New Mexico Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson, the nation’s only Hispanic governor, declared a state of emergency in four border counties that, as he told CNN, have been “devastated by the ravages and terror of human smuggling, drug smuggling, kidnapping, murder, destruction of property, and the death of livestock.’’
When the Border Patrol cracks down on coyotes in one place, the people-smugglers move to another. The pipelines through which human cargo passes constantly shift. Earlier this year, one of these human pipelines began emptying its contents in Texas’ Goliad County, more than a hundred miles from the border.
Before the Minutemen arrived, Goliad possessed the solemn distinction of being best known for a wartime atrocity committed long ago. On March 27, 1836, Mexican troops, acting on orders of General Santa Anna, marched more than 300 unsuspecting Texas prisoners of war to the outskirts of the town, took aim, and shot them to the ground. Their remains, which were later gathered and buried in a nearby mass grave, are marked with a monument to the “Goliad Massacre,” one of the bloodiest days of the Texas war of independence.
Today, the outskirts of Goliad are a battlefield of a very different struggle. Shots haven’t been fired in this war yet — but some fear it’s only a matter of time.
Bill Parmley is a petroleum geologist who lives in a rural community on the outskirts of Goliad. Earlier this year, he grew frustrated as the area around his land in South Texas was being overrun with illegal immigrants. The evidence was frequently sitting along the farm-to-market road that runs in front of his home.
“They were coming through here in a caravan, three or four [vehicles] at a time,’’ he said. “They’d dump the people, and someone from Houston would come pick them up. They’d leave them here for a week at a time. There would be 20 or 30 [people] in your driveway. You’d try to get the license plate of the first vehicle, and before you could, there would be a second vehicle.’’
Stranded for days in a strange place, the illegals did what they had to survive. Parmley said it was not uncommon for ranchers to find that their cattle, sheep, or goats had been slaughtered by starving immigrants.
Parmley and others first tried to get help from state and federal officials. They wrote and called politicians and bureaucrats. When that failed, Parmley started thinking about the Minutemen, whose patrols along the Arizona border had been making the news. He decided to contact Simcox. In June, Parmley said, he flew Simcox to Texas, and the two men agreed to form two Minutemen chapters, one for the Goliad area and another for the entire state, with Parmley as president of both.
Members trickled in as word of the newly formed organization began to spread. The group began reporting suspicious vehicles and strangers to Goliad County Sheriff Robert De La Garza. And for a while, the problem seemed to abate.
“The sheriff had come in here and seized 160 vehicles in the last six months,’’ Parmley said. “You can’t fault him and say he’s not doing something with it. He’s probably one of only three sheriffs in the state that was pursuing illegal aliens.’’ Other members of the organization, however, remained critical of the sheriff — and Parmley began to suspect they were motivated by something other than working on Goliad’s immigration problem.
Parmley said some of his members had previously approached him about “ trying to get the Hispanic people who are in office in Goliad [out] and replace them with white people.’’
But Parmley wasn’t interested. He thought the sheriff was doing a good job. And Parmley had been working on immigration problems with local officials of the League of United Latin American Citizens — an overture that further alienated him from Minuteman membership. The split didn’t seem likely to heal, and Parmley resigned less than two months after Simcox named him president.
“I don’t know of any other word to describe it other than racism,’’ he said. “They had a secret agenda before the organization ever got started. They rolled it into the Minutemen.’’
Parmley’s resignation made headlines across South Texas and seemed to confirm suspicions held by some that the Minutemen might not be so alarmed about illegal immigrants had it been whites pouring across the border.
After De La Garza learned of Parmley’s resignation, the sheriff said, he confirmed with his own sources that some of the Minutemen were working behind the scenes to get him out of office. Furthermore, he was flabbergasted when the wife of another Minuteman, in a conversation with him and other South Texas law enforcement officials, broached the possibility of shooting any illegals found trespassing. “They were talking about the illegals and what they could and couldn’t do’’ when the woman asked, “If these illegals come onto your property, can we shoot them?’’
The good relations that initially existed between the Minutemen and the sheriff’s office are now long gone.
“If they call me, we’re going to respond, but as far as an organization, I don’t want nothing to do with them,’’ the sheriff said. “They can stay out there as long as they don’t do anything illegal. The first time they cross that line, I’ll hammer them.’’
Minutemen co-founder Simcox responded to the fallout of Parmley’s resignation by appointing Al Garza as president of the Texas organization and Kenneth Buelter to head the Goliad group. Garza, a retired private investigator, lives in Douglas, Ariz., but was born in Raymondville and grew up in Pharr. He said that, for an organization fighting allegations of racism, the fact that he is Hispanic is a benefit. “I can speak Spanish,’’ he said. “Being brown-skinned is a big plus.’’
Buelter added that people should judge the Minutemen by their actions, not the words of others. “We are not a racist organization in any way, shape, or form,’’ he said. “If you watch what we do and listen to what we say, we will prove that.’’
When Garza moved to Douglas a few years ago, he said he was at first oblivious to the illegal immigration problems he would face. “I thought it was going to be tranquil, serene, and peachy,’’ he said. “It turns out I made a big mistake.’’ Dogs in his neighborhood barked constantly through the night as strangers passed through.
He contacted Simcox after seeing him on a local television news program. “Being Hispanic, I showed some concern because I thought this could possibly be a vigilante situation or white supremacists,’’ he said. Simcox, he said, took him “out in the field and showed me the different pipelines, the different trails, and whatnot, the debris that’s left behind — clothing, cans, paperwork, drivers’ licenses from Mexico. I could not believe my eyeballs.’’
The two men encountered one group of about 30 illegals. Among them was an elderly man and woman who were “showing signs of distress.’’ Simcox impressed Garza by getting the couple something to drink and calling emergency medical technicians to the scene. “That really turned me on,’’ Garza said.
“Break out the application,” he told Simcox. “Whatever it takes, I’m interested.’’
Garza acknowledges the situation in Texas “looks bad,’’ but said it was the result of misinformation. He spent time with the Goliad members and found that in “no way, shape, or form were these people prejudiced or had any sort of agenda.’’ Nationally, the Minutemen’s web site disavows any association with “separatists, racists, or supremacy groups” or associated individuals.
“A lot of the information coming through the media has been twisted,’’ he said. “The real story is simple. These people are frustrated.’’
The Minutemen have been portrayed as trigger-happy vigilantes, when, Garza said, they’re really “quite the opposite. What possible reason as a Hispanic could I have to go join a group that [has the reputation of] shooting Mexicans on a wild safari? That’s the image that’s been portrayed.”
On the other hand, Garza and other Minuteman leaders do acknowledge that many of their members carry guns on patrol — which may not make them much different from other people out in the rural parts of South Texas’ harsh landscape, where both drug runners and rattlesnakes are common.
“I won’t say there won’t be anyone who’s armed,’’ said Buelter, the new Goliad Minutemen president. “No one will be carrying long arms. If someone has a concealed handgun license and has permission from the landowner, they will be able to carry their concealed handgun.’’
Buelter said he has applied for a handgun permit but doesn’t know whether he’ll be taking a gun with him during a planned patrol all along the U.S.-Mexico border in October.
“It’ll depend on where I’m stationed. That’s one of the things that as a group we are making a stipulation. If the landowner requests that you not carry, you won’t carry. He’s liable for anything that we do.’’
As for the group’s national leadership, Simcox has already faced legal problems for carrying a pistol. In 2003, Simcox was arrested on federal firearm charges after crossing into a national forest with a concealed handgun. According to press reports, Simcox contended he was just taking a hike and did not realize he had entered federal property where firearms were banned. Park officials, however, according to press reports, said that they believed Simcox was on a patrol.
Simcox was cited for two misdemeanors — carrying firearms on park land and giving false information to a park ranger about whether he was carrying a gun, a court official said. He was sentenced to two years probation and fined $1,000, according to published accounts. Simcox is in the process of appealing the case. He was not available for comment for this article.
Garza said that carrying guns is part of the Southwestern culture. “In terms of us being vigilantes with guns, Arizona is a right-to-carry state,” he said. “I carry a gun, never used it. It’s simply a way of life out here.”
Garza said he is in the process of reorganizing the Texas chapter and recruiting members for other local groups in the state. He estimated that there are about 600 Minuteman volunteers in Texas. There is, however, no way to verify those numbers — and Parmley says the group exaggerates its membership.
“Every minute is a growth minute,’’ Garza said. But when asked for the names of other Texas Minutemen who could talk about the group’s plan, he said Buelter alone could “speak on my behalf.’’
The group is now trying to recruit members across the state for a planned month-long patrol of the 2000-mile U.S. -Mexican border in October. They plan to set up observation posts on private property where illegal immigrants are believed to travel.
Buelter said the Minutemen are in the process of persuading landowners along the border to let them come onto their property. “There’s 1,394 miles of border’’ in Texas, and all of it is privately owned, he said. His Minutemen will look to the ranchers for help in selecting observation posts. “The landowners know where the illegals come across their property,” he said.
“As we see trespassers come across the landowner’s land, we will be reporting those trespassers to the border patrol,’’ Buelter said. “That’s all we do. The only way we interact with any of the trespassers is we provide humanitarian aid.’’
One of the biggest landowners along the border is the King Ranch, and the Minutemen have not been able to obtain permission to search for illegals there. “They feel like the liability issue is too great,’’ Buelter explained.
Roger Rocha, director of the Texas chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said ranchers should worry about Minuteman patrols. He said member of a similar organization several years ago pistol-whipped an illegal immigrant during a patrol on private property, and the rancher wound up being sued over the incident.
Rocha also questions how the Minutemen will be able to make meaningful distinctions among the people they encounter. “How are the Minutemen going to distinguish who is a U.S. citizen and who is not? Certainly they don’t have the authority to ask anyone for identification. They’re not Homeland Security or the Border Patrol to be doing that.
“Texas is not Arizona,’’ he said. Unlike Arizona, where the border runs through public lands, all of the Texas border with Mexico is on private land. “We are really concerned with an incident happening on the border, a loss of life, that would have a bigger impact on immigrants and Hispanics. There would be a backlash regardless of who was responsible,’’ Rocha said
Carlton Jones, a spokesman for the Del Rio Border Patrol office, doesn’t know what to expect from the Minutemen. “It’s hard to answer that question,’’ he said. “We haven’t dealt with them there.’’
Border ranchers frequently call in sightings of illegal crossings. “We’re always glad to have citizens help us,’’ he said. “Given [the length of] the border and the number of people we have to patrol, any rancher who calls us and lets us know what’s going on helps.’’
And he’s resigned to the fact that his officers soon may not be the only armed patrols cruising the border. “From the standpoint of the Border Patrol, people are allowed to do things that don’t violate the law,” he said. “If they’ve got permits for [guns], there’s nothing we can do about it.’’
When he was president of the Texas Minutemen, Parmley said, he was never keen on the idea of armed patrols. But the Arizona members, who Parmley said had been fired upon by Mexicans across the border, were intent on carrying weapons. Their attitude, he said, was, “They [illegal immigrants] could be armed, so we’d better be armed — that type of mentality. It’s a recipe for disaster.’’
“These guys are kind of playing cowboy,’’ he said. “Somebody’s going to get hurt, and some attorney is going to sue the crap out of you.’’
I'd rather be an informed extremist than an ignorant bunch of toilet bowl residue.
“These guys are kind of playing cowboy,’’ he said. “Somebody’s going to get hurt, and some attorney is going to sue the crap out of you.’’
Better being sued than dead, Bill!
Liability my arse. It's called cheap labor and the rich like cheap labor.
We don't have to fret about anything. The nation of Aztlan will be fixed by the City of Berkley, CA. They'll just politically correct vote it away.
Dayum...now that's unamericun!
Witness protection program?
In 2003, Simcox was arrested on federal firearm charges after crossing into a national forest with a concealed handgun... Simcox was cited for two misdemeanors — carrying firearms on park land and giving false information to a park ranger about whether he was carrying a gun, a court official said. He was sentenced to two years probation and fined $1,000, according to published accounts. Simcox is in the process of appealing the case. He was not available for comment for this article.
I'll comment. I do something like this all the time. I live on the east side and hunt on the west, and continually pass through the monument with a firearm in the back of my truck. It's legal, and what Simcox did was also legal IMO. I'll also go on the record as saying that the park service property is not very well marked. If you're not familiar with it, it's hard to tell which of the three or four fences you have to cross is the boundary fence.
Whenever they can, the MSM will bring this up as a way to discredit Simcox. For those in the know, it is a discredit to the journalist writing the article.
Opposition.... What, I guess they ran into bayourod? LOL!
"Whenever they can, the MSM will bring this up as a way to discredit Simcox. For those in the know, it is a discredit to the journalist writing the article."
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What you won't see in the MSM is any stories of National Forest Rangers arresting illegal aliens for poaching (with firearms) , transporting them to ICE, and then watching them be set free right in front of their eyes.
You won't see it. Talk to a game warden in your area. They'll tell you about it.
You and I know for a fact the King Ranch runs on the underground economy.
Where?
More:
http://media.putfile.com/SOSAlhambra7
http://www.kirkbytv.com/index2.htm
http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-8245.html
The Early Years:
http://www.americanpatrol.com/RALLIES/JULY42000/July4stills-1.html
http://www.americanpatrol.com/RALLIES/JULY42000/album0.html
http://www.americanpatrol.com/RALLIES/JULY42000/album0.html
http://www.americanpatrol.com/RALLIES/011208ANAHEIM/CompareLAT_PHOTO_011209.html
"The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,
1. The act of invading; the act of encroaching upon the rights or possessions of another; encroachment; trespass.
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