Thread: Minuteman group plans Canadian border action

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Minuteman group plans Canadian border action


MARY LANE GALLAGHER
THE BELLINGHAM HERALD


A controversial group known for gathering armed volunteers to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border to slow illegal immigration plans to patrol America's northern border as well.

A representative from the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps recently spent two weeks in Washington state, including Whatcom County, to start two chapters here, one on each side of the Cascades, said Chris Simcox, president and founder of the Tombstone, Ariz.,-based organization.

Washington is one of several northern states to which volunteers want to bring the border-guarding effort, Simcox said.


"We've had an overwhelming response from people along the northern border, who feel we need to do the same thing there," he said.

Volunteers with the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps patrolled an otherwise unguarded stretch of the Arizona border last spring, and Simcox plans to expand the effort this fall to parts of the border in California, Texas and New Mexico.

About 50 people in Washington state have expressed an interest, Simcox said. The Minuteman group plans to hold informational meetings for potential volunteers, he said.

Simcox said the volunteers would set up "static observation outposts" along the border and spot people sneaking across the border, then call Border Patrol officials to catch them.

"We have no contact," he said. "You spot, you report, you retreat. You share that information with the proper authorities."

The northern border doesn't have as many illegal immigrants crossing it as the southern border, Simcox said. But illegal immigration is still a problem here, he said, because of Canada's openness to refugees.

"Canada just takes everybody," he said. "These folks realize, our border security is zero. Why go through a border checkpoint when you can drive out into the country and just drive in?"

"We've identified over 200 roads that cross the border in the north, that have no checkpoints," Simcox said. "It's just so easy."

Simcox said his group over the past three years has helped border agents track down more than 6,000 people they would have missed crossing the southern border illegally.

More importantly, Simcox said, the group has drawn national attention to what he called "the greatest risk to national security that we have."
FEDERAL REACTION

The Minuteman group has drawn protests in other communities. A protest organized by a civil-rights group in Las Cruces, N.M., drew hundreds of supporters. Such protests divert attention away from "the real problem" of lax border security, Simcox said.

While he said the group welcomes immigrants "when they come through a port of entry," he blamed illegal immigration for gangs and drug-related crime in Arizona. Human smugglers and other criminals are rampant in unguarded areas of the U.S.-Mexico border, Simcox said, which is why Minuteman volunteers are armed.

"You don't go near that border out here without being armed to defend your life," he said. "We've got chaos going on."

But Simcox doesn't expect volunteers will have to be as worried about protecting themselves along the northern border.

"The chances of you running into a group of 100 people coming across (the northern) border armed, carrying drugs, is not as great a threat," he said.

Federal officials have largely distanced themselves from the volunteer group.

Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert C. Bonner told The Associated Press last month that his agency was considering something like a volunteer "border auxiliary." But the next day, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman said that border patrols should only be done by "highly trained professional law-enforcement officials."

Locally, though, law-enforcement officials said they don't mind help from the public, provided no laws are broken.

"As long as they obey the law, and they don't take the law into their own hands, and they merely report suspicious circumstances, we'd welcome it," said Whatcom County Sheriff Bill Elfo, who said he was contacted last month by someone representing the Minuteman group to set up a meeting.

"They certainly have every right to come to Washington and do whatever lawful things they wish to do," said Joe Giuliano, deputy chief patrol agent with the Blaine sector of the U.S. Border Patrol.

"If they do as any good citizen would do, report to appropriate authorities things out of place, frankly that's the type of activity we encourage," Giuliano said.

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