Thread: Jim Gilchrist Says Minutemen Are Violent And Sinister

Minutemen leader laments path of anti-illegal immigration groups



When Jim Gilchrist headed to the U.S.-Mexico border three years ago to press for tougher immigration enforcement, he carried binoculars.

Today, Gilchrist is worried that a few self-proclaimed patriots might be carrying a gun.

After seeing online videos that encouraged border violence amid calls to crack down on illegal immigration, the 59-year-old Aliso Viejo resident said he feels responsible for what started out as a publicity campaign and has since fallen prey to internal divisions and to influence by people he believed had "Saddam Hussein mentalities."

"In retrospect, had I seen this, had I had a crystal ball to see what is going to happen… Am I happy? No," Gilchrist said in a phone conversation late last week. "Am I happy at the outcome of this whole movement? I am very, very sad, very disappointed."

A retired accountant, Gilchrist rose to the national scene when he led civilians on a border-watching mission in 2005. He appeared on countless TV interviews and news programs and took the issue of illegal immigration one step further when, several months later, he ran and lost a race against Rep. John Campbell, R-Irvine, to represent California's 48th Congressional district.

Last year, Gilchrist had a falling out with several of his former Minuteman Project collaborators, who accuse him of mismanaging the organization's funds. The dispute landed the group in court and splintered the anti-illegal immigration movement, which had been gathering steam amid several attempts in Congress to pass an overhaul of the immigration system.

Looking back, Gilchrist said he wished he had done more to root out troublemakers in the organization – both those who opposed him politically and those who instigate violence.

"There's all kinds of organizations that have spawned from the Minuteman Project and I have to say, some of the people who have gotten into this movement have sinister intentions," he said.

"It's an 'invasion'," Gilchrist said of illegal immigration across the border between the United States and Mexico, "but it's not a war. It is a covert 'Trojan Horse invasion'."

THEN AND NOW

That's a marked difference from the Gilchrist who led supporters on a caravan across the country two years ago to President Bush's ranch in Crawford, TX, shouting at critics before leaving from Los Angeles: "Minutemen, stand your ground!… If it's a war he wants, then let it begin here."

The year before, just back from the border trip, he told a group of 150 supporters at an anti-illegal immigration group meeting: ``I'm damned proud to be a vigilante.''

Last year, a coalition of human rights and labor groups labeled Gilchrist a "voice of intolerance" in the debate over immigration reform. In 2005, the Montgomery, Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center reported that neo-Nazis had joined the border-watching event led by Gilchrist.

The Minuteman Project was successful at tapping into core concerns among moderate Republicans and galvanizing them on the issue of immigration reform, said Louis DeSipio, a UC Irvine political science professor. But over the last year, immigration reform has slipped from the top of the national agenda, displaced by economic woes such as gas prices and the housing slump.

"At its peak, the group had a range of people," DeSipio said. "The sort of core of the movement was always people who took the metaphor of an invasion seriously and it's those (people) who have the potential to violence and are willing to use the web at least as a way of seeing if they can stir something up."

"As public opinion has moved away from immigration as being a highly salient issue and other things have come to the fore, the suburban patriot has moved in other directions," he said.

ADOPT-A-HIGHWAY

Now, Gilchrist continues to run his group with a web site that carries his name. He has adopted a two-mile stretch of Route 133 under California's Adopt-A-Highway program, planning to pick up litter and keep the roadway clean in exchange for the right to a promotional sign.

His former collaborators, including Barbara Coe of the California Coalition of Immigration Reform, continue to lobby for immigration enforcement on their own. Coe said she hasn't seen Gilchrist at rallies or on the border for some time.

Coe, an anti-illegal immigration activist since 1991, said she hasn't come across any instigators in her group. "Because that is rule number 1," she said. "You do not use inflammatory language and you never, never get violent – obviously, unless it is in the case of self-defense."

Gilchrist readily admits the movement has splintered over the last year. He said he still has ties to about 20 Minuteman Project chapters around the country – but used to have more.

Sometimes, Gilchrist said he thinks about leaving the debate over illegal immigration and taking on a new issue like urban blight or tax reform. For now, he said he will continue to lobby for more border patrol agents but not from a perch on the border, watching for people trying to cross.

"I have found, after four years in this movement (…) I very well may have been fighting for people with less character and less integrity than the 'open border fanatics' I have been fighting against," he said. "And that is a phenomenal indictment of something I have created."[/b]

He has moved so far from the original goals that he will be working for Juan Hernandez next.

"I have found, after four years in this movement (…) I very well may have been fighting for people with less character and less integrity than the 'open border fanatics' I have been fighting against," he said. "And that is a phenomenal indictment of something I have created."[/b]

Now if that's not a case of the pot calling the kettle black, I don't know what is.