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Group seeks minutemen to monitor illegals
Members to focus on businesses that employ immigrants

By BRYAN MITCHELL, mitchellb@knews.com
June 15, 2005


MORRISTOWN, Tenn. - Phillip Goff and his wife, Cindie, recently moved to Hamblen County from California to escape problems they saw associated with illegal immigration.
The couple described overcrowded schools with classes taught in English and Spanish, a troubled health-care system struggling to keep pace with the flow of uninsured, undocumented patients and increasingly scarce jobs.

"We decided we had enough," Phillip Goff said.

But when the couple relocated to East Tennessee five months ago, they say they found many of the same problems here.

"All of our resources are being used up by the illegal aliens instead of the people who paid the taxes," Cindie Goff said.

The couple was among roughly 30 people who attended an organizational meeting Tuesday evening of the Tennessee Volunteer Minutemen held at the Morristown Public Library.

The group is an outgrowth of the Arizona Border Watch, a group that gained national headlines earlier this year.

Arizona Border Watch wants to increase awareness about illegal immigration and provide a "neighborhood watch" type of operation to report suspicious activity in and around U.S. border areas, according to the group's Web site, www.azborderwatch.us.

Participants refer to themselves as minutemen after the people who were ready to fight on a minute's notice against the British during the Revolutionary War.

Tuesday's meeting follows an announcement by the U.S. Census Bureau that one in seven people in the United States is of Hispanic heritage.

President Bush proposed a temporary worker program last year, one year after the government announced that Hispanics had surpassed blacks as the nation's largest minority.

Such developments, in addition to the perception that Hispanics are taking U.S. jobs, led to the Tennessee Volunteer Minutemen program.

Without a border to defend in Tennessee, however, the Hamblen County group has altered its focus from its parent organization.

East Tennessee organizer Carl "Two Feathers" Whitaker, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2002 and is an independent candidate in 2006, said the Tennessee Volunteer Minutemen plan to report businesses that employ illegal immigrants to the government.

Morristown Chamber of Commerce officials have said they're unaware of the use of illegal immigrant workers in Hamblen County.

Whitaker said he has already turned over five businesses to the Department of Homeland Security in Memphis. He declined Tuesday to release the names of the businesses to the News Sentinel.

"That would be like handing over the playbook to the opponent right before the game," Whitaker said. "We have to enforce this; we have to stop this."

One elected official was on hand for Tuesday's meeting.

Hamblen County Commissioner Tom Lowe spoke in favor of immigration reform and of the Tennessee Volunteer Minutemen.

"We do everything we can within the law," Lowe said. "We can't take the law into our own hands."

East Tennessee organizer Carl "Two Feathers" Whitaker, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2002 and is an independent candidate