April 30, 2006, 10:21 AM

As their month-long border deployment draws to an end, leaders of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps say their efforts have brought more attention to the illegal immigration issue and more supporters to their border security movement.

Critics are less generous in their assessment, and the U.S. Border Patrol is maintaining its neutral position on the hundreds of volunteers watching for illegal entrants in Southern Arizona.

"It's helped to gather more volunteers, and it's also helped to further debate," said Stacey O'Connell, state director of the group that opposes illegal immigration and demands government action to secure the border.

"This is the time to make the nation aware of how poor our border security is, and I think we've been very successful in doing that this month."

Jennifer Allen, director of the immigrant rights advocacy group Border Action Network, said the group's presence along the border have done nothing to bring real solutions to the problems along the border.

"They further distract the general public and policymakers from real solutions that can provide for meaningful immigration reform and that can provide for real security on the border."

The Minutemen, Allen said, are clouding the immigration reform issue.

"They continue to provoke fear and have been inciting anti-immigrant violence," she said.

However, there have been no reports of violence connected with any Minuteman operations since the inception of the organization.

Despite that fact, Alessandra Soler Meetze, executive director of the American Civil Liberties-Arizona chapter, said its observers have been present to "document and observe as best we can in hopes of deterring violence."

Meetze claims that there have been two minor, nonviolent incidents in Arizona this month.

Arizona is the nation's busiest point for illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico, with a corridor southwest of Tucson experiencing some of the heaviest traffic. Minutemen have set up observation posts there this month.

Since April 1, several hundred Minuteman volunteers have spent time stationed on private ranch lands, watching for and phoning in sightings to the Border Patrol.

Minuteman chapters also have been active along both the Mexican and Canadian borders.

As of Thursday, O'Connell said Minuteman observers had reported to the Border Patrol seeing 1,300 people crossing through the Arizona desert this month. They also confirmed arrests of 601 of those people, he said.

But according to Border Patrol figures, citizen calls of sightings dropped significantly in April compared to the month before the Minuteman operations; so did apprehensions throughout the Tucson sector.

In March, there were 1,240 calls, but the number dropped to 955 through Wednesday, said agency spokesman Gustavo Soto. In addition, apprehensions of illegal immigrants dropped by 19,000, or 30 percent, from March through the first 26 days of April, Soto said.

Border Patrol spokesmen have said officials are neutral about the Minutemen, neither endorsing their observe-and-report efforts nor criticizing them.

"We don't know what kind of impact they made, if any," said Chuy Rodriguez, another spokesman for the patrol.

"We don't distinguish to see who's making the (citizen) calls."

Mike Albon, a spokesman for Local 2544, a union representing Border Patrol agents in the Tucson sector, said, "We haven't had any complaints of the Minutemen interfering with normal operations."

He said he also did not know whether their efforts could be classified as helpful or a hindrance. "We're basically neutral to their activity, but they have not interfered, so that's a plus."

In fact, he said legal observers affiliated with the American Civil Liberties Union's Arizona chapter watching the Minutemen to prevent any harassment or rights violations of illegal immigrants "have interfered more" than the Minutemen.

O'Connell accused ACLU volunteers of shining flashlights in the faces of Minutemen at night and of videotaping them and their license plates. He also said they have flashed lights into the desert, honked horns and made other noise, allegedly to alert illegal immigrants coming through the area that Minutemen were present.

"If that's what they're doing, that would definitely at night interfere with our operations," Albon said.

Meetze, the ACLU director, said, "That's not our intention and that's not the way that we operate and intend to operate. We're not there to get involved and to interfere with the work of the Border Patrol."

The goal of the ACLU's volunteers, she said, is to be observers.

The Minutemen, she acknowledged, "have been able to exercise their free speech and get their message across that they don't agree with the way our government is enforcing immigration laws."

The ACLU also is present, she added, "to enable them to express their rights. They have a right to express themselves. They just don't have a right to cross the line and take the law into their own hands."

The Minutemen will continue volunteer patrol activities in states where the group has chapters one weekend each month as well as monthly operations each April and October, said O'Connell.

He said Arizona's Minutemen now have an excellent relationship with Border Patrol agents on the ground, as well as some supervisors. "The trust level is there," he said.

One supervisor, he said, "was just ecstatic that we were there and able to help in this way."

But he also said that there is fear among rank-and-file agents of retribution from superiors if they show or publicly express support for the Minutemen.

Rodriguez, the Border Patrol spokesman, said, "I couldn't speak for that comment at all."

Copyright 2006 Associated Press and KVOA.com.

Sunday, April 30, 2006

(04-30) 07:22 PDT Boulevard, Calif. (AP) --

As immigrants and their supporters prepared for a massive boycott, opponents of illegal immigration went to work building a border fence meant to symbolize their support of a secure border.

About 200 volunteers organized by the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps of California began building a six-foot barbed wire fence Saturday along a quarter-mile stretch of rugged terrain in Boulevard, about 50 miles east of San Diego.

Tim Donnelly, the group's leader, said volunteers ate apple pie and hot dogs as they worked on the fence, which was connected to an existing 12-foot high fence previously built by the federal government.

The volunteers wanted to send a message to Congress that the government should block entry to the United States and not grant amnesty to illegal immigrants, Donnelly said.

Thousands of immigrants and their supporters are expected to boycott work and schools Monday to raise awareness of their contributions to society.

"This was largely sent as a message to Congress so they'll see on May 1, there are jobs that even illegal immigrants don't want to do, but Americans are more than willing to do them," Donnelly said, referring to the fence-building.

Donnelly said before the event he called a local contact at the U.S. Border Patrol and told him what the volunteers planned to do. He declined to name the local contact.

Department of Homeland Security spokesman Richard Kite said Saturday there had been "no indications our operations or the property of the Border Patrol have been tampered with or altered in any way by citizen groups."

Wave Newspapers, News Report, Gene Johnson Jr., Apr 27, 2006 LEIMERT PARK — A coalition of community activists from diverse backgrounds came together in Leimert Park Wednesday to denounce homeless activist Ted Hayes’ recent alliance with the ultra-conservative Minutemen Project as a means of battling illegal immigration.

During an afternoon news conference at the Lucy Florence Coffeehouse, activist Najee Ali said he believed Hayes is being used as a pawn by what he called a racist faction that never has affiliated itself with the black community until now.

“Ted Hayes and his involvement in the Minuteman group is certainly an issue that we should be concerned about,” Ali said. “We feel that [the Minutemen] will polarize the [black and Latino] communities. It will bring us farther and farther apart instead of [bringing us] together collectively to talk about tolerance, peace and resolution.”

Hayes, who did not attend the news conference, said he approached the Minutemen about eight months ago, in part, because they were in support of helping the homeless. Hayes help organize Dome Village, the homeless encampment west of downtown.

“I’m realizing that illegal immigration is taking away the resources of the homeless,” Hayes said. “The Minutemen are right. They want to help the homeless. I can’t get Jesse [Jackson] or [Rep.] Maxine Waters to work with the homeless. Who’s helping me? White people.”

Others speakers at the Leimert Park news conference faulting Hayes’ alignment with the Minutemen included Randy Jurado Ertll, executive director of El Centro De Accion Social; Gideon Krakov of the Progressive Jewish Alliance, attorney Cynthia McClain-Hill and writer and activist Earl Ofari Hutchinson.

“We [have] enough violence between black and Latinos in schools, jails and in the community,” Ali said. “We’re speaking out against potential violence that may happen based on Ted Hayes.”

Ertll agreed with Ali saying that “we need to unite both communities. I think it’s time that [blacks and Latinos] start talking to each other more and finding common ground and common issues that we can work on together.”

“I think the president and Congress need to find a solution to [illegal immigration] because it will create more divisions in the future,” Ertll said.

It’s a matter of learning to listen and “walk in other people’s shoes,” added Krakov “and not being a part of the problem, but being a part of the solution.”

Hayes, a Republican, his newly formed Crispus Attucks Brigade, and some of his Minutemen allies held a forum Sunday in Leimert Park, drawing more than 100 people. It became an intense war of words between him and another group, the Progressive Alliance, a coalition of blacks and Latinos urging unity.

The argument grew into a physical altercation for which Hayes later apologized.

During the Sunday forum, Hayes announced a plan to hold a protest march in downtown Los Angeles on May 21 and invited gang members to join the border patrol.

Tuesday Hayes said he went to the downtown Mexican Consulate to “clarify” the goals for his new group.

“We support civil rights for illegal immigrants — but in Mexico, in the country that drove [illegal immigrants] out — whatever country that drove you out,” he said. “[Iillegal immigrants are] coming here to get my civil rights, something [blacks] fought for. You just can’t come here and take our civil rights.

“We’re going to champion your cause for civil rights in Mexico. We, as blacks, are going to be your champion,” he said. “You might not understand now, but in time you will.”

Hayes said he wrote the Mexican consulate general a letter about five weeks ago, asking President Vicente Fox to allow a multi-ethnic delegation led by blacks to talk with Fox, Cardinal Roger Mahony and other Mexican civic and social leaders as a means of restoring civil rights back to Mexicans.

Hayes has called illegal immigration the “biggest threat to blacks in America since slavery.”

Wednesday April 26, 2006 7:16 PM

By GILLIAN FLACCUS

Associated Press Writer

IRVINE, Calif. (AP) - Laurie Lisonbee worried about illegal immigration but figured it was somebody else's issue - until she saw hundreds of thousands of immigrants and their supporters marching across her TV screen.

Soon, Lisonbee had recruited several friends to attend a demonstration by the Minuteman Project, a volunteer group that patrols the border to keep out illegal immigrants. Now, the 51-year-old art professor checks the group's Web site daily and plans a summer trip to the Mexican border to help build a fence.

Minuteman organizers say this spring's marches have proved to be an unexpected recruitment tool for Americans who feel uneasy about the burgeoning immigration movement but may have considered the organization a pack of gun-toting vigilantes.

``We're not trying to be more mainstream - mainstream has found us,'' said Stephen Eichler, the group's executive director. ``They're saying, 'These guys actually have teeth, they don't all chew tobacco, they don't all have a gun rack in the back of their truck.' They're saying, `They believe what I believe,' and they're joining us.''

Lisonbee, a registered Republican, said only one issue matters to her now.

``My vote will go to the candidate who's the toughest on immigration, whether they're Democrat or Republican,'' she said from her home in Orem, Utah. ``Before, we were pretty much the types of people who would call our congressmen and not take to the streets. But that's all changed now.''

The Minuteman Project first gained attention last year when Orange County resident and former tax accountant Jim Gilchrist helped lead its first 30-day patrol of the border in Arizona. The group has added mainstream political tools, including a network of local chapters and e-mail lobbying campaigns.

In December, Gilchrist, a former Republican, ran as a third-party candidate in a special House election in Orange County, Calif., finished a respectable third with 25 percent of the vote.

Since this spring's huge pro-immigrant rallies, 300 people nationwide have applied to start local chapters, according to Eichler. The group's goal is 500 chapters by December and a membership of 1 million within 1 years, Eichler said.

Eichler claimed the organization's membership has climbed to more than 200,000.

But Heidi Beirich, deputy director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, which monitors the Minuteman Project for racist rhetoric, said that estimate appears to be ridiculously high. She offered no estimate of her own.

``At the border during this last outing, they had maybe 50 people. If they have 200,000 people, it doesn't seem right,'' she said.

Beirich also questioned the premise that pro-immigrant rallies will help the Minuteman Project. She said many recruits may attend one or two rallies, but leave after they discover what she called the group's extremist attitudes.

``They get in there and they're like, `My God, I didn't sign on for this,''' she said.

In the coming weeks, the Minuteman Project plans to set out in a caravan from Los Angeles to Washington, with stops in 13 cities, including President Bush's vacation haven of Crawford, Texas. It is also raising money to build a private fence along parts of the California-Mexico border.

Increased security along the border is a popular idea on Capitol Hill, where the immigration debate will soon resume. How to treat the approximately 11 million illegal immigrants now here is where Congress splits - a House bill would criminalize the immigrants, a Senate bill would offer guest worker status and a potential path to citizenship.

David S. Meyer, a professor of sociology and political science at the University of California, Irvine, said the growing Minuteman movement has ``stiffened the spine'' of conservative politicians who might otherwise be wary of publicly identifying with the organization's views.

He said the recent workplace crackdown at a pallet manufacturer that resulted in 1,100 arrests at 40 U.S. sites was part of an attempt by the Bush administration to appease the Minuteman Project and its congressional supporters. Bush supports a guest worker program.

``The debate has kind of come to them, and they're clever enough politically to realize that,'' Meyer said. ``People in mainstream politics who are not associated with the Minuteman Project are essentially voicing their position, which is a victory itself.''

By Jim Kleinkauf/ Guest Columnist
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Metro West Daily News

In this space three weeks ago, I took a stand against the rising tide of anti-immigrant sentiment that I feel threatens the basic values upon which our country was founded.
In that column, I also wrote about the fact that my maternal grandfather was an illegal immigrant. I didn't include the fact that my paternal grandfather was a veteran of the Spanish-American War who died in the great influenza pandemic of 1918. It didn't seem relevant at the time. I include it now purely for the record.
The response to that column was surprising, mainly in that it was overwhelmingly positive, including one request for reprints.
The three negative responses were not unexpected. They included a phone call from Joe Rizoli of CCFIILE, a 250-word written response from New England Minuteman Association Director Jeffrey Buck and an-email from someone named Karen Whalen who evidently supports the Minutemen, among other things.
I found Whalen's response most interesting and worthy of quoting here:
"I'm completely embarrassed for you. Not only of your shameful admissions, which would be actually okay if you repented for these sins, which you do not, you glorify them...
"You are a good example of why foreigners coming onto OUR SOIL defile it when they will not give up their primary allegiance to a foreign government. You clearly have not, even though it was your ancestors who sinfully stole into our country.
"Mr. Kleinkauf, you clearly need to so some soul searching. And actually admit that there is generational sin in your family. And then ask God for forgiveness...."
After reading that, all I could think of was a line from the "Wizard of Oz."
"Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore."
Tell you what, Karen: I'll consider your advice, if you'll consider mine -- go to the Wizard and ask him for a brain.
But seriously folks, in retrospect, my lighthearted dismissal of the Minuteman movement in the last column was a mistake. These people are not funny. They are dangerous.
Founded a year ago in California by Jim Gilchrist and Chris Simcox, the Minutemen is a quasi-vigilante organization. Its stated goal is to prevent undocumented immigrants from crossing into the United States and to further pressure the federal government into adopting a more militarized border policy.
Last year, the Minutemen mobilized hundreds in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California to set up armed camps along the Mexican border. They evidently believe that these "border patrols" help protect the nation from drug trafficking and terrorist attacks.
In most cases, members of the Minutemen have attempted to set up their camps on public property near the U.S. border and to call in the Border Patrol when they observe what they consider "suspicious activity."
However, reports from the New Mexico Independent Media Center indicate that border areas in the Southwest surrounding Minuteman camps have experienced an increase in "mysterious shootings" aimed at local Mexicans.
In a report last May, masked men with assault rifles detained a van containing 18 Mexicans. After they were ordered out of the vehicle, Apolinar Ortega Sanchez, the driver, was executed. The murder is reported to have taken place south of the border, near Columbus, N.M.
Witnesses were reported to have said the gunmen spoke poor Spanish and left in the direction of the United States. Although Minutemen have denied any responsibility, Patricia Gonzalez, the attorney general of the Chihuahua Province, was reported to be investigating potential links between the attack and the Minutemen.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, the neo-nazi National Alliance has endorsed the Minutemen's actions and members are serving as armed volunteers. The white supremacist Aryan Nation group has also endorsed the Minuteman project, as a "white pride event."
While Framingham's Buck said the Minutemen couldn't monitor everyone who joins their ranks, he denies any ties to such hate groups, terming the Southern Poverty Law Center "anti-American." But then Buck also called President Bush a "traitor" for proposing that amnesty be granted to illegal immigrants who register with the government. Buck also called many members of Congress traitors for conspiring to create an "invasion of illegal immigrants."
Buck sees evidence of that national conspiracy here in MetroWest. "Ninety percent of Brazilians in Framingham are illegal. They told me so themselves in Portuguese," Buck said Sunday in a phone interview.
In response to claims in my last column, Buck wrote, "...Brazilians have in no way 'revitalized' downtown Framingham. They have only added to its corruption." Hate? Paranoia? You be the judge.

Hoisting the flag in anger

WELL, BLACK people have to be mad at somebody.

The antipathy toward Latino immigrants that has been building silently for years found full voice Sunday in an anti-immigration rally staged in Leimert Park, that grassy promontory in the Crenshaw district where black activists of all creeds and credibility levels come to say their piece or spread their word. The latest activist was Ted Hayes, founder of the Crispus Attucks Brigade, a black anti-immigration group that apparently formed for just this event. The group mounted a rally meant to focus free-floating black discontent about immigration, but it was something else entirely — a messy, saddening, surreal mix of too many things, notably black nationalism twisted into my-country-right-or-wrong black patriotism.

This is an inversion that must have had Malcolm X spinning in his grave. As it happened, the black man carrying the biggest American flag among a sea of flags also wore a Malcolm X cap. He stood shoulder to shoulder with a couple of white Minutemen, motorcycle riders and a strident anti-immigration Latino activist. Talk about cognitive dissonance.

I should have seen this coming. I have been to many gatherings in Leimert over the years, several of which turned contentious as black people struggled to identify exactly who and what are the forces most responsible for a litany of problems.

On Sunday, there was the usual frantic distribution of fliers and handouts calling for black solidarity on a number of crises that weren't directly related to the topic at hand: reparations, criminal justice, three-strikes reform, foster care, black business promotion, environmental protection. They were all handily cataloged on one flier like a to-do list, a list that was officially posted generations ago and has grown ever since. Now there are causes that have permutated into other causes, and fewer people to carry them. And so a handful of blacks gathered in Leimert to publicly shift all that weight onto something else, and someone else.

It was inarguably deplorable and thoroughly American — blaming a neighboring population for the ills of your own. The black people vigorously waving the Stars and Stripes certainly were claiming their birthright; it's just that their birthright is not as noble they imagine.

And yet I had to admit: They had a point. Much as I cringed at the broad condemnation of Latino immigrants by people who've endured so much condemnation and endure it still, I understood. I understood the raw anger at being consistently at the bottom of the economic food chain and watching yet another group moving up that chain, actually remaking it, with relative ease. I understood the loud, flag-waving insistence that the nation give its black citizens consideration above noncitizens. This is something the United States has never really done; U.S. citizenship has always been less about papers and more about race, privilege and perceptions of who belongs and who doesn't, and why.

That the super-patriots in Leimert even had to hold a news conference to ask for consideration — this, not immigration, was the issue. By its very existence, the event made the painful point that blacks still belong least of all. The anxiety over that is justifiable. It's also different from the xenophobic anxiety of the white Minutemen who were ostensibly there to support the anti-immigration blacks but whose own law-and-order agenda hardly embraces the interests of any ethnic minorities. Such differences were never addressed, though they were sharply in the air.

But many who supported Hayes in spirit admitted the border was neither the beginning nor the end of the issue. One of the many tragedies of the rally was that it attracted not simply the fringe but rational black people who lack any other forum to vent their ambiguity on issues like illegal immigration.

Terry Anderson, a talk-show host and L.A. native who supports closing the borders, said recently that even if illegal immigration stopped tomorrow, there would be no guarantees that blacks would benefit dramatically. "But it couldn't get any worse for us," he added hopefully. "People would be forced to deal with us at least."

Maybe. What I know is that rightful black indignation is too quickly discredited by a wrong response, and Sunday in Leimert Park felt like a doozy. After an hour and a half, in one incongruous moment among many, some brigadiers hoisted their flags and marched solemnly around the perimeter of the park while an ensemble of drummers played a kind of African accompaniment.

I asked a friend whether the group was playing for or against the cause. "Those guys?" he said. "Neither. They're here every week. They play no matter what." We should all have such equanimity.

By Brendan McCarthy
Tribune staff reporter
Published April 25, 2006, 9:18 PM CDT