Average American Citizens Gather to Protect the Border: Minuteman Project

Tim Warren has been feeling the industrial job market tighten since high school, and he blames illegal immigration.

(Border Patrol, ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, Minuteman Project, Chris Simcox, Minutemen Patrols, Gangs, crimes, laws, Congress, Secure Borders, Americans)

10/2/2005
Associated Press
WOAI Radio

So when the 42-year-old aircraft mechanic heard the "minutemen" volunteer border patrols that drew the world's eyes to Arizona were coming to Texas, he decided to join.

"There's a lot of good patriots here," he said Saturday, resting on a camp chair next to the tent he had pitched in a thicket of ebony and live oak. "

Come evening, he and dozens of others were planning to take posts somewhere around the 10,000-acre ranch owned by a couple that is fed up with migrants' trampling.

In April, volunteers with the Arizona Minuteman Project staged an operation that they say helped federal agents catch 335 illegal immigrants.

Leader Chris Simcox said then that the group would expand to other states on the Mexican and Canadian borders if the federal government didn't send troops.

Saturday was the start of monthlong operations in 12 states, including all four southern border states and eight northern border states, Simcox said.

"Our message is we want (the) National Guard and U.S. military at the border," Simcox said. "Until then, this is the nation's largest neighborhood watch group."

But since April, the group has splintered and been copied by Simcox dissenters. Along with Simcox's Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, separate groups known as the Texas Minutemen and U.S. Border Watch also launched surveillance operations Saturday.

Representatives of all three said they planned to be extra eyes and ears for U.S. Customs and Border Protection and not get into contact or conflict with immigrants. All three also said they carefully screened members and allowed only those with licenses to carry guns.

The groups in Texas had a harder time finding places to deploy.

Several heavily Hispanic border communities passed resolutions against them, with leaders saying they put their faith in the U.S. Border Patrol and feared the civilian groups were magnets for racists. The groups also fear the derision and angry protests they have met with in largely Hispanic communities.

Border Patrol spokesman Mario Villarreal said the agency preferred trained law enforcement do the job.

Falfurrias is about 75 miles north of the border, but its ranch land remains part of a key migration route. Once migrants pass the inland immigration checkpoint two miles south of the ranch, they consider themselves home free.

Ranch owner Linda Vickers said she's come out to see Brazilians lounging in the gazebo with the wooden "Cowboy Country Club" sign, where group leaders were now doing their planning.

"That was after 9-11, and the first thing I heard wasn't Spanish," she said.

She said she's found all sorts of debris on the ranch, ranging from spent water jugs and food containers to Sudanese currency. Cattle fences have been torn, water pipes broken.

"When you step out the door, you have two scannings," she said. "One is for rattlesnakes, the other is people in the middle of nowhere."

https://www.alipac.us/article-771-thread-1-0.html