http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/ ... irst1.html

Border issue reveals cultural rift

May. 20, 2005 04:35 PM

REGARDING THE MINUTEMEN

Jack Hart
Freelance writer
Former newspaper editor and reporter

A "cultural divide separating media elites from ordinary people" has been created by the press reaction to the Minutemen's volunteer effort to stop immigration from Mexico. That is the emphatic conclusion of Leo W. Banks, a 30-year reporter in Tucson. Having witnessed the agony of Arizona residents near the border, he is adamant that the invasion by violent, destructive illegal immigrants must be stopped.
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Banks might want to add the U. S. Border Patrol to his list of opponents if there turns out to be truth in allegations now being made that its agents have been ordered not to arrest illegal aliens in the area where the Minutemen had patrolled, because an increase of apprehensions now would prove the effectiveness of the volunteers when they were on the scene.

The Washington Times, which broke the story, reported that more than a dozen agents had revealed that arrests were "not to go up" along the 23-mile section of border monitored by the volunteers. One agent said supervisors "were clear in their intention" to offset the effect of the Minuteman vigil.

Reporter Banks, in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, reports from the scene that there was a reduced "number of illegals coming across...where the Minutemen were stationed." But that was not reported by visiting reporters, he contends, because "that's not the story most editors and producers wanted." What they wanted, Banks says, was a report saying, "Gun-toting vigilantes run amok in the desert, hunting harmless illegals who are only looking for work."

Banks draws a horror picture of border residents routinely being threatened in their homes at night, having their livestock slaughtered, being chased off the roads by high-speed immigrant haulers and cleaning up messes of pill bottles, syringes, used needles and "pile after pile of human feces."

"How long do you suppose such outrages would go on in Fairfield, Conn.? Or Greenwich?" he wonders.

Banks is buoyed by a poll finding that 57 percent of Arizona residents supported the volunteer border watch. But, he says, the report "sent the editorial page editor of Tucson's Arizona Daily Star into a stammering fit, calling the number alarming." He adds, "Of course, this is a paper so politically correct it can't even bring itself to call illegals illegals. Its writers refer to them as migrants or, my favorite, border crossers."

However, he says, the Minutemen plan to expand operations to five more states and that a new citizen group, the Yuma Patriots, plans to get into the act.

"It looks to me like the rednecks won," the veteran reporter concludes.