Posted on 11/24/2006 4:50:42 AM PST by King of Florida
For years, Roger Barnett has holstered a pistol to his hip, tucked an assault rifle in his truck and set out over the scrub brush on his thousands of acres of ranchland near the Mexican border in southeastern Arizona to hunt.
Hunt illegal immigrants, that is, often chronicled in the news.
“They’re flooding across, invading the place,” Mr. Barnett told the ABC program “Nightline” this spring. “They’re going to bring their families, their wives, and they’re going to bring their kids. We don’t need them.”
But now, after boasting of having captured 12,000 illegal crossers on land he owns or leases from the state and emerging as one of the earliest and most prominent of the self-appointed border watchers, Mr. Barnett finds himself the prey.
Immigrant rights groups have filed lawsuits, accusing him of harassing and unlawfully imprisoning people he has confronted on his ranch near Douglas. One suit pending in federal court accuses him, his wife and his brother of pointing guns at 16 illegal immigrants they intercepted, threatening them with dogs and kicking one woman in the group.
Another suit, accusing Mr. Barnett of threatening two Mexican-American hunters and three young children with an assault rifle and insulting them with racial epithets, ended Wednesday night in Bisbee with a jury awarding the hunters $98,750 in damages.
The court actions are the latest example of attempts by immigrant rights groups to curb armed border-monitoring groups by going after their money, if not their guns. They have won civil judgments in Texas, and this year two illegal Salvadoran immigrants who had been held against their will took possession of a 70-acre ranch in southern Arizona after winning a case last year.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
BTTT
13-3884. Arrest by private person A private person may make an arrest:
1. When the person to be arrested has in his presence committed a misdemeanor amounting to a breach of the peace, or a felony.
2. When a felony has been in fact committed and he has reasonable ground to believe that the person to be arrested has committed it.
And in Arizona, trespassing on ranchland is not a felony. Trespass in the First Degree (a felony), involves homes, fenced residential yards, critical facilities or mineral claims with intent to remove minerals.
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I do not see where this person has legal authority to detain someone at gunpoint found trespassing on his land.
Link to archive of local AZ newspaper articles on this:
http://www.svherald.com/shared-content/search/index.php?search=go&o=0&l=&s=&r=&d1=11%2F10%2F06&d2=11%2F24%2F06&q=Barnett
Barnett was in the right and his actions were justified imho.
Ping to 63 for more info on the case.
"Anyone can make racist statements unless you are a white American male. The thought police only arrest whites for hate speech."
"Get it through your head. We don't' live in a socialist world where "what you have is also mine"."
Gotta love it!
The police feel much the same way you do. However when the law breaks down it is the system of last resort. It works.
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