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Alabama Minuteman Support Team heading to New Mexico to patrol

By ROSA RAMIREZ
BIRMINGHAM POST-HERALD

Scattered throughout the living room of a house in Cook Springs, Gary Buie and five others learned about what they may see when they travel to New Mexico for a monthlong border patrol.
Buie, 53, has signed up to be one of 30 Alabama volunteers in the first round of the Alabama Minuteman Support Team that plans to travel to New Mexico the first week of October to assist the New Mexico Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. They hope to stop people from illegally crossing the 180-mile border stretch between New Mexico and the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The group hopes to eventually send about 125 people to New Mexico.

Volunteers cannot detain individuals but are instructed to immediately contact border patrol agents if immigrants attempt to cross the border illegally or if they notice possible drug-smuggling activity.

The Alabama Minuteman Support Team plans to provide equipment and support. The group, which met in a home owned by Buie's family in Cook Springs, northeast of Birmingham, underwent the first of several scheduled training sessions on how to operate short-range radios, field telephones and seismic intrusion devices that can detect the movement of vehicles, humans and animals.

At their training meeting on Saturday, five people showed up, all men, but only three were planning to make the trip. Most did not want their photographs take or names used.

During the meeting, the volunteers saw how someone walking some 30 miles away from the seismic intrusion device can be detected.

The Minuteman Project, which conducted a similar monthlong border observation in April and included some Alabamians, also is planning to conduct a border patrol in at least seven northern border states along the U.S.-Canadian border this October. They also plan to patrol California and Texas.

Mike Vanderboegh, Alabama Minuteman Support Team spokesman, who conducted the seismic training in Cook Springs, warned volunteers that they may encounter drug smugglers and others who are "very violent and nasty people."

He stressed volunteers must not be confrontational.

"We must not act like vigilantes, even though the press and protesters will call us that ... ," Vanderboegh told the group.

"We must not appear to be too ready," he said after telling them that in New Mexico they were allowed to openly carry a side arm.

Vanderboegh said all volunteers will undergo a criminal background check before heading to New Mexico in October. Training sessions will be held for volunteers every weekend in September, he said.

Vanderboegh said he is retired and lives on Social Security disability payments. In 1996, Vanderboegh was a board member of the South Dakota-based militia group Tri-States Militia.

The Minuteman Project previously has been criticized by the Montgomery-based Southern Poverty Law Center, which said the project does not have adequate screening methods.

Heidi Beirich, a spokeswoman for the center said, "In the case of Arizona (Minuteman Project) lots of extremists, gun nuts and white supremacists were attracted. I'm sure the elements remain the same (for the New Mexico border patrol)."

She said the SPLC has not decided if they will send volunteers to monitor the activities.

Increasing violence along the border caused New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson recently to declare a state of emergency in four New Mexico counties: Dona Ana, Luna, Grant and Hidalgo counties.

"Recent developments have convinced me this (state of emergency) is necessary, including violence directed at law enforcement, damage to property and livestock, increased evidence of drug smuggling and an increase in the number of undocumented immigrants," Richardson said in a statement.

Two separate surveys conducted for a Pew Hispanic Center study examined attitudes toward immigrants and immigration policy by Hispanics in the United States and in Mexico. A sample of 1,200 adults was surveyed.

The surveys found 21 percent of respondents would be inclined to "go live and work in the United States without authorization."

The report also showed that if immigrants had access to a temporary worker program, allowing them to enter and work in the United States, they would take advantage of it.

More than half of Mexican respondents in both surveys said they would be inclined to go to the United States through such a program that would require them to return to Mexico.

"We as American citizens have an obligation to maintain the rule of law," Buie said outside the house with his teenage daughter and son by his side. "No one is above the law or below the law. The laws are to be equally applied."

For Buie, participating in the Alabama Minuteman Support Team means more than just preventing people from entering the country illegally, he said.

It also means respecting the immigration process thousands of immigrants follow in order to enter, stay and work in the country legally, he said.

"It would have been easy for me to call my father-in-law ... and said meet us in Canada and drive us across," he said, speaking of the laborious process he and his wife went through when they submitted an application to the then-Immigration and Naturalization Service office to bring his adopted son, Robert, to the United States from Hungary.

He said the immigration process took more than six months, including a series of interviews about his life, his wife and his daughter.

"They had me answering questions (on behalf of the child) like 'Are you here for terrorist purposes?' " he said. At the time, his adopted son was 7.

"It's true we're a nation of immigrants," Buie said. "The immigrants came under the laws they had at that time."

Buie's children Robert, 15, and Siusan, 18, said they want to help in any way they can with the October New Mexico Minuteman Project.

"I want to help out with the illegal immigration epidemic," Robert Buie said.
Police murder trial delayed until October

Attorneys for other man involved say more time needed By WILLIAM C. SINGLETON III
The trial of the second person charged with capital murder in the deaths of three Birmingham police officers has been postponed until October.

Nathaniel Woods' trial was scheduled to begin today, but his attorneys said they needed more time to interview a witness prosecutors planned to call to the stand.

The witness, Michael Meyers, is an inmate who said Woods made statements about his involvement in the police shooting.

Authorities in July recovered what they consider a letter that shows Woods' intent in killing Officers Charles Bennett, Harley Chisholm III and Carlos Owen when they arrived at his Ensley apartment to serve a warrant on June 17, 2004.

Kerry Spencer, the triggerman in the shooting, was convicted of capital murder in June and sentenced to life in prison without parole. However, Jefferson County Circuit Judge Tommy Nail could overrule the jury's recommendation and impose the death penalty.

Cythnia Umstead and Rita Briles, Woods' attorneys, said the letter is actually lyrics from a rap song. They argued they needed more time to interview Meyers and others who might know him.

"He's making claims Nate told him something in jail our client denies saying," Umstead said.

Prosecutors David Barber and Mara Sirles argued the case should continue. But Nail granted the motion to continue the case until Oct. 3.

"In all fairness, I don't see how I can force them to trial on Monday morning," he said. "I think an appellate court would reverse this case just like that" if the delay isn't allowed.

Barber, Jefferson County district attorney, expressed disappointment in the delay but said the state would be ready in October.

Greg Owen, son of Carlos Owen, said he wanted to get the trial over with.

"Yeah, it's disappointing," he said outside Nail's courtroom. "I'm still nauseous from the first trial."

Umstead said the judge did the right thing.

"When trying to do trial prep and you're hit with new information, that complicates the matter immensely," she said. "There's still a lot of work to do because of this."