Thread: Meet the Minutemen

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Meet the Minutemen
A magnet of controversy, anti-illegal immigration group fights label as racists with a simple message: "Let"s secure our border."

By Dave Orrick
Daily Herald Staff Writer
Posted Sunday, March 05, 2006

At first glance, Terry Gavin and Pete Kozak seem to have little in common.

Gavin, 51, is a married insurance broker who once served on Elgin’s city council. Kozak, an 18-year-old Buffalo Grove High School senior, is readying himself to head off to the University of Arizona to study engineering.

Different musical tastes, different clothes, different generations.

“I’m expecting to see a bunch of grandparents in lawn chairs,” Kozak joked as he strolled into The Centre of Elgin last weekend.

But Kozak and Gavin agree on at least one thing: They think it’s ridiculous that waves of people, mostly Mexicans, illegally cross the U.S. border each year, and the federal government seems unable, or unwilling, to stop it.

That common belief gave them something else in common at a gathering in Elgin: They signed up to be Minutemen.

The Chicago suburbs may be about a thousand miles from the Mexican border, but lately it’s felt like the state’s on the front lines of immigration debate. From Arlington Heights to Batavia, demonstrations, vigils and even skirmishes involving police in riot gear have grabbed headlines, drawn in TV cameras and pressured political candidates to wade into the treacherous waters of immigration policy.

The attention is largely the result of campaigns by the Illinois Minuteman Project and its nemesis, a coalition of groups that supports some level of amnesty for illegal immigrants already here. Both groups are well-organized and growing.

Formed less than a year ago and originally named the Chicago Minuteman Project, the Illinois Minuteman Project is the local chapter of the national Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, an Arizona-based group that formed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The national group grabbed headlines — many of which members say mischaracterize them — because of their self-fashioned border patrol efforts.

Its principal issue is a call for an end to the flow of some 700,000 illegal border-crossers a year. The total illegal population was estimated 11 million as of June 2005, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

As the legal population of Latino immigrants continues to grow in the suburbs, so has the illegal population. The report ranked Illinois, with 400,000 illegal residents, sixth when compared to other states.

The problem, Minuteman members say, is that illegal immigrants sap public resources, from health care to education, and the country’s porous borders make us vulnerable to terrorist infiltration.

The group’s principal action to draw attention to the issue is for its members to take a tour of duty patrolling the Mexican-American border. The U.S. Border Patrol’s official policy on such activity is cautious.

“Our stand on the Minutemen is that we let the job of patrolling the border and protecting the border be done by people who are trained and certified do so,” says senior border patrol Agent Ramiro Cordero, who’s stationed in El Paso, Texas. However, border patrols in Texas have not taken any measures against the citizen patrols.

“We encourage any citizens to get involved and report illegal activity,” he says.

The Minuteman’s leaders and literature call for members to avoid becoming vigilantes.

“We arm ourselves with cell phones and walkie-talkies, and we alert the (federal) Border Patrol when we see illegal activity,” says Rosanna Pulido, a Chicago resident who founded the Illinois chapter in May, after completing her tour on the border last spring in the Southwest.

Born in Chicago, Pulido’s family roots are in Mexico.

“The culture is thick in my family,” she says. “My dad always told people who didn’t learn English and bragged about Mexican pride, ‘If you like Mexico so much, move back.’æ”

Her group’s message has resonated, she says. Nationally, the organization claims 6,500 members committed to patrolling the border and some 120,000 who have donated money. She says the local chapter’s ranks grew from about 450 to roughly 550 after last weekend’s meeting in Elgin, which drew counter-demonstrators, a lot of police and no violence.

But the group’s militia-like language, combined with America’s unease at discussing clashes of cultures and — some members say — liberal media bias, has often landed them the trump card of all labels: racist.

Kozak said he was in school the other day, reading the Daily Herald’s coverage of last weekend’s Minuteman events, when another student glanced over his shoulder. “æ‘Oh, those racists,’ the guy said. I just kept quiet,” Kozak recalls, adding that his fellow student didn’t know Kozak had decided to join.

“At first, I felt a little uneasy because I don’t want to be called a racist,” says Kozak. “But if somebody’s willing to listen to me, they’ll figure out I’m not racist. It’s common sense: Let’s secure our border. Then we can keep them from being exploited and stop the drug and firearms trafficking and people dying in the desert. All these things hurt the Mexican people.”

Like Kozak, Gavin also said he’s hardly lacking compassion for hard-working Mexicans seeking a better life. But, he said, “I just think we need to enforce our laws.” He says health-care services and state programs like low-interest home loans and in-state tuition granted to illegal residents force citizens to subsidize an off-the-books population that can’t even be tracked by law enforcement.

“It’s not a racial issue,” Gavin says. “That’s the part that really irks me, because people who say that don’t know me and they don’t know that I’m married to a minority.”

His wife, Rose, whose father legally emigrated from Mexico, also has decided to become a Minuteman member.

The shades of gray in the debate over immigration don’t stop at skin color. In fact, several suburban Minuteman supporters interviewed by the Daily Herald don’t espouse all the views that the organization does, especially when one delves into the thornier issues.

For example, while Pulido says she doesn’t support a military-style roundup of illegal immigrants already living here, she does believe they should all be deported “as they are caught, and most would be caught for lack of insurance or not having a driver’s license.”

Bill O’Neill, a 49-year-old Elgin resident who helped organize last week’s Elgin meeting, says he’s not sure that’s the solution.

“I’m really up in the air about that because it’s really going to cause economic hardship on these companies (who employ illegals), but then again they’ve profited for so long,” says O’Neill, who became involved after his car was struck by an illegal resident who lacked a driver’s license and carried insurance that wouldn’t cover his car’s damage to his satisfaction. “I would hate to see (millions of) people deported, but how do you pick and choose?”

Kozak says he wrestled with what to do with children of illegal adults — children who didn’t have much of a choice about crossing the border.

“I think once the borders are closed, a lot of these problems won’t be as big, and even the hardliners will be ready to compromise,” he says. “I think if people are willing to work here and pay taxes and not have a prior felony conviction, we could allow … essentially the president’s (guest worker) program.”

Gavin says it shouldn’t be a surprise that not every Minuteman agrees on every issue.

“Any group gets large enough and you’re going to have diversity of opinions,” he says. “This is not monolithic, but we do have one issue in common.

“Seal the border.”

Border: Minuteman numbers growing locally

“I’m really up in the air about that because it’s really going to cause economic hardship on these companies (who employ illegals), but then again they’ve profited for so long,” says O’Neill,

you lost me there, fella. These businesses are exctly the criminals that have caused this mess and they need to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Go out of business? they deserve to -and let the honest law-abiding company take their market. How about OUR economic hardship.

I've said this a hundred times; If a company cannot afford to not hire illegals, then they shouldn't be in business.

We should refer to them as illegal businesses.

IMPEACHMENT NOW!!!

I like that, Rockfish, "Illegal Businesses". Let's call them what they are.