Guess what. The MMP IS composed of small income individuals. The entire thing is operating on a shoestring budget bolstered only by volunteers willing to sacrifice their time.
Your idea, however, is a good one.
As soon as he heard about the situation, the Chairman of the County Board of Supervisors, Pat Call, went out to the Bible College to get to the bottom of this. It turns out that YES, the Bible College had received a citation and that a hearing will be held some time in May.
Here is some information from someone who is internally involved with this situation at the MMP:
He confirmed that a citation has been issued, that the Bible college has "violated the established use of their property" by allowing the MMP folks to stay there. Chris Simcox says that's not true, the Bible College has an assisted living program and folks stay there all the time. They were grandfathered in for that approval before the zoning laws changed. Simcox also says Vlahovich has a long history of going after folks who try to bring the border situation to light.According to Vlahovich, the amount of the fine has not yet been assessed, but it will be done at a hearing in May.
Vlahovich has been a pain in the side of border security advocates down here. He has essentially shut down a number of the operations of the American Border Patrol. Specifically, he's almost totally grounded their UAV operations despite the fact that you or I can go down to the border and fly our own hobby planes. He's obviously teaming up with Democrat County Supervisor Paul Newman to intimidate and harass border security advocates and certain organizations with which they politically disagree - CHD, ABP, and MMP.
Word is that the attention this incident has received and the telephone meltdown it has caused has caused Vlahovich to back off a bit. We should keep up the pressure though to convince him to lay off groups like the MMP, ABP, and CHD and to stop abusing his power to harass and intimidate them for politically motivated reasons.