Thread: Desperate Crossings: Americans protecting the border

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?secti ... id=4267590

Desperate Crossings: Americans protecting the border
Eyewitness News At The Border Part Two
Eyewitness News' Diana Williams
(Arizona-WABC, June 13, 2006) - Eyewitness News has a fascinating look at what some Americans are willing to do to protect the U.S. border. They are taking matters into their own hands.

Private citizens armed with guns are patrolling the U.S.- Mexico border to keep immigrants from crossing into this country.
We followed two different groups, both claim to be humanitarians, but they have very different ideas about how to deal with the hundreds of thousands of immigrants making a dangerous crossing.

Carol Hand wears a gun at her waist as she tracks immigrant trails south of Tucson.

"It is dangerous, you bet it is," she said.

Carol is a chiropractor from Phoenix fed up with the flood of illegals and the trash they leave behind. If she sees a group of immigrants, she will alert the border patrol.

Diana Williams: "How often do you think people are coming through this way?"

"Every day, every night. It's constant. It is like somebody left the faucet on. It is not dripping, it is running," Carol added.

"We want our boarders secure. The federal government has failed to do anything," Lance Altherr, with the Minutemen, said.

Altherr, a landscaper, is helping to fill a gap in the fencing along the southern Arizona desert. He is a minuteman, part of a civilian group determined to take back the country's borders. He too wears as gun.

"I am not out here hunting people. I saw what happened in New York on 9/11 ... we had terrorists. Anybody can walk across this border," Lance said.

But while some would quickly turn immigrants in, many others won't. They are humanitarians that work out here on the desert looking for immigrants so they can help them.

It is early morning and Delle McCormack is trekking the desert looking for illegal immigrants. She is calling out with offer of help, but it is highly unlikely anyone will accept.

"They are hiding. Their lives depend on their being invisible," she said.

Delle and other humanitarians carry water, clean socks, food for immigrants in distress. They check water stations and worry the government's border crackdown will cost more lives.

"They will move deeper into the desert where there is less likely to be traffic, less likely to be boarder patrol, it's much more dangerous," Delle added.

Bodies can turn to bones in a day in the desert heat. Last year, almost 500 immigrants died trying to cross this harsh terrain, most from heat exhaustion and dehydration.

"People who see us out here know that there are people in the United States who care, who don't want to let them die as they cross the border," Delle said.

The Minutemen say what they are doing is humanitarian, too.

"Nobody dies going through the front door, they die when they come across unsecure border," Carol said.

Neither group is allowed to interfere with immigrant's crossing. Samaritans can be arrested if they transport an illegal immigrant who is ill to the hospital. All civilians are supposed to call the border patrol for assistance.

If and when they finally make it past the desert, what makes them think that they will have a job considering how the crackdowns across the country are evolving? Employers are getting itchy and are more fearful of prosecution.

I would like to know what happened to the old law, I think it is still on the books called Citizens Arrest?Why can't legal American citizens make a citizens arrest if they find someone breaking our laws and they have the balls to make that arrest???why is it not legal?

This comes from Wikipedia regarding citizen arrests:

United States
All states permit citizen arrests if a felony crime is witnessed by the citizen carrying out the arrest, or when a citizen is asked to help apprehend a suspect by the police. The application of state laws varies widely with respect to misdemeanor crimes, breaches of the peace, and felonies not witnessed by the arresting party. In California, for example, there is no requirement that a lawful arrest be executed by a citizen (as opposed to an alien or illegal immigrant), and the citizen's arrest is referred to as a "private person arrest." Note particularly that American citizens do not have the authorities or the legal protections of the police, and are liable before both the civil law and criminal law for any violation of the rights of another.