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Border volunteers eye San Diego area
'Minutemen' seek to extend patrols

By Marty Graham, Reuters | June 24, 2005

SAN DIEGO -- Hundreds of self-styled ''peaceful vigilantes" who patrolled the Arizona-Mexico border for illegal immigrants crossing into the United States are targeting a new flashpoint -- the desert near San Diego.

''We want the government to take over so we are going to force them to do their job," said James Chase, a former Marine, who heads a group that is planning patrols near San Diego in July.

''We're not against immigrants. We just want them to come through legal ports of entry."

Scores of Minuteman Project volunteers, who take their name from a militia in the American Revolution, turned up in April in the Arizona desert, some armed, to patrol for illegal immigrants.

President Bush called the participants vigilantes and many in Mexico denounced them as ''migrant hunters." But the groups are allowed to legally watch for immigrants as long as they break no laws.

The new patrols in July were set as Congress considers immigration policy and how to treat the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants already in the United States.

Bush has proposed a guest worker program that would allow immigrants into the country on a temporary basis, while legislation backed by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and Senator Edward Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, could allow the workers to stay permanently.

In California, Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has come under fire after saying that the state's border with Mexico should be ''closed" and then comparing the volunteers of the Minuteman Project to crime watch groups.

Schwarzenegger, who emigrated from Austria, later said he meant that the border should be ''secured" and that the federal government was falling short on the job.

The Minuteman Project does not plan to join the San Diego patrols, although some members will, according to founder Jim Gilchrist.
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