Free Republic

CAMPO – As the sun set, Roy Wood looked out of place patrolling a dirt road a few steps north of a rusty fence that separates the United States from Mexico. The clean-shaven English-as-a-second-language instructor wore a T-shirt tucked in clean blue jeans, a pistol strapped to a belt. Many of the hundreds who make up the self-appointed civilian patrols monitoring the border to deter smuggling of people and drugs are unemployed or underemployed ex-military men who have long resented Mexicans who come to the United States illegally and, in their view, compete for jobs, crowd hospitals and schools and...

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said yesterday that stepped-up immigration enforcement must be coupled with a program that will allow foreigners into the country on a temporary basis to seek employment.Chertoff said a new guest-worker program would meet the economic needs of businesses while creating a system to regulate the burgeoning flow of illegal immigrants into the country.snipSens. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and John Kyl (R-Ariz.) have proposed a temporary worker visa program requiring foreigners to return to their home countries after two years, and mandating that illegal aliens leave the country to apply for work visas. The senators would add...

Minuteman effort may spread into S.D. region Group plans civilian patrols along border By Leslie Berestein UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER April 19, 2005 The media attention garnered by the Minuteman Project in Arizona since the beginning of April is inspiring similar projects to combat illegal immigration elsewhere, including one plan to bring civilian patrols to the border south and east of San Diego this summer. An organization formed last year that calls itself Friends of the Border Patrol hopes to gather enough volunteers to patrol from the ocean to the Imperial Valley. Advertisement "If we can pull it off to the...

COMING TO AMERICA Eye in the sky targets illegals Civilian border group tests high-tech remote surveillance vehicle A civilian border-patrol group has enhanced its surveillance capabilities by employing a high-tech, remote-controlled unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, to assist in spotting illegal aliens attempting to sneak into the U.S. Glenn Spencer, head of American Border Patrol, says his organization has successfully field-tested "Border Hawk," a UAV the group hopes to employ as a surveillance tool. WND profiled the potential utility of UAVs in patrolling border areas last month.The purpose of Saturday's test, which took place over a section of the...