Thread: Unusually fair and balanced article about the minutemen

One of the few times I read an article without a harsh bias against the minutemen, and gave accurate details what the project was about. Even though they did interview some of the critics and hand wringers of the project, at least the article stayed objective to both sides of the argument.


http://www.dailybreeze.com/news/articles/1602402.html

Local mother and son join Minutemen on the border
Stacy Polk of Hawthorne and her son Taylor headed for the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona to help the anti-illegal immigration group in April.
By Deepa Bharath
Daily Breeze

A faded magenta backpack lies on the couch where Stacy Polk sits.

The Hawthorne resident pulls out the items from the pack as if they were rabbits from a magician's hat -- a 2-liter water bottle, cans of chicken and barbecued meat, a bottle of jelly and a miniature tube of Colgate toothpaste. They were abandoned by an unknown immigrant trying to enter the country illegally.



Polk found the weathered backpack and brought it back from a scorching, windblown desert trail in southern Arizona, where she and her 17-year-old son, Taylor, spent close to a week in April scouting a small stretch of the nation's border for illegal immigrants. They are part of the controversial group called the Minuteman Project.

The organization, founded by James Gilchrist and Chris Simcox, is run by volunteers whose purpose is to prevent illegal immigration by acting as lookouts on the border. Some of them carry firearms, sparking controversy and escalating concerns about violence erupting on an already volatile border whose conditions are exacerbated by drug smugglers and other activist groups.

Many, including President Bush, believe that border enforcement is best left to the U.S. Border Patrol.

But the Minutemen rose from the Border Patrol's inefficiency and inability to put a clamp on the waves of illegal immigrants coming into the United States, Polk said. She sees the migrants as ants scurrying toward a lump of sugar.

"We're not law enforcement," she said of the Minuteman Project. "We do not take the law into our hands. We simply observe and report."

For the 50-year-old Polk, her motivation to join the project began here in the South Bay around the mid-1990s.

"I started to look around my neighborhood and I saw more and more non-English-speaking people," she said.

The migration has changed the climate and fabric of Hawthorne and its streets for the worse, Polk said.

The last straw came when she was robbed by a woman believed to be an illegal immigrant. She became active in groups opposing illegal immigration such as California Coalition for Immigration Reform, Voice of Citizens Together and Americans for Immigration Reform.

She doesn't have much patience for those who would defend illegal immigration because the United States was created by immigrants.

"We're not a nation of immigrants," says a defiant Polk.

"I'm tired of hearing that. We're a nation of citizens. A lot of us were born and raised here. We're Americans," she said.

A majority of the Minutemen, she says, are people like her "who've really had enough" of changes in their neighborhoods they insist are the result of illegal immigration, including overcrowded schools, excessive demand for subsidized services and heightened crime.

The Minuteman Project offers a nonviolent solution to an explosive problem, said Polk, who remained unarmed during the patrol, as did her son.

Nonviolence stressed

"I felt this sense of Americans pulling together in a nonviolent way," she says. "But it's a fight to preserve the quality of our lives in this country."

What attracted her to the Minuteman Project was its commitment to not interfering with law enforcement.

"We don't detain, we don't make any contact with the illegal immigrants," she said. "We let the Border Patrol do their job. We simply act as extra pairs of eyes and ears."

That's the way it must remain for the project to be effective and successful, Polk said.

"We have a system in place to screen for undesirables, racists, supremacists and so on," she said. "We have to take the legal and moral high road to do what we've set out to do."

Polk and her son set out for Tombstone, Ariz., in the second week of April. They didn't know what to expect.

They spent the first few hours at the Minuteman command center, which was set up in a local Bible college, attending an orientation class.

Volunteers, who themselves pay for travel, stay and other expenses, worked in three eight-hour shifts. The Minutemen covered about 27 miles of the border, from the Huachuca mountains to 7 miles west of Douglas, Ariz.

Polk and Taylor took the 2 to 10 p.m. shift.

"I felt pretty safe most of the time," she said. "But when it's dark and you're sitting all alone in a trailer or an RV, you can feel pretty insecure."

Each group was headed by a former police officer or military man. They all took camcorders for their own physical and legal protection, she said.

"The group leaders had pretty sound instincts and myself and others felt confident under their leadership," Polk said.

Through their shifts, Polk and Taylor never actually saw illegal immigrants crossing the border. But they saw visible signs and remnants, such as the backpacks they brought back. They also saw jackets, blankets and the water jugs and bottles that are lifesavers in the desert.

"The coyotes or smugglers who escort the immigrants usually ask them to throw away everything, including identification, so they can move faster and so they don't have any information on them if they get caught," Polk said.

Taylor begged his mother for permission to attend one of the night watches with two ex-Army Minutemen in camouflage. They took guns as well with thermal camcorders that film while sensing body heat.

"It was awesome," Taylor said. "I actually saw the illegals sitting on trees in a forest area waiting for a chance to cross over."

Polk and Taylor got credit for busting a group of 50 immigrants after they reported a suspicious white van pulled to the side of a desert road.

Their activism is not motivated by hatred for a particular race, Polk said. She said she feels for people who "have to leave their families behind and come all the way here to make ends meet.

"People who oppose the Minuteman Project make it out to be about race," she said. "But it's not a race issue. It's a numbers issue, a crime issue and a patriotism issue."

Taylor said he was impressed by the patriotism that pervaded the Minuteman camp.

"There were American flags all over the place," he said. "We were there to do something positive for our country."

Polk and Taylor are departures from the typical profile of a Minuteman, said John Keeley, a spokesman for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C., think-tank that serves as a research arm for the immigration reform movement.

"The Minutemen are usually retired men and women sitting on lawn chairs and armed with binoculars and cell phones," he said. "You don't often find people taking time off from work to do this."

That said, this group has proved that they could do what the federal government and Border Patrol couldn't, Keeley said. The Minutemen recently even earned the praise of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

"It's a conspicuous shaming of our government," Keeley said. "They've shown that 800 or so retirees can stop this issue cold in its tracks in one part of the border. That's something the United States government couldn't do in all these years."

Effectiveness debated

Polk cites figures showing that the number of seizures at the border dropped dramatically during the Minutemen protest. In the first three weeks in April 2004 there were 20,130 arrests made by border agents in the area the group patrolled. During the protest over the same period this April the number of arrests made was 9,308, a drop Minutemen supporters say is a direct result of their presence.

Critics, however, say the group has not been particularly effective. The American Civil Liberties Union, which sent0 observers to the Minuteman operation, say the project is nothing more than a publicity stunt.

"It was a good public relations event," said Carolyn Trowbridge, a board member of the ACLU's Arizona chapter. "They had half the press in the universe there."

ACLU members watched the Minutemen as they watched the border, she said.

"They've done nothing worthwhile here," Trowbridge said. "All they've done is moved the immigrants to a more mountainous and deadly area."

Patrolling the nation's border is no job for a group of senior citizens, she said.

"Illegal immigration is a big problem and these kinds of side stunts and shows don't solve it," Trowbridge said. "This is a group of vigilantes."

The "vigilante" label is one that makes Polk's blood boil.

"President Bush called us that," she said. "But we are not vigilantes. Does a bunch of people sitting on armchairs and observing sound like vigilantes to you?"

Frank Bean, professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine, said he and other researchers do worry about citizen groups getting involved with law enforcement operations. Bean is also the co-founder of the Center for Research on Immigration, Population and Public Policy at UCI's School of Social Sciences.

He sees groups such as the Minutemen as a "sign of citizens' frustration with federal policy."

Expert cites frustration

It's all part of a long-standing structural problem in the United States, Bean said. For example, when the children of undocumented immigrants enter public schools, the state -- not the federal government -- ends up paying for them, he says.

"The situation gets worse when the economy is the way it is now," Bean explained. "It is a legitimate concern for citizens."

But driving out illegal immigrants altogether would also not bode well for the nation, he said.

"Twenty-five percent of the construction industry is made up of illegal immigrants," Bean said.

Still, not all illegal immigrants walk across the border, he said.

"There are millions of other ways to get in to the country," Bean said. "There are thousands who overstay their tourist visas."

But Polk believes the Minutemen have and will continue to make a difference.

In July, Polk and Taylor may patrol an undetermined portion of the San Diego border. Her concern is not only illegal immigrants from Mexico, but terrorists who filter through as well, Polk said.

California will be more of a challenge than Arizona because Minutemen have to deal with more densely populated areas and possibly a larger number of immigrants, she said.

"But I'm going again because I want to enjoy my life in this country and not have to worry about my world being turned upside down," Polk said. "We feel it's our duty to our children. ..."

Taylor added: "And our country."

Polk gives a nod of approval to her son's remark.

The faded backpack sits unzipped, its contents spilled on to the couch, a souvenir of their April trip to the border and a reminder of the one to come.

They never saw the pack's original owner, they said.

"We don't know who it belonged to," Polk said, "but we can guess."

Great Article!!

AND, you can see who are the Patriots, Ms. Polk and her son, and who are not, ACLU and Bush.

GO MINUTEMEN!!

Thank you Mrs. Polk and your brave son for Standing Up for the USA; devoting your time and money to do a job that SHOULD HAVE BEEN DONE by our federal employees who were paid to do the job, you did and the other Minute Men, did for free.

GOD BLESS THE MINUTEMEN!!