Reply to article over Border Control

John Brogger

[John "from Minnesota"]

Jeffry Scott /Staff Glenn Spencer, head of the American Border Patrol organization, aligns his latest surveillance equipment, which includes a satellite video uplink. Spencer says he is counseling Tombstone publisher Chris Simcox and his followers to obey the law.

AP file photo Border concerns are not limited to Arizona. The Border Patrol stays busy along the entire frontier with Mexico watching for illegal activity, as patrol supervisor Dan Garibay did in 2001 in Laredo, Texas.

By Ignacio Ibarra ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Arizona leaders at the state and federal level are calling for investigations into armed civilian patrols along the state's border with Mexico.

At issue is the safety of people along the border and the legality of the so-called militia groups, formed out of frustration at the inability of U.S. border agents to slow illegal immigration from Mexico.

U.S. Rep.-elect Raúl Grijalva, a Tucson Democrat who takes office in January, said he will push for federal hearings into the activities of the civilian patrols. Grijalva's pledge echoes proposals this weekend during border forums in Mexico, made by leaders including Gov.-elect Janet Napolitano, Gov. Jane Hull and Sonora Gov. Armando Lopez Nogales.

Attending a border forum Saturday in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, state Rep. Robert Cannell, a Yuma Democrat, said the Arizona Legislature is likely to take up the issue when it meets in January.

"I think this rhetoric you're hearing from some of the leaders of these groups is very dangerous to the overall security of the region," Grijalva said. "The potential for violence is escalating and I think the whole situation has to be investigated."

Chris Simcox, publisher of a weekly newspaper in Tombstone, who used his pages this month to call for creation of a Tombstone militia, said citizen action is necessary - and legal, judging by several months of research he conducted into the constitutions of the United States and the state of Arizona.

Still, to avoid legal problems, his group will limit its work - confronting, detaining and delivering trespassers to authorities - to private property and by invitation only.

Simcox said that personally, he wouldn't hesitate to extend patrols onto public lands.

"I am not afraid to carry this on to state lands that belong to every citizen of the state they reside in. It's our land," he said. "I'm not afraid to step on that land and do the same thing, and I challenge my government to come and arrest me. We are not crazies, we're concerned citizens. . . . We are responsible people."

He said his office has received more than 1,000 e-mails of support since he issued the call to arms, many from current and former members of law enforcement and the military.

"I'm taking them seriously because they leave phone numbers and e-mails and addresses. I've got people giving money now," Simcox said. "I'm recruiting America."

The Second Amendment right of the citizenry to bear arms is generally accepted, said University of Arizona law Professor Roy Spece, but no respectable authority on the Constitution "accepts the proposition that you also have a right to form a vigilante group . . . and nobody has contended there is a right to have your own militia."

Vigilante activity interferes with the legitimate enforcement of the law, he said.

"I think it just makes their job harder . . . and I think it exacerbates the tensions."

At the Cato Institute, where gun rights are among the bulwarks of a think tank with a Libertarian philosophy, the notion that the Constitution allows private citizens to raise a militia is dismissed as "utterly fanciful nonsense."

"I don't know where this right is supposed to come from that they can take the law into their own hands . . . certainly not the Constitution," said Robert A. Levy, senior fellow for constitutional law with the Washington, D.C., institute.

Even the right to self-defense is not provided for in the Constitution, Levy said, but in the common and statutory law of individual states.

These laws make it clear that people have a right to defend themselves, he said, but that right goes only so far.

"They can't affirmatively take it upon themselves and go out proactively become a law enforcement officer," Levy said. "I can't imagine what kind of society that would lead to. . . . This is not the Wild West."

Napolitano, who moves from attorney general to governor in January, opposes the newest militia effort, said Kris Mayes, her spokeswoman.

"She thinks it needs to stop, and cooler heads need to prevail. She believes it is a dangerous situation, and that there isn't any place in Arizona for vigilantism," Mayes said.

Glenn Spencer, whose American Border Patrol organization set up headquarters southeast of Sierra Vista in August, said he's urging Simcox and his militia to "obey the law."

Spencer said his organization could have taken a more aggressive approach, like the one demonstrated by the Texas-based Ranch Rescue group, which last month intercepted two marijuana loads while patrolling on a privately owned ranch in Santa Cruz County.

But American Border Patrol chose a different focus.

The group's volunteers are encouraged to observe, document and report illegal border activity for posting on his Internet site - not for interception, he said.

"We believe in the rule of law. It's what holds civilization together. Taking the law into your own hands is clearly not adhering to the law," Spencer said. "It's tempting to go down that road, but I'm not going to do it. . . . I don't think I'd be happy with the kind of people that would show up."

The new call to arms on the border follows a long history of vigilantism there, said Doris Meissner, the former Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner who led the Border Patrol through much of the last decade and now serves as a senior fellow with the Migration Policy Institute in Washington.

Those advocating such activity say it is justified because of government failures, Meissner said.

"There have been calls like this before. . . . It is vigilantism, and there is no place for vigilantism," she said. "It hinders operations."

But there is no justification in the law for stifling the rhetoric, she added. The First Amendment protects such political speech.

"What is really going on here is political, and during my experience as commissioner, we treated it as exactly that - a political statement," Meissner said.

"This group is tapping into a deeply embedded fear and generally a lack of knowledge of what's going on at the border. That makes it even more important to make sure there is a clear understanding of why this kind of citizen action is misplaced in law."

* The Associated Press contributed to this report. * Contact reporter Ignacio Ibarra at (520) 432-2766 or at nacho1@mindspring.com.

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[dirtboy]

Have you read the Homeland Security Act yet? (I haven't finished it.)

I read about 3/4s of it, and then realized I should wait for the final version. I am now re-reading that bill. But most of it is just brain-numbing administrative detail, and a few potentially problematic areas where the new Secretary and a new commission will have some vaguely-defined discretionary powers.

What new powers in it (if any) does the Fed have to reduce 2nd Amendment rights?

Haven't seen any.

[Jennikins]

You are right, Fitz. I read in yesterday's LA newspaper that the Mexican trucks will be allowed access throughout the U.S. Also that they were initiating bus service from Mexico to the U.S. President Bush obviously has approved these measures.

We can't win this fight with all that is against us.

[DLfromthedesert]

Excuse me, people have the right to protect their own property. These people are mostly ex-law enforement types sho are on PRIVATE ranches that have been pillaged by illegal entrants.