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Posted on Tue, Aug. 15, 2006

Far from nation's borders, Minuteman groups growing

GARANCE BURKE
Associated Press

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A retired police captain from the sprawling Kansas City suburbs is starting a local chapter of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, one of dozens of branches surfacing in the Heartland as the group expands its reach beyond the U.S.-Mexico border.

Ed Hayes, who joined the group just six months ago, said the Minutemen hope to identify illegal immigrants in their homes and on the job to pressure federal officials to enforce immigration laws - apartment by apartment.

"Anybody that wants to can go to the border. I just feel there's enough to do right here," said Hayes, a 64-year-old grandfather from Overland Park, Kan. "If you go to the stores on Saturdays, they're full of people who are legal immigrants, I'm sure. But many of them don't speak our language and you can be assured that they're illegal."

The controversial civilian watch group is best known for sending its members to stake out the desert in round-the-clock shifts to report illegal immigrants to immigration officials. But its newest recruits say proposals to grant illegal immigrants a path toward citizenship motivated them to get active at home, in the Midwest.

The group's national training coordinator, Greg Thompson, estimates he has trained 30 new Minutemen leaders in the past two-and-a half months. He said most of the chapters are popping up in areas like Sioux Falls, S.D., and Omaha, Neb., which are only now experiencing the demographic change that occurred generations ago in traditional gateway states such as Texas and Arizona.

In Missouri, where the U.S. Census Bureau says the immigrant population has increased 31 percent in the last five years, the group is opening branches in Springfield and Joplin, two cities near poultry plants nestled in the Ozark Mountains.

"The whole purpose of the Minutemen is to secure our borders, and to get that done we know we're going to have to turn up the heat on politicians in every state," said Thompson, a retired advertising executive in Oklahoma City. "We're also going to go out on the job and identify contractors that are hiring illegals. If he keeps it up, we're going to turn him into the authorities."

Such tactics could backfire in the construction industry, where unions are increasingly courting immigrant day laborers in hopes of reversing a longtime decline in membership and clout.

And determining the legal status of workers on a given job site is no easy matter. Thompson said he trained leaders to ask workers a series of simple questions, such as what their favorite food was. If the worker couldn't answer the questions, Thompson said volunteers should assume the worker is undocumented and report him to his employer or to law enforcement.

In so-called "sanctuary cities" like Kansas City and Houston, where police and other local agencies don't inquire about a person's immigration status on routine stops, such reports could fall on deaf ears, officials say.

"Local law enforcement is not going to be able to arrest its way out of this issue," Kansas City Police Chief James Corwin said when testifying in June before a special immigration committee of the Missouri Legislature. "And we're very mindful that we have to report racial profiling numbers to the attorney general's office."

Officials at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said they welcomed tips about immigration matters from the public. But officers have to prioritize issues that impact national security or public safety, agency spokesman Tim Counts said.

Long-time immigration observers, meanwhile, said while the Minutemen's reach was increasing, the group's impact would be tempered by the growth of political organizations that seek to create a welcoming environment for immigrants.

"Historically in this country, we've seen an upswing in anti-immigrant activities every time there's an increase in the immigration population," said Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington. "It takes us a while to remember as a country that we are an immigration nation."