Posted on 09/21/2005 7:46:08 AM PDT by Bob Haran
Farmer, Patriots get patrol help from Minutemen BY BLAKE SCHMIDT, Sun Staff Writer --See Image(s) Below--
Published on: September 17, 2005
Eight members of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps of Tombstone came to Yuma for the first time this weekend to patrol an area near the border with the Yuma Patriots, where a local farmer had asked for help with an increasing number of illegal immigrants trampling his crops.
The volunteer patrol groups, who were unarmed, helped the Border Patrol capture two groups of illegal immigrants Friday night, and ran into a snag when the Cocopah police told them they were not allowed to patrol on County 15th Street, a road that runs between the farmer’s property and Cocopah tribal lands.
Flash Sharrar, founder of the Yuma Patriots, said he received the request for help from a local farmer last week, and Sharrar forwarded the request to Stacey O’Connell, a member of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.
O’Connell said the MCDC wanted to come down to Yuma to see how the Yuma Patriots operate.
The farmer’s 100-acre plot, on U.S. Highway 95 just west of Somerton, is located between the border and Highway 95, where aliens run to be picked up by traffickers, and often times taxi drivers, Sharrar said.
Sharrar said that during patrol Friday night, the patrolling Minutemen and Yuma Patriots deterred two taxi cab drivers attempting to pick up illegal immigrants.
Sharrar also got see some action. When a U.S. Border Patrol helicopter was pursuing a group of illegal aliens on the private property Friday night, four of them headed his way.
He flicked his spotlight on them.
"¿a1Sientese, la migra!" Sharrar said in Spanish, meaning "sit down, immigration."
Sharrar said the four aliens sat down, and were apprehended by Border Patrol.
"It’s an adrenaline rush," he said. "But you know what’s wonderful? (The farmers) say they love us. That’s the real rush."
Kent Cuming, a farmer who leases land where the Patriots and Minutemen have been patrolling, said the volunteer patrollers are the only ones doing anything to stop illegal aliens from trampling on his crops.
"Illegals, they walk across all of your produce. Every step they take, it’s a head of cauliflower," Cuming said, adding that his workers often see "hundreds" of illegal immigrants in a night.
"Border Patrol is doing all they can, they just don’t have enough manpower," he said.
Both the MCDC and the Yuma Patriots worked unarmed, said O’Connell.
O’Connell said that MCDC policy is the same as Arizona state law, and those with licenses can carry weapons. He said normally about half of the Minutemen volunteers would be armed.
"But that’s not how Flash’s organization works, they work unarmed, so we did too," he said. The volunteers came armed only with nightvision goggles, spotlights, and two-way radios, as well as first aid and water to hand out to illegals.
The volunteer citizen patrol groups used Sharrar’s RV, which was parked on the local farmer’s property, as their "command center." Radio equipment, refreshments and spotlights were all stored in the RV.
The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps was developed out of the Minuteman Project in April, a 30-day event in which volunteers patrolled across Cochise County in order to raise awareness of border issues.
Even though the MCDC developed out of the Minuteman Project, Sharrar said, the group’s leader is Chris Simcox, not Jim Gilchrist — though the groups occasionally work together.
"Our mission is to bring the topic of illegal immigration and national security on our porous open border to the limelight," O’Connell said.
Friday night, patrolling Minutemen and Yuma Patriots helped the U.S. Border Patrol apprehend two different groups of four alleged illegal immigrants, O’Connell said.
It has been a record year for the Border Patrol Yuma sector. With more than 130,000 apprehensions to date, Public Information Officer Michael Gramley said Border Patrol Headquarters has identified the problem in Yuma, and will have sent another 100 agents to Yuma by the end of the year.
"We do get citizens reports quite often of aliens on the border area, and we make it our priority to respond to each call," Gramley said. He said he expects the increase in agents will improve the situation on the Yuma border.
Bob Haran, 53, a retired NYPD administrative aid, came from Phoenix this weekend to help the Yuma Patriots patrol the area.
"I feel strange guarding my country at 53," Haran said. Haran slept in his 1988 Lincoln Town Car Friday night.
Haran said he received specific orders not to carry firearms on patrol in Yuma.
O’Connell said the MCDC is coordinating a 30-day event in October that will have volunteer patrols in all four border states.
Agustin Tumbaga, ex-mayor of Somerton and human rights activist, works as a sort of Minuteman watchdog. He has met with the Yuma Patriots and said he is concerned about the possibility of "one or two bad apples" in volunteer patrol groups.
"If they overstep their bounds, it’s going to be chaos," he said.
Tumbaga said the weekend that the MCDC chose to come to Yuma was "interesting."
"They came down during the Mexican holiday. Did they come down to prove a point? I don’t know if they want to insult the Mexicans in regards to the day they are doing it," he said.
Sharrar said he didn’t know it was a Mexican holiday.
"I live in America. I don’t keep track of Mexicans, that’s not my job," he said. "I don’t celebrate Mexico." --- Blake Schmidt can be reached at bschmidt@yumasun.com or 539-6852.
"Cocopah police told them they were not allowed to patrol on County 15th Street"
That sounds like it's debatable.
Yea, but what does Geraldo think about this.
I know there is an initiative to get a State Border Patrol, which would have the same powers as the police, in California. Why don't they try that in the rest of the states?
Ah, is this gentleman representing himself as a law enforcement official when he does this? That's illegal. Just the kind of thing that opponents of the Minutemen and other similar groups can latch on to for purposes of tying the Minutemen up in legal action.
Gotta love it!
re: 15th Street. If the county or the city maintain that thoroughfare, then I don't see how tribal police can keep the patrols off of it.
re: Sharrar telling the four to "sit down, immigration!" In essence, he is making a citizen's arrest which is legal in Arizona. The illegals don't necessarily respect his authority as a civilian, but they do know to respect La Migra. Valid action IMO. Certainly effective.
Noo... he didn't represent himself as a law enforcement official.
All he said was "Sit down, immigration".
Now if he had been wearing a Uniform or flashed a badge and was not IN that position of authority, then yes you would have a valid point.
He didn't say WHERE or WHO was immigation, he just said immigration.
It's their fault if they thought he was.
What you see here is typical journalism, there are too many errors in this article to count. The illegals were in the lights of a Border Patrol Helicopter, when they were told to sit down. No one said anything about la migra, I specifically asked each individual involved in the debriefing.
That sounds like it's debatable.
It is very debatable, we were on private property, not County 15th Street. The Cocopah police are as confused as jounalist Blake Schmidt.
Actually the Spanish word for immigration is 'inmigración'. 'La migra' is Spanish slang for an immigration agent. It would be like me calling a FBI agent a 'G-man'.
Protect our borders and coastlines from all foreign invaders!
Support our Minutemen Patriots!
Be Ever Vigilant ~ Bump!
Well, that may be ok for them but Texas Minutemen will not be doing that, they are strictly observe / report / NO CONTACT.
That's the policy and they are sticking with it.
I couldn't care less what that putrid 'public personality' thinks about about anything.
The invasion of America without a shot being fired = The legacy of George W. Bush.
This project seems to have been quite successful. A CNN story stated “ The Border Patrol has acknowledged receiving 317 calls from Naco and Douglas, resulting in 846 arrests, but the agency will not say whether any of those calls came from project volunteers.” From the Washington Times quoting one of the Minutemen organizers: “ Mr. Gilchrist noted that fewer than 5,000 illegal aliens will be apprehended this month by the U.S. Border Patrol in the Minuteman Project's 20-mile patrol area compared with 64,000 in April 2004 and 73,000 in April 2003.” and “ The U.S. Border Patrol has acknowledged making hundreds of arrests after receiving calls from the area being patrolled by the Minuteman volunteers, but has not confirmed whether any of those calls came from the volunteers.” The San Francisco Chronicle wrote “And, according to the Border Patrol, the Mexican military is now actively helping illegal immigrants, including known drug runners, reach safer border-crossing points in order to avoid the Minutemen. No doubt this little citizen uprising didn't figure into the handbook on how to enter the U.S. illegally the Mexican government distributed to citizens last year.”
So they proved it can be done. Yet our government tells us we can’t secure our borders but plans to spend another 81 billion in Iraq and Afghanistan. Its primary job is to protect us and it is failing to do this both physically and economically. It is supposed to regulate business, not act as an accessory in flooding the country with cheap labor to drive down wages for higher profits. If a neighboring country is encouraging and abetting its citizens to break our laws, and those same citizens are sending home more money than that nation makes selling oil, its motives are plain. Yet our president agrees with Vicente Fox that the Minutemen are “vigilantes” and wants to implement a thinly-disguised amnesty program. Some state legislatures have voted to give illegal aliens in-state college tuition while denying that right to American citizens from other states. Others have passed laws allowing them to obtain driver’s licenses. The matricula consular visa, an ID issued by the Mexican government, is starting to be accepted by banks as a form of identification necessary to open an account and obtain a mortgage loan, a direct violation of federal law. Meanwhile, over 3 million people around the world are on the waiting list for US visas.
Our elected officials are acting in violation of their oath to uphold the laws of the country and are themselves encouraging and abetting illegal immigration by granting these privileges. There are three obvious benefits the federal government reaps from this.
1) The influx of people will drive the housing market, one of the few industries that can’t be completely outsourced. The federal government owns 42% of America’s land, most of that in the western states. For example, they own 87% of Nevada. Las Vegas is expanding onto government land that was auctioned off to consortiums of homebuilders. The same thing is happening near Mesquite, NV, about 90 miles northeast of Vegas. Here's a specific example.
At this government site, http://propertydisposal.gsa.gov/property , it shows land and other property the government is selling or has sold. Recently, lots A thru J just north of Mesquite were auctioned off. Lot J was 1250 acres. The government assigned a pre-auction fair market value of $335,000 to this parcel. The winning bid was $4.1 million. There are many other parcels around Vegas that have been sold with similar results, where the sales price was substantially more than the fair market value. There is currently another federal auction of land near Laughlin. Once that land gets sold for exorbitant amounts, it immediately inflates the value of that land and the surrounding land, etc., etc. The government will continue to sell off America to the highest bidder to help finance its overseas war on terror. Accepting the matricula visa as required identification to get loans will encourage this process.
2) The special interests that fill campaign coffers are well served. Since labor costs make up on average 70% of the total cost of doing business, cheap labor makes for better profits. This means more independent contractors, less benefits for workers and more money for executives and shareholders. Of course lobbyists will then have more cash to spread around in Washington which will send more congressmen on free golf trips overseas.
3) This flood of workers drives down wages and raises unemployment to create more poverty. More poverty brings more crime which helps to fill up the increasingly privatized prisons. This also creates a slave labor class that performs tasks for a fraction of the cost in free society. The joke of a drug war contributes even more inmates. And you can’t have an all-volunteer army with full employment. The US birthrate alone can’t provide enough cannon fodder for the new crusades in the Middle East. The average age of the current American population is 36. Mexico's is 24.93, Honduras-19.15, Dominican Republic-23.88, Nicaragua-20.56, etc. The average ages of the populations in Middle Eastern countries, where most terrorists come from, are even lower. Here's an excerpt from a Chicago Tribune editorial, 10/9/05, entitled "Back To Immigration Reform", concerning some rules of the guest worker program legislation currently before Congress:
“After the first six years of work here- and proof of some English proficiency, additional security and criminal record checks, medical exam and registration in the armed forces- temporary workers could apply for permanent residency.”
The young people sucked across the border from Latin America will find themselves legitimized alright- legitimized to the point where they can serve in the US armed forces and participate in a prolonged ground war in the Middle East.
The government, therefore, is just unwilling to change what benefits them. Corporations run the world and national borders have become nothing more than public relations. Many on the left take a generic liberal stance that it is racism driving those who would control our borders since the majority of illegal aliens come from Mexico. This issue is now beyond politics- it’s a matter of survival of this country. We cannot continue to absorb Mexico’s poverty at this alarming rate. Our leaders should have taken Vicente Fox and others to task long ago for their feeble efforts to improve the lives of poor Mexicans. Otherwise they will continue to use the US as the safety valve for the discontent of the impoverished. Mexico wins both ways - immigrants remit billions back home and as our population grows we import more of their oil. The current situation cannot stand.
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