Thread: Activists say Minutemen causing fear; ACLU offers training i

Activists say Minutemen causing fear; ACLU offers training in El Paso
Fear of a civilian patrol group is prompting fewer contractors to pick up workers from Houston corners where day laborers congregate, some activists said.

Workers' fear over the Minuteman volunteers probably led to some day laborers also abandoning their usual corners. And the same concerns caused a day labor organizational meeting Saturday to be closed to the media, according to organizers.

Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union on Saturday began training volunteers in El Paso who plan to monitor the Minuteman volunteers during their planned patrols along the border in October.

The Minuteman Civil Defense Corp. said it plans to patrol Texas' border with Mexico in October, repeating an action it took along Arizona's border in April. The group, which seeks to reduce illegal immigration, also has said it will watch day laborers in Houston and write down the license plate numbers of contractors who pick them up.

The ACLU plans to have volunteers, wearing clearly marked shirts, watch to ensure there are not civil or human rights violations along the border.

"When you go and you actually talk to them, you'll see that the underlying reason they're here is not because of immigration or drugs, but because this country is changing," Claudia Guevara, a coordinator from Los Angeles for ACLU's Legal Observer program, said in a story in Sunday's online edition of the El Paso Times.

Officials with the Minuteman project disagree.

"The government has continued to fail to enforce U.S. immigration laws for four decades now, and it's time for the U.S. people to present their case under the First Amendment, and that's how we're doing it," said Jim Gilchrist, a founder of the Minuteman Project.

In Houston, Maria Jimenez, a leader of the Coalition Against Intolerance and for Respect, said the laborers are very scared.

Houston police stopped photographing day laborers in July after receiving pressure from immigrant rights groups.

But some immigrant advocates concede that the Minutemen might be encouraged to hear they're already having an effect.

"This is already starting," Juan Alvarez, another leader of the coalition, said in a story in Sunday's Houston Chronicle. "We can't reverse it."

Such tension is divisive to a community and workers should respond to the Minutemen's arrival in a nonviolent manner, said Francisco Pacheco from the National Day Labor Organizing Network, based in Los Angeles.

"The situation here is becoming more delicate," he said after touring day labor sites Friday.

The coalition organized Saturday's meeting so the laborers could meet with Pacheco, who has worked in areas as Long Island, N.Y., where conflicts have resulted between residents and day laborers.

Houston is home to an estimated 350,000 to 400,000 illegal immigrants, according to demographers
http://www.dfw.com/mld/startelegram/new ... 501297.htm

Glad to read that the minutemen are already having an effect. I just want to bang my head when I read the ACLU volunteers will be onserving to see if there is civil and human rights violations. HELLO, you are breaking the law by entering illegally