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Armed grannies do their bit to protect America



By Michael Gawenda, Naco, Arizona
December 5, 2005

Thousands of vigilantes patrol the US-Mexico border to curb the illegal immigrant torrent.

WE ARE standing on a small rise at the end of a pot-holed dirt road on the border between Mexico and the US. As far as you can see, the flat, scrub-covered, cactus-dotted desert of southern Arizona shimmers in the afternoon sun.

In the distance, the bare treeless Dragoon Mountains, once Apache country, are shrouded in a haze of pinkish dust.

Across the rickety barbed wire fence, about a metre high, is Mexico â€â€