Thread: OC REgister Mis Counts NUmber of Minutemen in CA

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/ne ... 084166.php

Sunday, April 2, 2006
Citizen patrols back on duty
MinutemanProject revives monthlong watches along pockets of border stretching from CaliforniatoTexas.

By MICHAEL CORONADO
The Orange County Register


JACUMBA – On a 2-mile stretch of dirt road, about 65 miles southeast of San Diego, they took positions behind a rusted iron fence that separates the United States and Mexico.

About a dozen border-watch volunteers unpacked lunchboxes, lawn chairs and coffee. They unfurled American flags and scoured the weed-filled desert for people.

Saturday began the formal monthlong call to action for the Minuteman Project, the citizen-watch patrols that last year galvanized followers, enraged protesters and drew throngs of media to desolate border towns like Douglas, Naco and Tombstone, Ariz.

The border watch, along pockets of land stretching from California to Texas, coincided with Saturday's protest marches in Costa Mesa and last week's massive march in Los Angeles against immigration bills under review by lawmakers.

Minuteman volunteers said this year that they seek the same answers to the border issue they sought last year: a lack of enforcement by the government to adequately police the border, refusal to crack down on errant employers who give jobs to undocumented workers and inaction to deport those in the U.S. illegally.

"I'm not against immigration. I'm vehemently against illegal immigration," said Jim Gilchrist, who attended a rally and border watch in Campo, about 11 miles west of Jacumba. Gilchrist, an Aliso Viejo resident, founded the Minuteman Project last year, which has since spawned into several sister movements. He said he was deeply disturbed by the marches in Los Angeles and student walkouts across Southern California last week.

"When you come to the U.S. and plant a Mexican flag ... to me that precedes a declaration of war," Gilchrist said.

Authorities in Campo said Saturday's afternoon gathering of Minuteman volunteers was uneventful. At least one federal border agent stopped his vehicle at one of the Minuteman checkpoints to thank the volunteers for their work, allowing him to patrol another section of the border.

Notably absent from the early morning border watches were anti-Minuteman protesters who last year showed up at times in sizeable numbers along the Arizona border to rally against the patrols.

Bea Mitchell drove from Fountain Valley to stand watch at a border point in Jacumba.

"We need to know who's coming in," Mitchell said. "You need to do things legally. If I break a rule, I'm in trouble. I think the border should be secure."

True Seaborn, 71, of Los Alamitos is a Minuteman veteran who said the federal government is failing Americans. Seaborn is on his fourth trip out to the California border to patrol since last year.

"If President Bush wanted to halt the flow of illegals into this country, he could do it," Seaborn said.

Steve Taylor of Laguna Woods said residents can see the effect of illegal immigration through crowded emergency rooms and on street corners where day laborers gather.

"It's not race," said Taylor, who is from England. Taylor came to the United States in 1979. "If my own countryman is here and I find out he's illegal, I will report him."

there were 60 people in one location and 80 at another

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