http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_3073365

3 legislators to patrol Arizona border
By Michael Riley
Denver Post Staff Writer

Three GOP Colorado legislators will spend two nights patrolling the Arizona desert in search of illegal immigrants next week.

Escorted by a controversial group known as the Minuteman Project, the armed patrols are part of a week-long fact-finding mission that will include discussions with local lawmakers in the state hardest hit by the illegal flow of immigrants across the border.

"We need to understand this thing firsthand," said Rep. David Schultheis, R-Colorado Springs, who will lead the group. "It is affecting every area of society, and we have to deal with it."

Schultheis said the legislators - including Rep. Jim Welker of Loveland and Rep. Bill Crane of Arvada - are paying for the trip themselves. They plan to carry guns during the patrols.

He described the mission as a prelude to a major Republican push to address illegal immigration in the Colorado legislature.

He faces big obstacles, say Democratic colleagues, not the least of which is that immigration is almost entirely a federal issue. Schultheis' push in the last session to restrict local services for illegal immigrants failed in committee on a party-line vote.

"If they want to see something, all they have to do is go downtown. There is a corner out there where everyone is jumping into trucks for day labor," said Rep. Val Vigil, D-Thornton.

"Maybe they just have a need to be able to strap a gun around their waist, I don't know. Whatever tickles

their pinky. But it isn't going to help the state of Colorado," he said.
The Minuteman Project became controversial in April, when thousands of volunteers from across the country descended on the Arizona border to conduct citizen patrols. There are as many as 12 million illegal immigrants in the country, most of whom entered through the leaky Southwestern border.

As the number of illegal immigrants in Colorado has climbed, Schultheis said, the costs to the state have ballooned. He said the costs of providing education, emergency health care and prison space easily reaches into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

But Rep. Fran Coleman, D- Denver, said none of that will be helped by joining armed patrols.

"Any state representative or state senator who goes armed into supposedly dangerous areas is asking for trouble," Coleman said. "Why don't they plan a pheasant hunt instead?"