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"Minutemen" Halfway Through Texas Operations
LAST UPDATE: 10/13/2005 1:04:45 PM
Posted By: Jim Forsyth
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The Minutemen civilian border patrol group is halfway through its month-long operations along the Texas-Mexico border, and the group says it is getting the attention of would be illegal immigrants in Latin America, and politicians in Washington.

"We're getting the politicians on board and they're notifying Bush that this kind of thing is going to happen whether he likes it or not, and that's our goal," said Shannon McGauley of Arlington, a leader of Texas Minutemen, Inc, one of several Minutemen groups active in Texas. He spoke with 1200 WOAI news from a ranch near Ft. Hancock, east of El Paso, where he is participating in Minutemen activities.

McGauley says his unit is staging aerial patrols as well as watching for illegal immigrants on the ground, with several members who are pilots flying over the Rio Grande and reporting suspicious activity to the Border Patrol. McGauley says the fact that the Minutemen are active in the air, "really makes the ACLU mad."

The Minutemen say they'll continue their operations in Texas until the end of this month.

McGauley says he hasn't seen that many illegal immigrants.

"They are avoiding the areas," he said. "I think the ones that we run into are really not keeping up with the current news."

McGauley says the group has been successful in fending off planned counter protests by Latino and anti-Minutemen groups, as well as from the American Civil Liberties Union. That's largely because all Minuteman activities in Texas are taking place on privately owned land.

"This is private property, they can't come on. I'm afraid the ACLU had to learn that the hard way, they were told that if they tried to come onto his property again, they would be arrested for criminal trespass."

The Minutemen activites in Texas have been relatively calm, with no serious incidents reported.