Minuteklan News Watch

Few minutes with Minuteklan is plenty of time for GOP group

2006-06-29T13:08:00.000-04:00

Thu, Jun. 29, 2006

Few minutes with Minutemen is plenty of time for GOP group

BUD KENNEDY
In My Opinion

BRYAN - The Texas Minutemen brought their borderline paranoia to the heart of Aggieland this week.

A Republican club invited the Wise County-based Minutemen to tell about their escapades guarding the Rio Grande. But what they heard was too loony even for Aggies.

When the Minutemen's quirky leader started rambling about a secret plan to "merge Canada and Mexico with the United States," the good Republicans in the home of the George Bush Presidential Library started squirming in their chairs behind half-eaten barbecue plates.

When a Minutewoman from Dallas started complaining that ranchers can shoot diseased cattle at the border but not humans, and blamed permissive immigration on the "greedy business people" of America, their Republican host finally had enough and stood to cut off questions.

"Thank you," said Dan Garcia, 29, an Iraq war veteran and now a Texas A&M University student. Almost apologetically, he told the Brazos County Young Republicans, "Our goal was just to set up a forum where we could hear different opinions."

Later, he said the discussion "got out of hand a little too quickly."

"I don't think disease should be part of the issue," said Garcia, a Brownsville native and the son of immigrants from Mexico who earned doctorates. "Some of the things they said, I totally disagree with. As Republicans, we're not xenophobes. We just want to know who's coming into the country."

It was his idea to invite a Minuteman to draw more people to a meeting when some Young Republicans have gone home for the summer. It worked: Instead of five or six Republicans, the meeting drew 25 guests to C & J Barbeque.

Garcia said he looked up Minutemen on the Web and found the Wise County group.

Shannon McGauley, 42, a private investigator from Boyd, leads one of two factions of Minutemen volunteers in Texas. His faction reports to a California man who is affiliated with a Bible-preaching fringe political party and who openly opposes allowing any other "cultures" or languages in America besides his own.

That part bothered Garcia before the meeting.

"What makes America great is that we pull the best from all cultures," he said in an interview. "As a Republican, I value hard work and personal integrity. People bring those values to the U.S. from all cultures."

McGauley agreed to make the drive to Bryan for gas money, Garcia said.

McGauley and other Minutemen have eagerly accepted invitations from border-minded Republican clubs lately, using the opportunity to promote their financially struggling volunteer effort and to preach their conspiracy politics. In Bryan, their handouts included something about the Trilateral Commission.

McGauley, a stubby man with a necktie that stops about four inches too soon, called himself a "bail bond enforcement agent." He and a brother bill themselves on the Web as the only known pair of twin bounty hunters.

Before they hunted border crossers, they might have been hunting something else.

In a Yahoo discussion group called "smalltowntexassingles," somebody using his brother's name posted a 2002 ad introducing twin brother private investigators looking to "get to know" singles. They have also advertised a lawn service.

Early last year, after volunteering in a Minuteman Project patrol in Arizona, McGauley registered the name Texas Minutemen.

The other faction is the Falfurrias-based Texas chapter of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, which emphasizes lawful borders more than fear of Hispanic "culture."

For the Bryan audience, McGauley began with a routine report on risks along the border. He described the cat-and-mouse game Minutemen play watching the border, the rumors of Iraqis crossing illegally and the plans for another patrol Sept. 11 along the Rio Grande near Laredo and Del Rio.

The volunteers simply watch for border crossers and alert the Border Patrol, he said. They carry concealed weapons for self-defense, as allowed under state law.

A small group of Hispanic students and adults from Texas A&M University watched from a front table. Hispanic students have been part of the Gig 'Em tradition since at least 1894, when an Aggie from Hidalgo, Mexico, named N. Valdez scored A&M's very first football touchdown.

They bristled when McGauley's co-founder, a retired Dallas software engineer named Sandra Beene, started talking about shooting "varmints" and about how ranchers used to shoot cattle that crossed the border for fear they might have diseases.

"Now, we're bringing all the diseases that we wiped out right back in," she said.

Then, a barber from Bryan spoke up from the crowd to complain about trucks from Mexico using the planned Trans-Texas Corridor toll superhighway.

"Trucks are going to roll all the way into Kansas City from a foreign nation," McGauley said as if free trade is somehow sinister.

He mentioned the secret "plan" to merge North America, which must not be a secret up in Wise County.

Late in the discussion, Beene made this telling comment:

"Once, in this country, we imported a lot of people who were black, and we created a slave class of human beings," she said. "And we're still paying for that, through all the resentment. And black people are still paying for it, too."

Lesson 1: Some of these Minutemen don't want anyone of another color or culture in Texas.

Lesson 2: Republicans need to be careful about welcoming the Minutemen.

Star-Telegram

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/14928590.htm

Vista, CA- council passes day laborers ordinance

2006-06-29T13:04:00.001-04:00

Vista council passes day laborers ordinance

Amy Isackson

KPBS SAN DIEGO (2006-06-28) Under a new ordinance, employers who hire day laborers in the city of Vista will have to register with the city. The city council voted unanimously in favor of the measure last night on the grounds that it will protect workers. But critics say the true purpose is to shut down curbside hiring. KPBS Border Reporter Amy Isackson has the story.

Vista has long been searching for a way to move day laborers out of a local shopping center where they gather.

Vista Mayor Morris Vance says the new ordinance will not only protect day laborers from unscrupulous employers. He says it will also restore order to the shopping center.

Mayor Vance: "We've received complaints from the shopping center itself as well as from patrons who want to go there and as soon as they get there, they're immediately swarmed by people and they feel unsafe and harassed."

Members of the Minutemen and a local spin-off group have compounded the problem. They recently made the site the target of their protests. They're snapping photos of employers who come to hire day laborers and just about anyone who looks Mexican.

Immigrants' rights activist Tina Jillings says the Minutemen are stoke anti-immigrant passions. And by passing the ordinance, the city is giving in to their agenda.

Jillings: "This is about racism. It's about a class of people who are being discriminated against and their right to work is being hindered."

Jillings and other activists say employers won't bother registering and will hire day laborers in other cities.

The ordinance requires employers to go through a two day registration process. Employers will receive a placard for their windshields. And they must provide the terms of the job in writing, including the hourly wage and transportation arrangements.

The city is also looking into creating a new hiring site where day laborers can gather.

Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union may sue on free speech grounds.

Barring legal challenges, the measure takes effect at the end of July. For the California Report, I'm Amy Isackson in San Diego. Amy Isackson, KPBS News.

© Copyright 2006, KPBS
http://publicbroadcasting.net/kpbs/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=934359&sectionID=1

Vista, CA- council passes day laborers ordinance

2006-06-29T13:04:00.000-04:00

Vista council passes day laborers ordinance

Amy Isackson

Vista, CA- City ordinance would regulate curbside hiring

2006-06-27T22:59:00.000-04:00

Labor law is likely to pass in Vista

City ordinance would regulate curbside hiring

By Matthew Rodriguez and Elena Gaona
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITERS

June 25, 2006

VISTA – A few dozen day laborers stood around the strip mall parking lot at Escondido and South Santa Fe avenues one day last week, sipping coffee and eating doughnuts while waiting for “bosses” to drive up and signal them to hop into their trucks.

By 9 a.m., two employers had come by the site looking for a worker wanting to put in a day of manual labor. It used to be that by that time of the morning a dozen bosses had shown up.

The workers say they expect the number of employers to dwindle to zero once the Vista City Council casts what is expected to be a second unanimous vote Tuesday to approve an ordinance regulating curbside hiring.

And that seems to be what council members hope will be the effect of the new law.

Mayor Morris Vance said Friday that he doesn't want the busy intersection used as an informal hiring site any longer. City officials have said they would work with a nonprofit organization interested in opening and operating a hiring hall or site elsewhere.

For several years, the city has been faced with the issue of day laborers – predominantly Latino – who congregate at the busy intersection looking for work. Some nearby shop owners say the men disrupt business. Others say they rely on the day laborers as customers.

In recent weeks, the site has become a place of protest for Minutemen-style groups that oppose illegal immigration.

During the last council meeting June 13, about 100 people packed the chambers, with speakers arguing both sides of the issue. The council unanimously approved a first reading of the ordinance, and it will become law July 28 if approved again Tuesday.

The ordinance has drawn criticism from day laborer advocates and groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego & Imperial Counties, which said in a letter that the ordinance “may well be unconstitutional.” Local pro-immigration advocates plan to hold a rally Tuesday evening to coincide with the council meeting. Protesters plan to form a “human chain” along the half-mile route between the day laborer site and City Hall.

The Vista ordinance would require employers who seek to hire day laborers to register with the city. The registration would last at least a year. Employers also would be required to display certificates on their vehicle windows while hiring day laborers. They would need to provide the worker with a “term sheet” describing the job and the wage.

Vista's ordinance, which seems to be unique, isn't the first attempt to regulate day laborer hiring. About 50 cities in Southern California have enacted laws to restrict such solicitation, said Chris Newman, legal programs coordinator for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network in Los Angeles. Some of the stricter laws in Los Angeles, Redondo Beach and Glendale have been overturned by federal district courts.

In 1990, Encinitas enacted an ordinance prohibiting curbside hiring, but a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order, blocking the law on First Amendment grounds. The City Council soon repealed the law.

Vista City Attorney Darold Pieper said those ordinances went much further than the Vista ordinance by trying to ban curbside hiring altogether.

The Vista ordinance only requires employers to register with the city, and then they could continue to hire workers at so-called uncontrolled locations.

City code compliance officers and sheriff's deputies would enforce the ordinance, city officials have said.

Assistant City Manager Rick Dudley said the city would provide employers and day laborers with information about the ordinance at the site before it becomes law. A Spanish-language version is being considered, Dudley said.

Abel Valenzuela Jr., an associate professor at UCLA, said the ordinance won't necessarily drive away employers, but could move exchanges underground.

“Day labor will continue to exist as long as you have demand,” Valenzuela said.

More than a dozen men interviewed this week said they didn't think employers would sign up with the city. Victor Lopez, 23, of El Salvador said regular demonstrations by Minutemen-style groups have scared away employers, and requiring would-be employers to register with the city only would make matters worse.

“I don't know what to believe. They say they want to help us. But I think they're taking our work away,” Lopez said, clasping an empty energy drink can. “I came here for a better future, to help my family, not to cause trouble.”

Though sometimes employers don't pay them, it's not the norm, workers said. The men tip each other off about which employers have treated them badly, they said. Several said they believe the ordinance is really meant to appease anti-illegal-immigrant activists, not to protect workers who never asked for it.

“What we really need is work,” said Frank Villa, 36, of Mexico. “If the Minutemen want to come hire us, they're welcome to stop by.”

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/northcounty/20060625-9999-1mi25curb.html

Minuteklan groups in Colorado fight over naming rights

2006-06-22T10:37:00.000-04:00

Front Range group grabs Western Colo. Minutemen monikers

By By MIKE SACCONE The Daily Sentinel

Thursday, June 22, 2006

Shortly after the leader of a Western Slope anti-illegal immigration group said he would like to rethink the Minutemen’s public image, a Front Range group registered four versions of the local group’s name as a “trade name,” forcing the Western Colorado Minutemen to seek out a new name.

Under Colorado law, the group that was called the Western Colorado Minutemen was forced to change its name or face possible lawsuits from the name’s registered owner. Less than a week later, Dana Isham, leader of the then-Western Colorado Minutemen registered the group as the Rocky Mountain Minutemen.

Robert Copley Sr., a leader of the Colorado Minuteman Project, based in Byers, said after reading Isham’s comments in a June 11 article about his Front Range group’s image, he felt some action had to be taken.

Isham had told The Daily Sentinel that he wanted to distinguish his group from other Colorado Minutemen groups by crafting an image that was less “preachy” and more dialogue driven.

“Image is everything, I think about it every day,” Isham told a reporter then. “The problem we have is ‘Minutemen’ are associated with militias, by virtue of name, by virtue of history.”

Filings with the Colorado Secretary of State’s office show that by noon on Monday, June 12 — the day after the article was published — Copley had registered five group names with the state: “Colorado Minutemen Project, LLC,” “Western Colorado Minutemen,” “Western Colorado Minutemen LLC,” “Western Slope Colorado Minutemen” and “Western Slope Colorado Minutemen LLC.”

All five groups were registered with the same address as Copley’s group, the Colorado Minuteman Project. And on June 17, Copley also registered the name “The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps Colorado” with the secretary of state’s office.

Prior to June 12, Copley had laid claim to only one group name, “Colorado Minutemen,” which was registered Oct. 10, 2005.

Copley said he registered the group names as a way to assert the primacy of his Front Range group over any other group that might claim to be the legitimate voice of the Minuteman movement.

“It’s called protection; it’s called damage control,” Copley said.

Copley said Isham had initially approached him to form the Western Colorado Minutemen as a branch of his Front Range group. But when Isham set off on his own and said the Colorado Minuteman Project was “too patriotic” in its presentation, he knew something had to be done.

“He did not do us a favor in that article,” Copley said. “He painted us as a radical wacko group.”

Copley said in addition to “damage control,” he did not want the average Coloradan to confuse Isham’s efforts with what his group was doing on the Front Range.

He said even though the Colorado Minuteman Project does not have any activities or organizations brewing on the Western Slope, he did not rule out the possibility they eventually might.

Isham declined to comment for this article. He said he did not want to further inflame the acerbic debate that followed his previously published comments.

According to Colorado law, once an entity’s name is registered with the Colorado Secretary of State’s office, only it may conduct business under that name.

But John Howe, a local attorney with Hoskin, Farina & Kampf, said it is possible to abuse the trade name registration process in Colorado, and groups who find their own name “registered away” might have claim to continuing to use their chosen name.

Howe said, in his opinion, the Colorado trade name registry does not necessarily entitle the first person or group who registers a group name to exclusively use a business name. He said the now-renamed Western Colorado Minutemen might have a compelling claim to the group name, provided they can show a court they were already associated with the name.

“If the Western Colorado Minutemen were using ‘Western Colorado Minutemen’ in Western Colorado for their purposes, they may have a better claim to the name than does the Colorado Minuteman Project,” Howe said. “You’ve got to still prove up your rights to use the name, notwithstanding that you’ve managed to register it first.”

Howe said unlike the state registry, the federal trademark registry, administered by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, confers some rights upon groups who register names therein.

He said federally registered groups like Minuteman Project Inc. or the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, could license out the “Minuteman” name, because their federal registration allows them the rights to those names nationwide.

“That would give you nationwide rights to that name once you jump through the national trademark registration hoops,” Howe said.

Nonetheless, Howe said the Rocky Mountain Minutemen might not want to pursue reclaiming their name because obtaining a court order for the Colorado Minuteman Project would require significant expenses.

Minuteklan's fantasy fence a bust

2006-06-21T16:20:00.000-04:00

Tucson Region

Ernesto Portillo Jr. : Minutemen's fantasy fence a bust

Ernesto Portillo Jr.

Tucson, Arizona | Published: 06.21.2006

It all seemed so easy when the Minutemen announced their plan to build a border fence.

It's the vaunted Minutemen, after all. As they're only to happy to tell us, they have widespread appeal and have singlehandedly made illegal immigration a national issue.

But the reality is, the group can't attract enough volunteer laborers to build its fantasy fence along the border.

And the other reality is, a fence will not stop illegal immigration. Illegal border crossers would just go around the overpriced desert ornament. Smugglers are already changing their routes as the U.S. government deploys National Guard troops at ports of entry and adds U.S. Border Patrol agents to heavily crossed areas in Arizona.

But don't bother telling that to the Minutemen. They're too busy trying to save face — and their project.

The Arizona-based Minuteman Civil Defense Corps hired a contractor to oversee the building of a fence on private land near Palominas in Cochise County.

Apparently the self-described border guardians can't stand Arizona's June heat.

When the group started its fence project in late May, its leaders said volunteers would flock to a ranch on the border and do what the federal government will not do — build a fence.

In typical Minuteman fashion, its proclamations were filled with hotter air than a Southern Arizona summer day. There has been no flood of volunteers lugging tools, putting in posts and stringing wire while singing Toby Keith country songs and trashing the Dixie Chicks.

The Minutemen claimed they would build a multilayer fence with concertina wire, trenches and surveillance cameras.

Well, that kind of high-security fence is not what the property owner had in mind, said a story from the Sierra Vista Herald/Bisbee Daily Review that ran in the Arizona Daily Star.

"From our perspective, the whole idea of the fence is to keep Mexican livestock out. We know a barbed-wire fence isn't going to keep people out," said Jack Ladd, on whose property the fence is being built. "We want to make it clear that while we oppose illegal immigration, we weren't necessarily trying to keep Mexicans off the land."

While the Minutemen are having trouble getting their modified but still symbolic fence up, it's not to say the group will fail. The fence could be erected with the help of a contractor, legal workers or illegal workers with fake documents.

Despite the public-relations setback, the Minutemen are still putting a positive spin on their project.

Connie Hair, spokeswoman for the group, said Monday that slightly more than two miles of the intended 10 miles of fence is up.

Hundreds of volunteers have flocked to Cochise County, and more are expected, she said.

In addition to the fence on the Ladd property, Hair said work will begin next month on a second fence, similar to the first , on nearby private property.

Even if the fences are built, the Minutemen have a greater challenge before them.

Illegal border entrants have returned to San Diego and El Paso, are crossing through tunnels and are paying more to smugglers who'll find other, desolate crossing points into our country.

They know where Canada is.

Presidential candidate Alan Keyes to visit Provo for border control debate

2006-06-21T16:17:00.000-04:00

Monday, June 19, 2006

Presidential candidate Alan Keyes to visit Provo for border control debate

Daily Herald

Former diplomat and presidential candidate Alan Keyes will weigh in on the debate on immigration and border security in Provo Wednesday.

The event is free and open to the public. A spokeswoman for the Minuteman political action committee is scheduled to speak as well, and there will be a screening of the documentary "Cochise County: Cries from the Border." The Arizona county is on the border with Mexico.

One of the event's organizers said Keyes is coming to Utah because of the recent visit of Mexican President Vicente Fox and the focus on immigration reform in the high-profile contest between incumbent U.S. Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, and businessman John Jacob in the Third Congressional District primary.

"Utah found itself in the media nationally because of the visit of Vicente Fox , which involved the head of a nation coming to Utah to lobby the Senate," said Stephen Stone, Web site editor of Renew America, a conservative advocacy group chaired by Keyes. "There's also, of course, the timeliness of the Third District race. The whole nation is looking at this race."

Minuteman PAC spokeswoman Carmen Mercer also is scheduled to speak. The Minutemen Civil Defense Corps is a volunteer group that monitors traffic across the U.S.-Mexico border and is building a border fence on its own near Naco, Ariz.

Keyes has called for a National Border Guard, similar to the Coast Guard, as an element of the armed forces, supplemented by a citizens' auxiliary that would act as spotters.

He also has supported the Minutemen and has been critical of immigration proposals supported by President George Bush and the Senate, which include a guest worker program.

The initial focus needs to be on stopping the flow of illegal immigrants across the border, Keyes wrote in a recent article posted on www.renewamerica.us.

"We are not averse to opening a proper path to citizenship for any who truly wish to be Americans," he wrote. "But if we take steps in this direction without first securing the border ... any move to open this path will rightly be regarded around the world as a signal that we lack the political will to maintain and defend our border and our national identity."

Stone said Wednesday's event is a "voter education" forum and that Keyes has not endorsed either candidate in the Third District race.

Keyes served as ambassador to the U.N. Economic and Social Council and assistant secretary of state for international organizations under former President Ronald Reagan.

He ran unsuccessfully for one of Maryland's Senate seats in 1988 and 1992, and in 1996 and 2000 was a Republican candidate for president.

Keyes drew the support of 21 percent of voters in the 2000 Utah presidential primary, a better showing than U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Steve Forbes.

He also visited Utah in September 2000 for a well-attended speech at the McKay Events Center at Utah Valley State College.

"I always look forward to coming to Utah," Keyes said in a statement. "This is a state where the people are committed to the faith, values, and decency that have made this nation strong and free."

Renew America, the Minutemen PAC and the Utah Eagle Forum are sponsoring the event.

Alan Keyes

6:30 p.m. Wednesday

Provo City Library
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page D1.

Hazleton, CA- may be first city to adopt anti-immigration proposal

2006-06-21T01:41:00.000-04:00

Legal challenge in San Bernardino, Calif., means Hazleton could be first to adopt law

Monday, 19 June 2006
By KENT JACKSON
kent.jackson@standardspeaker.com

A model that Hazleton Mayor Louis Barletta chose for an anti-immigration ordinance faces a legal challenge before it can reach voters in San Bernardino, Calif. The legal delay in San Bernardino means Hazleton might be the first city in the nation to adopt penalties against landlords that rent to illegal immigrants or businesses that hire them.

“We’re hoping we would be lighting one candle in a dark room. If this is duplicated by other cities in the nation, it would have a real impact on businesses who might think of hiring illegal immigrants,” said Barletta, whose proposed ordinance also makes English the official language of Hazleton government.

After shots were fired and gang-related graffiti was painted near the Pine Street Playground and two illegal immigrants were arrested for shooting to death a Hazleton man on May 10, Barletta started researching countermeasures.

He found one in San Bernardino, a city where roughly half the 200,000 residents are Latino.
An activist proposed an Illegal Immigration Relief Act and collected signatures to place the act on San Bernardino’s ballot as a voter initiative.

“It grew out of frustration of having no state and federal action,” said Joseph Turner, a legislator’s assistant and founder of the non-profit group Save Our State.

Turner awaits a court ruling on a challenge based on the number of signatures that his group gathered for its proposal.

San Bernardino’s charter says an initiative can go on the ballot if proponents gather enough signatures to equal 30 percent of votes cast in the most recent mayoral election.

Turner filed a petition for the immigration act in October 2005 and began collecting signatures based on the 2001 election when the mayor ran unopposed and turnout was low.

While the petition drive was under way, San Bernardino held another election for mayor that resulted in a runoff in February that attracted a large number of voters.

Opponents of Turner’s petition went to court and argued that the number of signatures needed on the petition should have been based on the turnout in February.

Meanwhile, in Hazleton, city council on Thursday approved the first reading of the ordinance that fines landlords $1,000 for each illegal alien tenant and revokes the businesses license of firms that hire illegal immigrants for five years, during which time the firm would be ineligible for city contracts.

Council could give final approval to the ordinance next month.

Barletta said the provision fining landlords for knowingly renting to illegal immigrants might be modified before then.

“My intent was never to have the landlords check citizenship. That’s very difficult to do,” Barletta said. “I do want them to be the first line of defense when illegal immigrants come to Hazleton.”

Theresa Brennan, attorney for the Hazleton Area Landlords Organization, said good landlords are willing to help reach objectives that the mayor set and already abide by a city ordinance that requires them to register tenants.

“The problem that I see is when you have out-of-town landlords that aren’t necessarily as familiar with ordinances in Hazleton, aren’t complying with registration ordinances, aren’t screening tenants as carefully,” Brennan said.

She plans to meet later this week with city Solicitor Christopher Slusser to discuss the anti-immigration proposal.

Another problem she noticed with the proposal: wording that penalizes landlords for knowingly renting to illegal immigrants.

“How do you prove that?” Brennan asked.

In San Bernardino, questions have surfaced about the difficulty of enforcing the Anti-Immigration act.

Barletta said Hazleton officials could not knock on doors and check identification, but police, health and code officers sometimes will find out when people are in the city illegally.

“It could be a routine traffic stop or a code violation,” he said. “When we do come across someone here illegally, we will find their place of employment if there is one and where they live.”

Barletta said that gives Hazleton a unique approach to discouraging illegal immigrants.

“We would be the first city that would be … going after businesses where they work and the place where they sleep.”

Group plans Fort Myers rally against illegal immigration

2006-06-21T01:24:00.000-04:00

Group plans Fort Myers rally against illegal immigration

By Melissa Cassutt

Monday, June 19, 2006

Americans Standing Tall has a message to lawmakers and locals: The line has been drawn.

"Instead of sticking our heads in the sand, I like to say we've drawn our line in the sand," said Americans Standing Tall President Harold Poole. "We just feel our country is being invaded by an illegal group of people who really have no right to be in this country ... We can't just pick and choose which laws we choose to enforce and which we choose to ignore."

The 27-member anti-immigration group formed shortly after the April 10 rally in Fort Myers, which drew out an estimated 75,000 to 80,000 protestors who balked the strict immigration laws churning through the Senate. Americans Standing Tall hopes to show in its July 1 "Citizen's Day Rally" on the steps of the Fort Myers City Hall that there is another voice in this debate -- and it's saying illegal immigrants need to pack up and ship out.

"We just need to stop and enforce the laws that are there now," Poole said. "We feel that every year or so (lawmakers) are making new laws which they don't enforce at all."

Organizers are still trying to get the word out but Poole estimated between 200 and 2,000 people will attend.

The Fort Myers Police department will be assigning additional officers to the rally, but the department does not release operational plans for security reasons, said Shelly Flynn, a spokesperson for the police department. The Lee County Sheriff's Office spent more than $300,000 on riot gear for the April 10 march, but has not been contacted for support in the July 1 rally, according to Deputy Angelo Vaughn, a spokesperson for the Sheriff's Office.

Minuteklan Border Fence Vandalized

2006-06-16T09:29:00.000-04:00

Minuteman Border Fence Vandalized

June 16, 2006, 03:10 AM

By Mark Stine, KOLD News 13

There's holes in a border fence put up by the Minuteman Project. Volunteers with the border- watch group built it last month near Palominas. But somebody tore it up.

This is the actual barbed wire fence separating the U.S. from Mexico. As you can see this part of the fence has been cut and there's a hole big enough for someone to travel through."

The new minuteman fence resembles the current border fence and it now has even more similarities because parts of it are in pieces."

"We expected some sort of statement from across the border, but we didn't think they'd go this far," says Jack Ladd as he drives along the new Minuteman border fence that sits on the edge of his ranch, and assesses the damage. "If anything, it's going to show the people of the United States it's even worse than what they thought."

An eight hundred foot section of the three mile barbed wire fence was cut.

"Cut so cleverly that it could not be repaired, it has to be restrung because it's cut right here at the post," says Carmen Mercer of the Minuteman Project.

Tuesday the Minutemen woke up and discovered the downed fence.

"It's very disappointing and of course we'd like to know what happened. If it was reaction from the other side, if it was reaction from, I don't know, question mark there."

The minutemen aren't surprised someone wanted the new barrier destroyed, but they are surprised the culprits weren't caught in the act.

"Especially over the lengths that it was done. It's just surprising to me that it was not getting the attention of the border patrol when it happened."

And since the act of vandalism, the volunteer group is increasing security along the fence line to keep it from happening again.

"We'll be there to prevent that, you better believe it."

The Minutemen say they've reported this vandalism to the Cochise County Sheriff's Department and hopefully they will be able to find out who destroyed the fence.

Minuteklan hire contractor to build fence

2006-06-16T00:42:00.000-04:00

Minutemen hire contractor to build fence

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SIERRA VISTA, Ariz. -- The Minutemen civilian border-patrol group has hired a contractor to finish building 10 miles of fence along the Mexican border.

Construction on the fence began May 27, when about 150 supporters turned out for the groundbreaking, but the number of volunteers then dwindled.

"We don't want to put up something that will just be a symbol," said Al Garza, the group's executive director. "We want to make sure it's permanent, properly structured and done right."

As few as four people were observed working on the fence recently, said Cecile Lumer of the humanitarian aid group Citizens for Border Solutions.

"From the beginning, the numbers they have projected have always fallen very short of the reality," Lumer said.

One of the ranch owners, Jack Ladd, said he hoped the fence would keep Mexican livestock off his property, but he doubted it would keep people out.

"We want to make it clear that while we oppose illegal immigration, we weren't necessarily trying to keep Mexicans off the land," he said.

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
Thursday, June 15, 2006 · Last updated 3:24 p.m. PT

ACLU anticipates problems at the border

2006-06-15T00:53:00.000-04:00

ACLU anticipates problems at the border

Sun News Report
Las Cruces Sun-News

The ACLU will open an office in Las Cruces in the next 12 to 18 months in anticipation of civil-rights problems along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The group also plans to open a Santa Fe office.

The ACLU has an office in Albuquerque and six other chapters across the state.

A $1.3 million investment from the American Civil Liberties Union headquarters in Washington, D.C., will make the expansion possible, executive director Peter Simonson said.

The office in Las Cruces will become the organization's only location along the U.S.-Mexico border.

"It is a full expansion. The office on the border is an idea that has been brewing for two to three years now. It was to anticipate the military forces on the border and the Minutemen," said Simonson. "We're likely to see possibilities of civil rights abuses; it's just a statistical fact given that immigrants are so disparaged by the mainstream media and by the popular view of U.S. citizens."

The office in Las Cruces will carry out a regional mission to defend people's rights, especially those of immigrants in the border zone, instead of doing it from Albuquerque, Simonson said.

From Las Cruces, the ACLU will also work with affiliates in Arizona and Texas and coordinate closely with the National ACLU Immigrant Rights Project.

Simonson believes that there will still be a need to have a watch group monitor activities on the border a year from now.

"Whatever Congress passes in regards to immigration will include a significant border security component," he said. "This creates a potential for problems."

The office in Santa Fe will open after the one in Las Cruces is ready to begin operations. It will focus on supporting advocacy efforts in the state Legislature and addressing education issues in northern New Mexico.

Show pairs Minuteklan, immigrant family

2006-06-13T16:51:00.000-04:00

Show pairs Minuteman, immigrant family

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES - A member of the Minutemen group and a family of illegal immigrants are paired in a reality series aimed at giving people a chance to see life from a different perspective.

The episode of the FX series "30 Days," from Academy Award-nominated "Super Size Me" documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, is scheduled to air Aug. 2.

In it, a man identified only as Frank and said to be a member of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, the anti-illegal immigration group, lives with a Mexican family in the U.S. illegally.

Frank shares a one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles with seven immigrants and accompanies the family to a March pro-immigrant rally that drew hundreds of thousands to downtown Los Angeles.

The network remained within the law, said John Landgraf, president of FX Networks.

"We suggested the family seek outside legal counsel," Landgraf told the Daily Journal of Los Angeles. Participants were not paid and the family's real surname was not used, he said.

Spurlock's series debuts July 26 with an episode in which the filmmaker tests life inside a county jail in Virginia.

ON THE NET

http://www.fxnetwork.com

Western Colorado Minuteklan seeks to change their image

2006-06-13T16:49:00.000-04:00

Minutemen work to rebuild image

Sunday, June 11, 2006

For Dana Isham, leader of the Western Colorado Minutemen, the struggle to create a lasting Western Slope movement against illegal immigration is a “PR war.”

Isham, who founded the group in late April after returning from border patrols in southern Arizona, said he hopes over the next few months to show the public that his group is not some proto-military organization, but rather a group of concerned, average citizens.

“Image is everything, I think about it every day,” Isham said. “The problem we have is ‘Minutemen’ are associated with militias, by virtue of name, by virtue of history.”

The Western Colorado Minutemen exists today in three informal branches with branches in the Grand Junction area, the Rangley-Meeker-Craig area and the Delta-Montrose area.

Isham said membership currently stands around 50, but he expects the group to swell to more than 200 once he starts his concerted effort to draw in casual anti-illegal immigration supporters.

To accomplish this “everyman” goal, Isham said he has decided to make his group a unique Colorado Minutemen collective, separate from the Front Range Minutemen group, Sovereignty Colorado.

Citing their Web site, www. sovereigntycolorado.com, Isham said they were too focused on the founding fathers and American nationalism. He said that sort of historical lecture would likely turn off the people he was trying to bring into the Minutemen movement.

“If you go to their Web site, folks nowadays don’t want to have a lecture on the founding fathers They want to see what (the group) is all about,” Isham said.

Isham said in addition to being “preachy,” some Minutemen groups give the impression to most Americans that “these folks might be carrying guns.” He said that was not the message he hopes the Western Colorado Minutemen will have.

On the Western Colorado Minutemen’s Web site, ww.westerncoloradominutemen.org, Isham has included, in addition to the mission statement of the group, a form for people interested in joining. As part of the membership form, prospective members are asked to submit $10 for a Colorado Bureau of Investigation background check. Isham said this would allow him to comb out the “bad apple applicants.”

He stressed that he has not had to reject any applications yet, but would probably have to “filter out” a few conspiracy theory buffs or people who hope to hijack the Western Colorado Minutemen to promote their own agenda, unrelated to immigration.

In the end, Isham said he hopes to show the Western Slope that his branch of the national Minutemen movement is intended for the everyman. He said he hopes to impress upon the public his group’s commitment to non-violent, dialogue-based resistance to illegal immigration.

He said he has already started reaching out to the Latin-Anglo Alliance and the Immigrant Rights Coalition in an attempt to show them that even though the Minutemen hold strong views on illegal immigration, his group is neither racist nor completely closed minded on the issue.

Isham said he also plans to eventually form a committee within the Western Colorado Minutemen devoted to community service.

Ultimately, Isham said he hopes the Western Colorado Minutemen will be able to show the public that “somebody is doing something” locally to counter illegal immigration.

“We’re just regular people,” Isham said. “The people that make this country work.”

Minuteklan reaching out to young conservatives

2006-06-13T16:48:00.000-04:00

Borderline interest

Monday, June 12, 2006

Dana Isham, leader of the Western Colorado Minutemen, said illegal immigration has always been a passionate issue among Minutemen circles. But Isham said for all their passion, when he looks out on his supporters, all he sees is gray.

As the immigration debate has unfolded this year, Isham said he realized that to sustain the strength and vitality of the Minutemen, he needed to reach out to younger supporters. He said without the under-50 crowd, the Minutemen will have little chance of becoming a lasting social movement.

“We need to get some of those folks involved with us to get their energy, their ideas, their minds,” Isham said. “Yes, they need to be part of the process, and we would like to get more young people as part of our process.”

Isham said several weeks ago he started reaching out to young conservatives to bring them on board with the Minutemen. He said he began his search with local young Republicans and conservatives because he thought they “would be more receptive” to the Minutemen’s message.

One of the young conservatives Isham contacted, Matt Soper, vice president of the Mesa State College Republicans, said Isham needed to realize that young men and women were generally uninvolved in politics. Soper said because of this predisposition to apathy, youth participation in groups such as the Minutemen would be hard to accomplish.

Soper said the fact the illegal immigration debate has polarized into the far left and far right camps did not exactly help either cause. He said given a choice, any young voter would pick a more moderate “option C.”

He also said each side’s “racial” overtones would likely turn off younger voters who have grown up immersed in diversity.

Soper said youth today are less likely to be shocked or amazed at the mingling of races in public. He said the fact that anti-illegal immigration groups focus on Hispanic immigrants makes them seem “nativist.”

But Fred Elbel, director of Defend Colorado Now, said society has indoctrinated youth to abhor discussions that might seem culturally insensitive.

“(Our older supporters) have been around longer and have seen how our country is starting to disintegrate,” Elbel said. “The younger folks are more or less indoctrinated into the religion of multiculturalism in the public schools.”

Elbel said older people are more likely to get involved in the illegal immigration debate for the same reasons they are more likely to vote or be involved in their communities. He said the older people get, the more interested they become in politics.

“It takes a while when you’re young to realize the importance of voting and that democracy is not a spectator sport,” Elbel said.

Advocates on the other side of the debate have not been so deeply affected by youth apathy. Nonetheless, movement leaders said they should not slow down their youth recruitment.

Ricardo Perez, an immigrant rights leader from Montrose, announced at a recent meeting at the Riverside Task Force that the Immigrant Rights Coalition needs to move beyond its usual recruiting venues of churches and family gatherings.

“The people getting involved are mostly older,” Perez said. “We need to reach out to youth at the schools and university. They should be informed of what’s going on.”

Perez said this approach would help the coalition involve youths who have a “social justice outlook” but might not be active in their churches.

Joshua Guajardo, 26, a teacher at Palisade High School and a leader within the local immigrant rights movement, said he has seen the illegal immigration debate enliven youths.

Guajardo said the strong national debate combined with the highly visible local immigrant rights demonstrations has piqued the interest of some youths who would otherwise feel “frustrated and annoyed” with politics. This, he said, was especially true of local Hispanic youths.

“A lot of people that weren’t interested in politics are becoming more so or are getting more involved,” Guajardo said. “Many people think we have no say but something about this movement has been very empowering.”

On both sides of the issue, Guajardo said the illegal immigration issue has the potential to craft a cadre of local political leaders and activists. The trick, he said, is to help them take the first steps.

NYC- Minutemen Take Border Battle to 39th Street

2006-06-11T00:55:00.000-04:00

Minutemen Take Border Battle to 39th Street

By Jarrett Murphy | June 02, 2006

Village Voice

There'll be another immigration rally on the city's streets on Saturday, but it won't be the kind seen so far this protest season. The people who'll gather outside the Mexican Consulate on East 39th Street are calling for more—not less—border enforcement and less—not more—immigration.

The lead sponsor is the newly formed New Yorkers for Immigration Control and Enforcement, which a press release says "is open to all Americans and legal immigrants who believe in enforcement-ONLY immigration legislation." It continues: "We represent the diversity and rich culture of the tri-state area, and welcome Americans and legal immigrants of all races, religions, and political affiliations who are united in our common struggle to protect our borders through enforcement-ONLY legislation."

Another sponsor is the New York City chapter of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a unit of about a dozen people that formed a few weeks ago when the larger New York State chapter grew big enough to split into regional groups. (The Civil Defense Corps is one of two similarly named organizations that started out West; the other is the Minuteman Project.) The group's leader is Jason Megill, a 30-year-old son of Canadian immigrants who works as a trader on Wall Street.

"We're really concerned about the lack of border security," Megill tells the Voice. He points to the thousands who sneak across each day, and to 9-11 as an example of where more uncontrolled immigration might lead. "We have to call attention to the fact that this administration doesn't enforce immigration laws." And not just on the border: The Minutemen want to see more "interior enforcement"— cops asking people their immigration status (this is expressly restricted in New York City). Megill believes that would "reduce illegal immigration and reduce crime."

The 11 a.m. rally on Saturday (another group, S.O.S. Borders, is also a sponsor) is part of a planned nationwide day of action in support of tougher immigration laws—an answer to the multi-city, pro-immigration rallies on April 10 and May 1. It's called "Hands Along the Border," a reply to the May 1 events at which pro-immigration activists linked themselves in human chains.

The very House measure that the pro-immigration protests denounced is what N.Y.I.C.E. wants to see become law. "We strongly believe that the problem of illegal mass migration must be solved through the enforcement of immigration laws (like employer sanctions), NOT by rewarding lawbreakers," continues the release from N.Y.I.C.E., whose office number led to an answering machine featuring the voice of a proud supporter. "Therefore we endorse the enforcement-ONLY approach of H. R. 4437, recently passed by the House of Representatives, and oppose amnesty and guest-worker provisions in the corresponding Senate bill, S. 2611." What's more, N.Y.I.C.E. opposes "the massive increase in legal immigration contained in S. 2611, which threatens to overwhelm an already strained immigration bureaucracy, and which would drive U.S. population to over a billion people by the year 2100."

N.Y.I.C.E. offers an equal opportunity critique of the pro-immigration lobby. "We oppose the Left's self-serving encouragement of illegal immigration, which is predicated on the assumption that ethnic special interest groups will increase the Left's own power. We also oppose the business special interests on the Right, who have been using President Bush as a puppet to achieve their long-term goal of opening America to cheap foreign labor." However, the group does not embrace mass deportation, preferring to whittle away at the problem through attrition (Their statement doesn't address what to do about illegal immigrants' children).

The Minutemen in New York haven't garnered the attention that their Western, border-watching counterparts have, but in April Megill and others did head to the Canadian line to keep watch. "People do sneak across, but we didn't catch any, although we would have if we had stayed another day," he says. In Southampton, another Minuteman chapter is videotaping cars that stop to hire illegal immigrants and posting the films online. Megill, who grew up in Iowa and attended the University of Virginia, says the Minutemen conducts a background check on new members to screen out people with criminal records. "We don't want any instigators," he says. Most of the members are "middle-class people who are sick to death."

They aren't alone. Artcamp, or "Artesanas Campesinas," a cooperative of Mexican women that sells handcrafted jewelry, is sending around emails calling on the United States to enforce its border laws and "Help us to Keep Our Husbands Home with our Families." The site features testimonials from women left behind, like:

Dear Ruben please come home the children have not seen you in three years and little Beto is a young man and Lupita asks about her papa. I know we agreed you should try your fortune in the United States, but I didn't know that it would be so lonely and that you would be gone for such a long time, please return to us.

Meanwhile, with the immigration debate in Washington stuck between two seemingly irreconcilable bills, local pro-immigration activists are turning their attention back to Albany and the issue of immigrants' access to driver's licenses. The New York Civic Participation Project, which helped to organize the big marches in the city this spring, is asking folks to call Majority Leader Joe Bruno and Speaker Shelly Silver in support of bills by Senator Nicholas Spano (S7388) and Assemblyman Felix Ortiz (A612a) "that would allow hard working immigrants in New York State to access licenses and prevent hundreds of thousands of immigrants from being pushed further underground."

Yakima, WA- Rally shows support for ban on services for illegal immigrants

2006-06-09T12:26:00.000-04:00

Rally shows support for ban on services for illegal immigrants

By MARK MOREY
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC
Wednesday, June 7, 2006

A better immigration policy for the United States starts with locking down the country's borders, deporting illegal residents and punishing the employers who hire them, organizers of a Yakima rally said Tuesday night.

About two dozen people who attended the rally also heard from members of the 21st Century Paul Revere Ride, a group of motorcycle riders traveling across the country to voice their concerns about illegal residents, and from Republican congressional candidate Claude Oliver of Kennewick, who wants to unseat veteran GOP Rep. Doc. Hastings of Pasco.

Ruth Drollinger of Yakima organized the rally to boost local signatures for Initiative 946, which would restrict state and local governments from providing social services to undocumented residents unless the federal government mandates it.

Opponents of the change say that reform is needed, but believe I-946 could create public health problems and harm children.

Drollinger said she formed Grassroots on Fire, affiliated with the I-946 campaign, to raise awareness about the broader impact of illegal immigration. About 80 people belong to the group, Drollinger said.

She said many of the Valley's problems — including access to social services — can be tied to illegal immigration.

"The cost is exceeding the benefit of having them here to work in the agricultural area," she said in an interview.

Members of the rally audience signed bricks that they planned to mail to members of Congress to show support for immigration reform.

Oliver, a Yakima native who has spent 25 years as a Benton County treasurer or commissioner, said he hasn't studied I-946 to develop an opinion yet on the measure. But he said Hastings and other members of Congress have failed to administer their immigration responsibilities, including investigations of border security and illegal entry.

"What has taken so long for you to address our broken border security and immigration laws? We can only survive as a nation if we are a nation under law — the law of the United States," he said in prepared remarks.

Frosty Wooldridge, a member of the Paul Revere Ride, which arrived in the Yakima area Tuesday on the way to Olympia, recounted statistics that he said demonstrate that illegal immigration will flood and destabilize the country.

At the current growth rate, the U.S. population could pass 500 million by 2050, Wooldridge said. Based on the birth rate, the population would reach a peak of 255 million if only 200,000 immigrants were allowed per year, he said.

The speakers' messages appeared to hit home with the audience.

"I'm not against guest workers, but I'm against opening our borders and letting people come here by the millions," said Harvey Mushman of Yakima.

Utah- Immigration heats Republican primary race

2006-06-09T12:21:00.000-04:00

Immigration heats race

Vote could impact GOP stance, experts say

By Tad Walch
Deseret Morning News

OREM — From New York to Los Angeles, the immigration issue is spurring national interest in this month's Republican primary race between Utah 3rd District Congressman Chris Cannon and challenger John Jacob.

Meanwhile Utah's radio airwaves began to crackle with ads from the two candidates, as Jacob's campaign issued three spots over Thursday and Friday to counter Cannon's initial ad, released the week prior.

Cannon responded with a new ad of his own late Friday afternoon as the candidates position themselves for the June 27 primary, which actually begins next week with early voting at select locations.

The cluster of campaign media buys followed a lengthy article published Tuesday on the Wall Street Journal's Web site that framed the national immigration debate around the Utah race. A story last week in the Los Angeles Times portrayed the immigration issue as a re-election minefield for Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, including Cannon.

"A GOP primary for a Utah House seat in the country's most conservative congressional district may set the boundaries for any legislation that has a chance of passing both the House and Senate," wrote John Fund, a Wall Street Journal editorial page writer.

Fund speculated that a loss by Cannon in the June 27 primary could motivate other House Republicans to block any bill that creates a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

"House Republicans are already spooked about immigration, and should one of our own lose on the issue, you will see panic break out," one GOP congressman told Fund.

Both Utah campaigns said Fund's Journal piece sparked campaign contributions. Cannon campaign manager Nathan Rathbun said donors who have appreciated Cannon's voting record on other issues were motivated by the article to come to Cannon's aid.

Jacob campaign manager Randy Minson said small donations from people who want stronger immigration policies than Cannon has supported have poured in from more than 25 states in the four days since Fund's article was posted on wsj.com.

"It's an issue that's obviously polarizing in this race and others," Minson said.

Cannon beat a Republican challenger, Matt Throckmorton, two years ago, when Throckmorton ran almost solely on immigration and benefited from tens of thousands of dollars spent by national anti-immigration groups. None of those groups have entered this campaign, but Cannon's first 60-second radio ad anticipated the import of the issue and launched his effort to show that his ideas aren't very different than other national Republicans.

"Why would someone run against a strong conservative like Chris?" a woman says in the ad.

A man responds, "Chris is one of the congressmen writing the new law to stop illegal immigration. He's already voted for stricter screening at entry points, increased border surveillance and more border patrol agents."

The woman adds, "I've read about it. Chris Cannon would also require all immigrants to carry a tamper-proof ID card or be deported."

But while Fund praised Cannon for being "one of the few members to point out the genuine need the U.S. economy has for new workers," that's a position criticized by immigration restrictionists who do not want any new legislation to include a way for illegal aliens to gain temporary worker status that leads to the possibility of citizenship.

One of Jacob's ads appealed to voters who feel that way by having a man, purported to be a 3rd District resident, saying, "I'm not anti-immigration, but I am for the rule of law."

That radio spot and another ended with a tagline — "What if there was a man who thought the way you thought?" — that seeks to take advantage of the former air traffic controller and water rights developer's position as a political novice.

Jacob's campaign staff was angered by Cannon's initial ad because the woman in it also says, "I just hope this opponent runs a clean race and doesn't spend the campaign falsely attacking Chris."

Jacob issued a 30-second rebuttal to what Minson called a "backhanded shot," with Jacob himself saying he would follow President Reagan's advice that Republicans should never speak ill of other Republicans.

Some wondered why it took Jacob until Thursday to air his first radio ad when a poll done by Dan Jones & Associates for the Deseret Morning News and KSL-TV in mid-May found that 77 percent of 3rd District residents had never heard of him. Minson said the strategy was designed to avoid voter ad fatigue.

"If you start too early, ads will be ineffective when you come down to crunch time and you need a bang at the end."

Both candidates made appearances Saturday at Pony Express Days in Jacob's hometown of Eagle Mountain. this coming Saturday, they will appear in a debate together at Utah Valley State College.

Yakima, WA- Rally shows support for ban on services for illegal immigrants

2006-06-07T17:03:00.000-04:00

Rally shows support for ban on services for illegal immigrants

By MARK MOREY
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC
Wednesday, June 7, 2006

A better immigration policy for the United States starts with locking down the country's borders, deporting illegal residents and punishing the employers who hire them, organizers of a Yakima rally said Tuesday night.

About two dozen people who attended the rally also heard from members of the 21st Century Paul Revere Ride, a group of motorcycle riders traveling across the country to voice their concerns about illegal residents, and from Republicancongressional candidate Claude Oliver of Kennewick, who wants to unseat veteran GOP Rep. Doc. Hastings of Pasco.

Ruth Drollinger of Yakima organized the rally to boost local signatures for Initiative 946, which would restrict state and local governments from providing social services to undocumented residents unless the federal government mandates it.

Opponents of the change say that reform is needed, but believe I-946 could create public health problems and harm children.

Drollinger said she formed Grassroots on Fire, affiliated with the I-946 campaign, to raise awareness about the broader impact of illegal immigration. About 80 people belong to the group, Drollinger said.

She said many of the Valley's problems — including access to social services — can be tied to illegal immigration.

"The cost is exceeding the benefit of having them here to work in the agricultural area," she said in an interview.

Members of the rally audience signed bricks that they planned to mail to members of Congress to show support for immigration reform.

Oliver, a Yakima native who has spent 25 years as a Benton County treasurer or commissioner, said he hasn't studied I-946 to develop an opinion yet on the measure. But he said Hastings and other members of Congress have failed to administer their immigration responsibilities, including investigations of border security and illegal entry.

"What has taken so long for you to address our broken border security and immigration laws? We can only survive as a nation if we are a nation under law — the law of the United States," he said in prepared remarks.

Frosty Wooldridge, a member of the Paul Revere Ride, which arrived in the Yakima area Tuesday on the way to Olympia, recounted statistics that he said demonstrate that illegal immigration will flood and destabilize the country.

At the current growth rate, the U.S. population could pass 500 million by 2050, Wooldridge said. Based on the birth rate, the population would reach a peak of 255 million if only 200,000 immigrants were allowed per year, he said.

The speakers' messages appeared to hit home with the audience.

"I'm not against guest workers, but I'm against opening our borders and letting people come here by the millions," said Harvey Mushman of Yakima.

Utah- Immigration heats Republican primary race

2006-06-05T17:00:00.000-04:00

Immigration heats race

Vote could impact GOP stance, experts say

By Tad Walch
Deseret Morning News
Monday, June 05, 2006

OREM — From New York to Los Angeles, the immigration issue is spurring national interest in this month's Republican primary race between Utah 3rd District Congressman Chris Cannon and challenger John Jacob.

Meanwhile Utah's radio airwaves began to crackle with ads from the two candidates, as Jacob's campaign issued three spots over Thursday and Friday to counter Cannon's initial ad, released the week prior.

Cannon responded with a new ad of his own late Friday afternoon as the candidates position themselves for the June 27 primary, which actually begins next week with early voting at select locations.

The cluster of campaign media buys followed a lengthy article published Tuesday on the Wall Street Journal's Web site that framed the national immigration debate around the Utah race. A story last week in the Los Angeles Times portrayed the immigration issue as a re-election minefield for Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, including Cannon.

"A GOP primary for a Utah House seat in the country's most conservative congressional district may set the boundaries for any legislation that has a chance of passing both the House and Senate," wrote John Fund, a Wall Street Journal editorial page writer.

Fund speculated that a loss by Cannon in the June 27 primary could motivate other House Republicans to block any bill that creates a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

"House Republicans are already spooked about immigration, and should one of our own lose on the issue, you will see panic break out," one GOP congressman told Fund.

Both Utah campaigns said Fund's Journal piece sparked campaign contributions. Cannon campaign manager Nathan Rathbun said donors who have appreciated Cannon's voting record on other issues were motivated by the article to come to Cannon's aid.

Jacob campaign manager Randy Minson said small donations from people who want stronger immigration policies than Cannon has supported have poured in from more than 25 states in the four days since Fund's article was posted on wsj.com.

"It's an issue that's obviously polarizing in this race and others," Minson said.

Cannon beat a Republican challenger, Matt Throckmorton, two years ago, when Throckmorton ran almost solely on immigration and benefited from tens of thousands of dollars spent by national anti-immigration groups. None of those groups have entered this campaign, but Cannon's first 60-second radio ad anticipated the import of the issue and launched his effort to show that his ideas aren't very different than other national Republicans.

"Why would someone run against a strong conservative like Chris?" a woman says in the ad.

A man responds, "Chris is one of the congressmen writing the new law to stop illegal immigration. He's already voted for stricter screening at entry points, increased border surveillance and more border patrol agents."

The woman adds, "I've read about it. Chris Cannon would also require all immigrants to carry a tamper-proof ID card or be deported."

But while Fund praised Cannon for being "one of the few members to point out the genuine need the U.S. economy has for new workers," that's a position criticized by immigration restrictionists who do not want any new legislation to include a way for illegal aliens to gain temporary worker status that leads to the possibility of citizenship.

One of Jacob's ads appealed to voters who feel that way by having a man, purported to be a 3rd District resident, saying, "I'm not anti-immigration, but I am for the rule of law."

That radio spot and another ended with a tagline — "What if there was a man who thought the way you thought?" — that seeks to take advantage of the former air traffic controller and water rights developer's position as a political novice.

Jacob's campaign staff was angered by Cannon's initial ad because the woman in it also says, "I just hope this opponent runs a clean race and doesn't spend the campaign falsely attacking Chris."

Jacob issued a 30-second rebuttal to what Minson called a "backhanded shot," with Jacob himself saying he would follow President Reagan's advice that Republicans should never speak ill of other Republicans.

Some wondered why it took Jacob until Thursday to air his first radio ad when a poll done by Dan Jones & Associates for the Deseret Morning News and KSL-TV in mid-May found that 77 percent of 3rd District residents had never heard of him. Minson said the strategy was designed to avoid voter ad fatigue.

"If you start too early, ads will be ineffective when you come down to crunch time and you need a bang at the end."

Both candidates made appearances Saturday at Pony Express Days in Jacob's hometown of Eagle Mountain. this coming Saturday, they will appear in a debate together at Utah Valley State College.

San Diego, CA- Border marchers, Minuteklan swap verbal jabs

2006-06-04T00:59:00.000-04:00

Border marchers, Minutemen swap verbal jabs

By Michael Stetz
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

June 4, 2006

The plan to use National Guard troops to bolster border security was protested yesterday in San Ysidro.

Calling the move “militaristic,” organizers staged a rally and a march, which went from the community's Larsen Field Park to the U.S.-Mexico border.

The rally also drew a counterprotest by members of the Minuteman Project, the controversial citizen border patrol, who clustered along Camino de la Plaza, an avenue bordering the park.

The two groups took verbal jabs at each other throughout the afternoon.

Police said it was largely a civil protest, with one arrest. A man was taken to jail after what police said was an assault on an officer.

At one point, when the march began and protesters neared the Minutemen, police had to stand between the two factions.

“Racists, go home!” the protesters chanted.

“Illegal aliens, go home!” the Minutemen responded.

San Diego police, which beefed up staffing for this rally, estimated the protesters numbered 200.

About two dozen Minutemen were present.

Elva Salinas, a protest organizer, did not give an estimate of the crowd size. She said to ask the police.

The crowd, while not as substantial as at past rallies, was vocal. Tuesday is election day and several events regarding that may have siphoned supporters, said Salinas, an English professor at San Diego City College

“You're always disappointed when you don't get a million people for a protest. But we had quality people,” she said.

The rally was in answer to President Bush's call for the National Guard to assist the U.S. Border Patrol.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger – who initially expressed concerns about the plan, particularly its funding – agreed last week to use the troops. About 1,000 are expected to be on the border by mid-summer.

The concept rattles protesters. “You call the National Guard for a state of emergency, not this,” said Ajamu Edmonson, a community activist from San Diego. “It's a last resort.”

Protesters also called for amnesty for those who are here illegally.

The Minutemen said the protesters are out of touch with mainstream America and that border security, as it stands now, is a farce.

“They want open borders,” said Jeff Schwilk, the founder of San Diego Minutemen, who was taking part in the counterprotest. “They want it open to drug dealers, terrorists and criminals. That's how I read it.”

The protest had its bizarre moments. A man dressed in a Ku Klux Klan outfit showed up on the Minutemen side, drawing jeers from the protesters.

He was pulled away by police. The Minutemen people said he was not part of their effort.

The police presence was considerable. More than 50 officers were present, including 15 on motorcycles and six on horseback.

“We had a few little conflicts,” said Lt. Tony McElroy, who was in charge. “But it could have been worse.”

Minuteklan redesign border fence to protect cattle

2006-06-03T01:08:00.000-04:00

Minutemen redesign border fence to protect cattle

Advocates to pray for undocumented immigrants

BY EMMA PEREZ-TREVIÑO
The Brownsville Herald

The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps on Friday announced plans to modify a border fence it is building on private property in Ari-zona so that it doesn’t hurt cattle.

Meanwhile, advocates for the roughly 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country are planning to hold a prayer vigil in Brownsville.

Their vigil will be held at 10 a.m. today at Hope Park in downtown Brownsville along the banks of the Rio Grande next to the bus station.

The group will pray for fair immigration reform but against the use of National Guard troops to secure the U.S.-Mexico border and the construction of a border fence included in two separate immigration bills by the U.S. House and Senate.

The House and Senate are expecting to start negotiations soon on their separate bills in an effort to reach a compromise.

The Minutemen, however, aren’t waiting.

The group has been monitoring locations close the U.S.-Mexico border since 2004 in an effort to prevent entry by undocumented immigrants and has started its own small-scale fence-building project in Arizona.

Minutemen President Cris Simcox stated in an e-mail that there will be surveillance cameras on the fencing that Minutemen across the country will monitor by computer.

“We have chosen a security design that is based on the Israeli fences in Gaza and on the West Bank that have reduced terrorist attacks there by 95 percent or more. In order to be effective, a fence should not be easy to compromise by climbing over it with a ladder, cutting through it with wire cutters, ramming it with a vehicle or tunneling under it undetected,” Simcox stated.

On Friday in another e-mail, Simcox advised of its redesign, but only on one property.

“This new design has a vehicle barrier to not only deter the drug and human traffickers from crashing through the fencing in their vehicles, but this barrier will also help protect the rancher’s cattle from the razor wire,” Simcox said.

Simcox’s e-mail stated that the full-flown security fencing as presented in its original design will be constructed on other private tracts of land.

“In the face of the betrayal of the Senate and our federal government, we are more galvanized and organized than ever to do the work that they refuse to do,” Simcox stated.

Simcox is upset about the Senate’s recent proposal to provide a path toward legalization for undocumented immigrants who have been in the country two years or more and starting a guest worker program.

The U.S. House proposal does not provide for legalization or a guest worker program. Both proposals provide for fencing, but the House calls for 700 miles while the Senate calls for 350 miles in addition to vehicle barriers.

Simcox was not available for comment Friday to say if, besides cattle, serious injury to an undocumented immigrant had been considered in designing the fence.

“With the wire and the trench, the rancher felt that his cattle would be injured,” Simcox’s spokeswoman Connie Hair said by tele-phone from Dallas.

“A cow is too stupid to see the trench,” Hair said. “A cow is not a real smart animal. A horse would go around it, but not a cow. A human being can easily avoid it, but a cow can’t, so the only people who would be subject to be injured are if they are trying to dis-mantle the fence.”

Texas Minutemen representative Mike L. Vickers did not anticipate any injuries.

“I don’t think it’s going to be harmful to anyone, it’s a standard livestock fence,” Vickers said.

Texas Governer to install cameras on the border, encourage viewers to report immigrants

2006-06-03T01:00:00.000-04:00

Anyone can report illegal crossings via web cams

By Louie Gilot and Brandi Grissom / El Paso Times

6/03/2006 12:00 AM

The border "neighborhood" is about to get a whole lot bigger under Gov. Rick Perry's "neighborhood watch" plan that will allow anyone, anywhere, anytime to monitor the Internet for immigrants crossing into the U.S illegally.

Good guys and bad guys, smugglers and law-enforcement officials and even people in Guatemala or Europe will be able to keep an eye on the Texas border.

Perry announced Thursday that the state would invest $5 million to install hundreds of surveillance cameras on private farmland along the Texas-Mexico border, broadcast the live feed on a Web site, and ask Web users to call an 800-number to report sightings of undocumented immigrants.

State officials Friday likened the plan to a "neighborhood watch" for the entire border. "We're talking about a really long neighborhood," Perry spokes woman Rachael Novier said.

Others said it amounted to online vigilantism.

John Vandeven, a Northeast El Paso business owner and a supporter of border security efforts, said he was in favor of the cameras but will not be using his lunch break or free time to scan a screen for dashing immigrants.

"It's not anybody's business but the government's to do that. You're going to have people calling, 'Look, you've missed one.' But I think the novelty will wear off. People won't stick with it," he said.

Cameras are expected to go up in the next 30 days.

Nothing in the plan thus far limits participation in the program to Texans. Anyone, anywhere, could access the site and call the 800 number to report illegal activity. The idea has already attracted international media attention.

Last year, people from as far away as Minnesota monitored the Arizona border through a camera installed by a group called American Border Patrol and linked to the group's Web site. Watchers could even manipulate the camera from their homes, said Glenn Spencer, American Border Patrol president.

"It does work. One problem for the law-enforcement officers is that it takes a diligence to watch a camera feed. You can get bored or distracted," he said.

Spencer's online watchers were only allowed to watch 30 minutes at a time to stay alert, Spencer said. The group discontinued the camera experiment because of lack of funding, Spencer said.

Ray Ybarra, who represents the El Paso chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said he opposed online monitoring by people who don't know the border region, predicting it would generate "a numerous amount of calls that are unwarranted" and lead to the harassment of residents.

Novier said Perry was not concerned that the cameras might encourage the activities of vigilante groups.

"The intent is to make it broadly available to act as a sort of force multiplier," she said.

State officials said the Department of Public Safety would run the program with the help of local law enforcement and that calls would be routed through a centralized communication system already in place through Operation Rio Grande, one of Perry's border security initiatives.

Whether many in El Paso would dedicate time to scrutinize the border from the comfort of their home or workplace remains to be seen.

Even volunteers with Minutemen-style organization weren't very enthusiastic.

"If I can see the border on my computer screen, so can the coyotes (smugglers)," said Bob Masling, founder of the Texas Border Regulators in El Paso County. "What good does it do?"

In Dallas, Shannon McGauley, president of the Texas Minutemen, a group that organizes regular patrolling trips to El Paso's Lower Valley, said his friends would use the Web site "if we have time."

State officials have not yet drafted a list of landowners who want to be involved in the so-called Virtual Border Watch Program but Novier said it was border farmers and ranchers who brought the idea to the governor.

In El Paso county, there has been no publicized resistance to the idea from border farmers, some of whom have allowed Minutemen volunteers on their land.

Bill Lovelady, who owns a 1,000-acre cotton farm in Tornillo, said he would welcome government cameras on his land.

However, he laughed at the suggestion that he should become a "remote Minutemen," as he put it, by surveying video feed of his own land.

"I do have a life," he said.

Fremont, CA- Dueling protests spill onto streets

2006-06-02T01:11:00.000-04:00

Tensions rise in immigration debate

Dueling protests spill onto Fremont streets

By Jonathan Jones and Chris De Benedetti - STAFF

6/02/2006 09:09 PM

Inside Bay Area

FREMONT - They taunted. They screamed. They waved American flags.

On Friday evening during rush-hour traffic, the emotion over the immigration debate boiled over at the intersection of Mowry Avenue and Fremont Boulevard.

On one side, a group of roughly 35 local residents from the Tri-City area gathered, holding signs that read: ``No Amnesty,'' ``Secure the Borders Now'' and ``No Racists Here.''

Next to them another group, twice their size, also gathered at the intersection, chanting into a bullhorn, waving signs that read: ``No to the racist minute-men,'' and ``No human being is illegal.''

Until recently, the passionate debate over immigration reform in Fremont involved subtle tensions in residential neighborhoods, school walkouts, small demonstrations, and occasional comments to the local news media.

But the passions have intensified after a group of residents recently formed the East Bay Coalition for Border Security, a Fremont group that favors immigration reform and opposes amnesty for illegal workers.

This week, advocates for illegal immigrants struck back. Using contacts formed as part of the May 1st Coalition, organizers reached out through e-mails and fliers at BART stations, urging people to come to the intersection near the Fremont Hub to counter-protest against what they described as ``the racists in our own backyard.''

The protests come as Congress tries to reconcile House and Senate immigration and border security bills. While the Senate bill provides a pathway for citizenship for illegal immigrants who have been here five years or more, and creates a temporary guest worker program, the House bill provides no such provisions and makes it a felony to be an illegal immigrant or to assist one.

Members of the East Bay Coalition for Border Security bristled at the other side's accusing chants of racism. ``Of course, anything that is disagreeable to them is racist,'' said Charles Dirkman, a Fremont resident and coalition co-founder.

Dirkman, a 25-year-old college student, called the counter-protesters ``just a real motley collection of the political far left. They conflate issues, and their thoughts are based on false premises.''

``They're slandering us,'' said Dave Sander, the coalition's sergeant-at-arms. The Fremont resident said the counter-protesters were distorting his group's point of view, adding that many of his anti-amnesty peers also share the left-wing protesters' disapproval of President Bush.

``If the KKK or the Nazis were here, I'd be on the (counter-protesters') side,'' Sander said. ``But it's not a racist thing. It's an American thing. We're against illegal immigration, not legal immigration.''

They're calling us Minutemen, but we're not. We haven't even joined that group.''

Dirkman and the coalition's leaders, including co-founder Casey Fargo, a 25-year-old Livermore resident who works in Fremont, will speak with Fremont police officers before planning another rally.

``We're not intimidated, but we don't want to strain the Fremont police's resources. People from Berkeley will,'' Dirkman said. ``We've had counter-protesters before and it's been peaceful, but this is a completely different element coming from Berkeley or San Francisco. They're more into confrontational politics.''

Amelia Powers, a 19-year-old from Fredonia, Kan., watched the heated rally with astonishment during her first visit to California. Powers sat with the anti-amnesty group that was holding a sign that read ``Si, se puede aprender Ingles'' (Yes, you can learn English) - a variation of the longtime pro-Latino slogan.

``In Kansas, there are no protests,'' Powers said.

Unlike the May 1 protest, the counter-protest consisted of mostly white men and women in their 20s and 30s such as James Illingsworth, a 26-year from Santa Cruz, who stood outside the Barnes and Noble bookstore, handing out fliers.

Like many others involved in the counter-protest, Illingsworth is part of the International Socialist Organization, which along with the Green Party and the Transport Workers Solidarity Committee drew supporters from throughout the Bay Area.

Oakland resident Jessie Muldoon, a 36-year-old organizer, said she was not surprised by the lack of Latinos at the protests.

``I think it would have been more confrontational for them,'' she said.

Muldoon said those who came to Fremont wanted to show that they're not ready to shy away from a fight over reforming immigration. Many also said they supported amnesty for illegal workers.

Jose Carlos, a 49-year-old postal worker who came from Hayward as part of the May 1st Coalition, called the East Bay Coalition ``a bunch of racists who have nothing better to do than hate immigrants.''

Despite tensions and more than 15 police officers standing guard, there were no major confrontations during the two hours of heated protest.

A few even tried to engage in debates, an exercise in futility.

As he crossed the northwest corner, Dirkman approached 28-year-old Anna Matshke to tell her she was helping to create an open border with Mexico, and helping to burden an already overloaded health system.

``I know that as the immigration movement gets stronger, they'll also get stronger,'' said Matshke, referring to the East Bay Coalition for Border Security. ``So we want to bring attention to our organizations and let people know there's a way to be connected and stop them from winning people to their side.''

As both groups gathered in size, Faisal Fekri, a 14-year-old Centerville student, pulled up on his bicycle, then grabbed a picket sign, as 40-year-old Joe Jacobs, a member of the East Bay Coalition for Border Security, waved a cowbell in his face.

``I wanted to punch that guy in the face but the cops were around,'' Fekri said afterward. ``We're all immigrants. We've all come from other countries.''

About 6 p.m., some of the counter-protesters dug into Domino's pizza that they said had been donated, as Todd Chretien, a Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate, campaigned against what he sees as the government's betrayal in both the Senate and House bills.

``We live in a very diverse community,'' said John Gallagher, a 32-year-old fourth-grade school teacher at Forest Park Elementary School. ``Blaming immigrants for this country's problems does not make for a great community.''

Across the street, Mansoor Hai, a 21-year-old Afghan immigrant now living in Dublin, stood outside, sipping a Jamba Juice, looking dumbfounded.

``I don't know what's going on,'' said Hai as he pointed across the street at the two sides bunched together and yelling at each other. ``Are those people pro-immigration or anti-immigration?''

NYC- Minutemen Take Border Battle to 39th Street

2006-06-02T00:55:00.000-04:00

Maryland Minuteklan to shift focus toward monitoring employers

2006-05-31T05:41:00.000-04:00

Minutemen to shift focus
Immigration reform group to monitor employers; opponents decry effort

Wednesday, May 31, 2006
by Sebastian Montes
Staff Writer

Stephen Schreiman, director of the state chapter of Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, in his Gaithersburg home.

In the four months since its creation, the Maryland chapter of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps has been laying low and largely out of sight, running a handful of what it calls ‘‘operations” at spots throughout the state where day laborers gather to wait for work.

‘‘It was not being productive to try to do anything during the winter months,” said Stephen Schreiman, the state chapter’s director. ‘‘We did some initial surveillance and realized that with 4 percent employment levels, what’s there to photograph?”

But with the summer weather sure to boost hiring activity at the sites, Maryland’s Minutemen are ratcheting up preparations for a concerted push against illegal immigrants.

In the next few weeks, Schreiman said, the group will host its first public event, an ‘‘open community forum,” most likely in Gaithersburg.

Meanwhile, the focus of their surveillance at the worker sites will be more on the businesses and homeowners, not the day laborers themselves.

He says he does not blame those among the day laborers who came into the country illegally. Rather, he focuses his ire particularly on Montgomery County government, and the politicians he says have ‘‘hijacked” the values of its citizenry.

‘‘You’ve got a group of people that are ideologues. Many of them have been in politics for so long that they’ve lost touch with reality. What we have are just politicians that have run amok,” he said.

And through the summer, as this year’s elections near, Schreiman says the Minutemen will add a political dimension to their strategy.

But while Schreiman deems ‘‘delusional” those who believe that the majority of the county supports illegal immigrants, County Councilman Tom Perez finds the claims of the Minutemen and their ilk ‘‘laughable.”

‘‘We’ve had day laborer centers in Montgomery County for 15 years and it’s been a win-win-win: a win for the adjacent communities, a win for businesses and a win for the laborers themselves,” he said. ‘‘I get a real kick out of people... telling us what this community thinks.”

The county last year allocated $125,000 for a day laborer center in Gaithersburg and has set the money aside again this year.

Mayor Sidney A. Katz and the City Council have discussed the center publicly three times since a task force of residents made its recommendations on what course the city should follow. Progress has so far been slowed by the difficulty of finding a site that conforms to what the task force recommended.

Perez, who is running for state attorney general, is nonetheless optimistic that a Gaithersburg center will be up and running by July.

Schreiman insists that the Minutemen do not oppose a day laborer center in Gaithersburg outright, only if it serves illegal immigrants.

And while the Minutemen are vowing a stronger public presence in the coming months, they are a group that remains shrouded in secrecy.

Schreiman, a biomedical engineer for a ‘‘national company” somewhere ‘‘in the metropolitan area,” spoke at two of the city council meetings since the task force wrapped up their work, but did not identify himself as the chapter’s director.

A membership that started out at around 20 has now swelled to what he insists are more than 100, he said, more than half from Montgomery County. He would not, however, show The Gazette a list of members.

No other members of the state chapter have come forward, in part because of threats, Schreiman said, but also because many of the members have not been allowed by their employers to come out as Minutemen.

‘‘We’ve got people in local government,” he said. ‘‘Obviously, they keep a low profile.”

Nonetheless, the mood in Montgomery County is drastically more accepting of opposition to illegal immigrants than in years — even months — past, says Chuck Floyd of Kensington, a Republican running for county executive.

‘‘I talk to people every day, I talk to thousands of people, and they’re very upset about it,” he said. ‘‘Is that the No. 1 issue in Montgomery County? No, it’s probably number five. But it’s on the radar screen.”

Perez counters Floyd’s ‘‘message of division and pessimism.”

‘‘There’s a regrettably long history of xenophobes who oppose immigration,” he said. ‘‘The good news is that they have always remained a small fringe group, and they will continue to be.”

The state chapter is one of 23 branches of the national organization, with five more soon to come, said Connie Hair, spokeswoman for the Minutemen’s national headquarters in Phoenix.

More than 7,000 volunteers have had background checks, received training, and have been cleared by the national headquarters to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border, she said.

But as an organization, the Minutemen are still going through ‘‘growing pains,” having incorporated itself as a 501(c)4 nonprofit only in April 2005.

Which is why, said Hair, there have yet to be financial records showing how much money the group has raised. Nor did she reveal details of its budget.

‘‘We will release those just like everybody else does,” she said. ‘‘I don’t even have those numbers to give out yet.”

Meanwhile, Casa of Maryland, which runs the county’s two existing day laborer centers, holds that if anything, the presence of the Minutemen ‘‘has attracted a lot of sympathy and new employers coming in to support the workers,” said Kim Propeack, Casa’s director of community outreach.

And if the Minutemen do in fact up their presence at the worker sites, Casa remains at the ready, she said.

‘‘We have a very strong core of volunteers ready to fly into action if the Minutemen ever get aggressive. But luckily, they’ve been largely irrelevant.”

Schwarzenegger tries new script - changing strategy to garner support

2006-05-30T16:07:00.000-04:00

Schwarzenegger tries new script

The once very Republican chief of California now changing strategy to garner support

By JOHN POMFRET and SONYA GEIS
Washington Post

SACRAMENTO, CALIF. - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is attempting a political comeback as he faces re-election this year, courting Democrats and independent voters by distancing himself from President Bush and pushing an expensive bond proposal to rebuild California's levees, schools and highways.

Schwarzenegger, one of the nation's most prominent Republicans, has criticized Bush's plan to dispatch the National Guard to the Mexican border. He has appointed Democrats to key state jobs. In recent weeks he helped engineer a bipartisan compromise to get the $37 billion bond proposal on the November ballot, traveling the state with Democratic legislative leaders to promote it.

"If last November I told you just give it a few months, that he'd be running around the state with Democrat leaders by his side, you wouldn't have believed me and I would have felt like a fool telling you," said Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican strategist. "But he's doing it. All of the sudden, he has a record of accomplishment."

The governor is hoping to build support in a state where Democrats and independents account for nearly two-thirds of registered voters. His strategy is having some effect: In April, a Los Angeles Times poll showed his approval rating at 44 percent, up from 37 percent in October.

But he still has a way to go. A poll last week by the Public Policy Institute of California said a race now between Schwarzenegger and either of his likely Democratic opponents — State Treasurer Phil Angelides or State Controller Steve Westly — would be a toss-up.

Last November, Schwarzenegger's fortunes looked grim. California's voters handed him a stunning loss in a special election that would have changed several state laws and given him more political power.

That election night, Schwarzenegger vowed to change and to show voters that "I am not to the right or left, that I just see things best for California."

Since then he has courted the public-service unions that exert enormous influence on California politics and that had spent millions to try to defeat his plans. Schwarzenegger has tried to smooth relations with the California Nurses Association by dropping his quest to overturn state nurse-patient ratios.

Buoyed by an additional $5 billion in tax revenue, he has pledged to increase education spending by billions of dollars, hoping to patch strained ties with the California Teachers Association. And he has put off a significant overhaul of California's troubled prison system, leading the California Correctional Peace Officers Association to delay plans to open a $10 million war chest for attack ads against him.

Karen Hanretty, a former state GOP spokeswoman, said Schwarzenegger can no longer count on Republicans to support him at the polls. She contended that he had become overly influenced by his wife, Maria Shriver, a lifelong Democrat and a member of the Kennedy clan.

Schwarzenegger's recent change of heart on immigration is a case in point, Hanretty said. Last year, the governor, himself an immigrant, spoke in favor of the Minutemen and other vigilante groups patrolling the Mexican border. This year he has distanced himself from the Minutemen and recently criticized a Senate plan to build more walls along the border.

Immigration issues get hateful

2006-05-30T16:01:00.000-04:00

Immigration issues get hateful

Tuesday, May 30, 2006
KENT FAULK
News staff writer
The Birmingham News

The day after May 1 rallies by Hispanics seeking amnesty for illegal immigrants, someone sprayed black paint over the window panes at the La Casa Del Pueblo de Dios church in Decatur, blocking the view of a welcome sign written in Spanish.

"It was a hate-filled act," said the Rev. Gene Lankford, coordinator of Hispanic ministries for the northern conference of the United Methodist Church.

Lankford, whose wife, Aida Lea Barrera-Segura, pastors the Decatur church, is among those who see evidence that the debate over immigration reform is taking a hateful twist.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is reporting a rise in the past year in the number of groups it categorizes as hate groups. A Ku Klux Klan imperial wizard said a recent rally was the first he could remember that drew more supporters than protesters. And one candidate for Alabama attorney general is openly calling for martial law and the shooting of illegal immigrants who resist imprisonment and deportation.

Many of those who attend anti-immigration rallies say they aren't hateful or racist and don't have a problem with immigrants coming to the United States as long as they do it legally.

"I would guess that the more mainstream anti-immigration groups are trying to distance themselves from groups like the Klan because ... (such a group) de-legitimizes their message," said Allen Kohlhepp, a staff member with the Anti-Defamation League.

SPLC has documented a nationwide increase in the groups it classifies as hate groups, from 762 in 2004 to 803 last year, according to the report The Year in Hate for 2005. The increase caps a 33 percent rise in the number of such groups formed since 2000, according to the report.

"Hispanic immigration, in particular, may have been the single most important factor in recent years, fueling a national debate and giving hate groups an issue with real resonance," the report says.

Klan gets support:

The KKK recently held an anti-immigration rally in Russellville during which it had 20 or so people apply for membership, said Ray Larsen, imperial wizard for the National Knights of the KKK from South Bend Ind. The rally drew a crowd of more than 300 that included a mix of supporters, on-lookers, and a few dozen counter protesters.

It was the first time Larsen could remember supporters outnumbering the people who came out to protest their presence. The Klan initiated several new members at a cross lighting ceremony later that night in Franklin County.

Hispanic advocates say the recent rise in hateful rhetoric has alarmed some illegal immigrants.

"They're a little fearful that they may get hurt in the process," said Veronica Ramos, a Hispanic interpreter from Shelby County whose father was an immigrant.

Attacks by white supremacists and other extremists also are increasing against legal and illegal immigrants, according to a report released last month by the Anti-Defamation League.

"While most hate crimes targeting Hispanics have not been the work of the extremist groups themselves, the groups' virulent anti-Hispanic rhetoric has contributed to a broader climate of hate," the league said in a statement.

League and SPLC officials cite several attacks or threats made against Hispanics around the country since late March, including an attack by two white teens on an Hispanic youth in Texas whom they thought had kissed a white girl.

Don Black, a former KKK grand wizard who now runs the white nationalist Web site forum Stormfront, said the immigration issue has increased visits to his Web site to about 25,000 visitors a day, up by about 5,000 a day in the past couple of months.

"A lot of people are going to be attracted to our movement because of it and get a greater understanding of what we're all about because of that one issue," said Black, who runs the site from his West Palm Beach, Fla., home.

`Social strain':

It isn't surprising that the KKK and similar groups are taking on the immigration issue as a way to expand membership, said SPLC spokesman Mark Potok. "In times of social strain these groups tend to do well, and this is a time of real strain," he said. "Many of these groups feel the immigration issue is going to put them in the mainstream."

At least one candidate, Larry Darby, who is running for Alabama attorney general, has picked up the issue. Darby proposes to declare martial law and mobilize national guardsmen to seal the state's borders for a period to stop the flow of illegal immigrants. Then what Darby calls "Mexican invaders" would be rounded up by sheriff's deputies, constables, and others who would be deputized. The illegal immigrants should be treated like prisoners of war and put in tent cities until they could be taken back to Mexico, he said. If they try to resist or escape, Darby said, "then they should be shot. This is war."

The Alabama Democratic Party investigated what action it could take against Darby because of his remarks, which party executive director Joe Turnham said were unacceptable. The party announced Friday it was too late to take him off the ballot.

"I am a little concerned. I have seen some escalation that is a little unnerving," Turnham said. "When people make hateful remarks, it can incite people to violence, and that's not the way we solve our problems."

Whoever the message is coming from, it sounds the same to many Hispanics, Lankford said.

"All they hear out of it is a message we don't want you here," he said.

Anti-illegal immigration advocates deny that they are motivated by racism and hatred

2006-05-28T16:53:00.000-04:00

Race sparks border debate
Anti-illegal immigration advocates deny that they are motivated by racism and hatred

By HOLLY EDWARDS
Staff Writer
Published: Sunday,
05/28/06

Despite sharply different views, activists on both sides of the immigration debate have reached the same conclusion: America is being poisoned.

One side believes Hispanics streaming into the country illegally will destroy American culture, while the other fears rising racism and bigotry will desecrate American ideals.

"There's an inherent contradiction between the racist rhetoric I hear about Hispanics and the
Christian values that are supposed to be leading the hearts of Americans," said Yuri Cunza, president of the Nashville Area Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "It's time to learn from the past dramatic and terrible consequences of racist thinking and move ahead."

But activists fighting for tougher immigration laws dismiss accusations of racism and say their primary aim is to reclaim their country.

"I don't care what race you are, no one should be rewarded for breaking the law," said Gene Rutledge, a retired Border Patrol agent who lives in Clarksville.

On Web sites, talk radio shows and in interviews, anti-illegal immigration activists describe Hispanic migrants as lawless, disease-ridden "invaders" waging an undeclared war against the United States.

But anti-illegal immigration activists insist race has nothing to do with their views. Some point to Rutledge's wife, Delfina Espinoza, whose father emigrated from Mexico legally in the 1950s.

"The illegals coming to this country are turning the nation into a Third World country," said Espinoza, who met her husband, when he stopped her near the Mexican border, incorrectly suspecting she might be an illegal immigrant. "They take no pride in America and have no respect for anyone."

Destroys 'our way of life'

Beyond concerns about unemployment, declining wages and over-tapped public services, many activists say their primary fear is that the sheer number of Hispanic migrants will drown American culture.

Theresa Harmon, a founder of Tennesseans for Responsible Immigration Policies, said there is nothing wrong with viewing the American way of life as superior and trying to preserve it.

In her opinion, Harmon said, illegal Hispanic immigrants don't share the American values of education, home ownership and respect for the law and are destroying middle class neighborhoods throughout Nashville.

For the most part, she said, they want to impose their culture on America rather than learn English or assimilate into American society.

"I feel like my forefathers fought and bled and died to give us this country, so no one should come here and try to shove something down my throat," she said. "You can't fault people for being patriotic and loving their country."

Throughout history, Harmon said, countries that have accepted large numbers of immigrants have seen bloodshed.

Many books and articles touted by the anti-illegal immigration movement carry dire warnings of impending race wars as hordes of Hispanics bent on re-conquering America convert middle-class suburbs into Mexican barrios.

"What you are seeing happen is the destruction of our way of life," she said. "Anytime you see a nation go over to an entirely different culture and different nationality, you're going to see a fight."

She said she was brought to tears by the changes illegal Hispanic immigrants have brought to her childhood neighborhood in the Thompson Lane area.

"The area is starting to look like a Mexican barrio," she said. "The upscale restaurants are closed, all the signs are in Spanish, and all you see going in and out are Mexicans."

There is also a growing sense of outrage among some African-Americans who blame illegal immigrants for rising job loss and crime in the black community.

A poll by the Pew Center for Hispanic Studies found that while African-Americans tend to be more sympathetic to the plight of Hispanic immigrants, they also tend to feel more threatened by job loss and declining wages.

Many blacks also bristle at comparisons between the civil rights and pro-immigration movements. And like others in the anti-illegal immigration camp, some see the recent immigrant rights rallies as an aggressive demand for privileges illegal immigrants don't deserve.

"Slaves helped build this country, and what you have here are invaders who come here with arrogance and demand to get all the things we worked for," said Michael Holt, 51, a Bordeaux native who retired from an aircraft part manufacturing plant in Nashville.

As Holt sees it, the swelling anti-immigrant sentiment in the country is an encouraging sign of new unity between whites and blacks.

"For once in this country's history, we have black and white people joining forces against a common enemy," he said.

Accusations of extremism

On the other side of the debate, some civil rights groups point to parallels between anti-immigration propaganda and arguments long made by white supremacist groups.

While most anti-illegal immigration activists aren't extremists, there are disturbing signs that white supremacists have infiltrated the movement, said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that tracks hate groups.

Anti-illegal immigration leaders insist they have no connection to white supremacist hate groups and take vigilant measures to make sure they never do. Harmon said she threatened to take legal action when the National Vanguard, a white supremacist group, posted an article and pictures on its Web site of Tennesseans for Responsible Immigration Policies event.

She said her views on illegal immigration have nothing to do with racial bias or negative stereotypes.

"My grandmother is a Cherokee Indian, and the Cherokee people are an example of what happens when you don't secure your borders," she said, adding that two of her best friends are black.

Many leaders of the movement view the charges of racism as an effort by politically correct liberals, aided by left-wing media, to shut them up and close down the debate.

Others embrace the term. A message posted on an anti-immigration Web site called Our Way of Life defines racism as "a reasoned response to the perceived harm done to one's own race by an alien race" that is "generally speaking, a good thing."

For Potok and others who gauge racist sentiment in the country, the combination of racial intolerance, conspiracy theories and a growing group of armed citizens guarding the border could quickly lead to violence.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation reported nine hate crimes targeting Hispanics in 2004, the most recent year for which such information is available.

According to the law center, Hispanic immigration has been the driving force behind the rising number of hate groups across the country, which have grown from 602 in 2000 to 803 last year.

A recently released report by the Anti-Defamation League cited more than 2,500 hate crimes against Hispanics from 2000 to 2004. Two of the hate crimes the report described occurred in Tennessee.

In Blount County last year, two men were sentenced to four and a half years in prison for vandalizing and painting Nazi symbols on a Mexican food store in Maryville. Also last year, a federal judge sentenced former correction officer and KKK member Daniel James Schertz of South Pittsburg, Tenn., to 14 years in prison after he pled guilty to making five pipe bombs to blow up a bus carrying Mexican workers from Tennessee to Florida.

The ADL report blamed extremist Web sites and talk radio shows for fanning the flames of violence. Among those quoted in the report is a New Jersey radio host who told his listeners how "terrific" it would be to trap illegal immigrants in steel cages and beat them to death.

While immigrant rights activists say the rabid tone of some talk radio shows is inciting racial tension, others say the belligerent attitude of some Hispanics is sparking the animosity.

Local radio host Steve Gill, a fervent proponent of tougher border security measures, said many people were outraged when they saw Hispanics carrying signs that said "This is our country" at some of the immigrant right rallies.

In his view, Hispanics are guilty of racism when they demand an exemption from federal law that would apply only to them.

"They would never say we should bring cruise ships full of undereducated, disease-ridden, impoverished Haitians to this country to undercut the wages of the Hispanic community," Gill said.

The anger reflected on the Internet and the radio stems from the sense many feel that the country is being invaded, he said. While Gill said he's never told his listeners to use violence against Hispanics, he understands why some feel there should be a military response.

"If 100,000 Mexicans rushed the border at the same time and if people looked at the situation the way it really is, no one would call it anything other than an invasion, and we would send in the military and shoot people," Gill said.

Local radio host Phil Valentine has also been active in the anti-illegal immigration movement. More than 1,500 people turned out for a "De-Magnetize America" rally hosted by Valentine in April.

'Not what this country is supposed to be about'

Jose Gonzalez, executive director of Conexion Americas, a nonprofit organization in Nashville designed to help Hispanics integrate into the community, said he is saddened by the increasingly violent anti-Hispanic sentiment he encounters.

Gonzalez said immigrant rights advocates are fighting for new laws to protect immigrants and allow them to move here legally to work, not an exemption from the law.

"One of the things this whole debate has done is bring out some emotions a lot of people didn't know this country had," he said.

"This is how sad it is. I heard a radio talk show host say the solution to immigration is to put the alligators attacking people in Florida in the Rio Grande River."

He also said he discovered a video game on the Internet called "Border Patrol" in which shooting the most vulnerable Hispanic people — pregnant women and children — earns the highest number of points.

"All we're doing is building fear and racism, and that's not what this country is supposed to be about," he said. "The thing is, Tennessee values and Southern values are the same as Hispanic values. They're church, family and hard work."

Hispanics are latest to face anti-immigrant sentiment

Potok, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the negative stereotypes applied to Hispanic immigrants were also placed on other groups that entered the country in large numbers.

The Irish, Germans, Protestants, Catholics and Jews were all accused of spreading diseases, being disloyal to America and not speaking English correctly, he said.

"What these anti-immigration groups have in common with white supremacist groups is the belief that white people are the most endangered species on the planet," he said.

Tough talk in Washington

Fears of America's destruction are also being stoked at the highest levels of government, according to civil rights groups.

U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, a Colorado Republican who chairs the 92-member bipartisan House Immigration Reform Caucus, told a group of activists last year that illegal immigration is part of a global plot to destroy America.

Some have labeled Tancredo a racist, but he insists he's simply opposed to anyone of any color entering the country illegally. Tancredo is considered a hero by some anti-illegal immigration activists and frequently shows up at local events and rallies.

Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee has won new favor in the movement with his support of a measure to make English the national language. He also introduced legislation requiring that the national anthem, Pledge of Allegiance and all other symbols of national unity be recited in English. Alexander voted against Senate legislation Thursday that would overhaul U.S. immigration law. Alexander said it did not do enough to make the border more secure. (Tennessee's other senator, Bill Frist, the Republican Senate majority leader, voted in favor of the bill, which passed.)

One point of agreement between the two sides is that government policies allowing businesses to hire vast numbers of illegal immigrants are primarily responsible for the situation.

Both sides also blame the outsourcing of jobs and international trade agreements for damaging some Latin American economies and driving more Hispanics to America.

"No one I know is for illegal immigration, but there are economic realities, economic forces that are pushing people into the country," said Gonzalez, of Conexion Americas. "It's basic supply and demand. Jobs are available here, and demand for jobs is over there."

Published: Sunday, 05/28/06

Minuteklan to start border fence

2006-05-27T16:33:00.000-04:00

Minutemen to start border fence

By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published May 27, 2006

The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC) will begin construction of new fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border in Palominas, Ariz., today in the wake of the Senate's passage of an immigration reform bill the Minutemen have criticized as amnesty.

"The vote to give amnesty to millions of illegal aliens by the U.S. Senate, should it pass into law, would ensure that the status quo is maintained. The borders would remain wide open and the attractive nuisance of endless welfare and social programs at the expense of the American taxpayer would remain," said MCDC President Chris Simcox.

"Those climbing over the backs of those waiting patiently to abide by our laws and instead breaking the law, illegally entering this country, and committing document fraud, those not paying taxes and those hiring illegally would be granted full amnesty," Mr. Simcox said. "This sends the message that if you play by the rules, you suffer; if you enter the United States illegally, you are not subject to the rule of law."

More than 1.15 million illegal aliens were apprehended last year by the Border Patrol, more than half of whom were caught in Arizona.

The MCDC, working with WeNeedAFence.com, a grass-roots group that began a campaign last year to construct a secure barrier along the Southwest border, has partnered with six landowners for construction of fencing on their properties and has raised more than $200,000 in donations so far to pay for the project.

Surveillance cameras on the fencing will be monitored via computer by registered Minutemen volunteers across the country, Mr. Simcox said.

"No fence can be a 100 percent impenetrable barrier -- but a good design will be time-consuming enough to get through that Border Patrol agents can be alerted to get to a point of attempted intrusion before the intrusion can be completed," he said.

The fence's design was the work of WeNeedAFence.com, whose founder, Colin Hanna, described the Arizona project as a "bold and creative private-sector initiative" to bring a secure physical barrier along the nation's southern border.

"We are thankful that 259 members of Congress and 83 senators have voted for a border security fence," he said. "It is time for the House and Senate to work together to ensure that every high-traffic border region is protected with a secure physical barrier so that America can remain a nation of legal immigrants."

Mr. Simcox and Mr. Hanna will attend today's ground-breaking ceremonies. Two construction companies have offered to begin building the fence, coordinate volunteer construction crews and donate the use of heavy construction equipment, Mr. Simcox said.

In December, the Pennsylvania-based WeNeedAFence.com first proposed that a privately built fence be erected on the southern border, delivering 20,000 petitions to members of Congress asking that a fence provision be included in any immigration bill.

The organization wants separate fences on both sides of the border, each 12- to 15-feet high, separated by a roadway to allow the passage of Border Patrol vehicles. Motion sensors would be buried in the road as part of the project. The structure would be 40 to 50 yards wide, with coiled barbed wire 8 feet high on each perimeter. The cost has been estimated at $4 billion to $8 billion.

Minuteklan, walkers plan Memorial Day activities

2006-05-26T15:53:00.000-04:00

Minutemen, walkers plan Memorial Day activities

CLAUDINE LoMONACO
Tucson Citizen
05.26.2006

Groups from opposite sides of the immigration divide are gearing up for Memorial Day weekend activities to bring attention to what both call a failed border policy.

Seventy-six people have registered for a seven-day walk through the desert from the Sasabe Port of Entry to Tucson to commemorate the hundreds of illegal immigrants who have died.

Another 70 or so will join the group for least part of the "Migrant Trail," which begins Monday, organizers said.

Members of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps will kick off a three-day fence-building project Saturday to fortify a 10-mile stretch of border along a private ranch in Palominas. Organizers expect about 350 volunteers.

Jim Campbell, a 63-year-old Phoenix retiree, donated $100,000 to the Minuteman effort.

At one time, he relied on illegal immigrants, he admitted.

"There was nobody else to do the work," Campbell said. "But that was six years ago. They were nowhere near the burden they are right now."

Campbell said he hoped the fence would help stop illegal immigrants who overburden schools, hospitals and law enforcement agencies.

Project organizers wanted to build an Israeli-style military fence, but rancher Jack Ladd objected to the design, said Minuteman spokesperson Connie Hair. The new design will consist of a vehicle barrier and barbed-wire fence.

Maria Padilla Jim, a patient care technician, was inspired to join the "Migrant Trail" last year after treating seriously injured migrants in University Medical Center's emergency room.

"They would come in with Kotex pads in their shoes to soak up all the blood," she said.

Others survived but suffered permanent kidney failure and require dialysis for the rest of their lives.

"There's women and children and old people dying for jobs," Padilla Jim said. "I don't think they should be forgotten."

The 75-mile walk winds through the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge and Altar Valley, where dozens of people died last year.

Fremont, CA- group forms 'There's nothing about the Minutemen that we don't like'

2006-05-25T09:07:00.000-04:00

5/25/2006 02:33 AM

Anti-amnesty group forms in Fremont
'There's nothing about the Minutemen that we don't like'

By Chris De Benedetti, STAFF WRITER
Inside Bay Area

FREMONT — Their name may be new, but their goals remain the same.

Or so say leaders of a Fremont group opposing illegal immigration that has considered becoming a local chapter of the Minutemen, the national civilian border watch group.

But after about 60 people met Monday night in Fremont, the Minutemen affiliation temporarily was put on hold, and instead a local group calling itself the East Bay Coalition for Border Security was formed.

"It's an important first step if we're going to turn this into a campaign," said Charles Dirkman of Fremont, a co-founder of the group.

The meeting grew somewhat chaotic when librarians asked the overflow crowd to leave the Fremont Main Library's meeting room because the number of attendees exceeded capacity, Dirkman said. Those at the impromptu offshoot meeting, held in the library parking lot, took only the initial step of signing up to express interest in creating a Fremont-based Minutemen chapter — but at a later date.

Meanwhile, inside the library another group formed a board of officers that will serve as a decision-making body for the East Bay Coalition for Border Security's membership, which shares the Minutemen philosophy if not its official affiliation.

"We didn't formally start the Minutemen chapter, but we may become a chapter in the future," Dirkman said of the new coalition. "Ideologically, we're the same (as the Minutemen). There's nothing about the Minutemen that we don't like."

Dirkman, a 25-year-old college student, will serve as secretary and co-spokesman for the newly formed anti-illegal immigration group. Casey Fargo, a Livermore resident who works in Fremont, was chosen as group president.

Administrative rather than philosophical reasons likely contributed to the delay in creating a local Minutemen chapter. Chapters may be formed only by a collection of individuals who already have joined the controversial group. Thus, many nonmembers who attended the meeting Monday first must join the national Minutemen organization, Dirkman said.

Individuals applying for membership to become Minutemen must undergo a background check, which takes a couple of days, said Tim Bueler, a Minuteman Project spokesman based in Orange County. Also, any member who participates in border-watch activities first is given a psychological evaluation, he added.

The Minutemen nationwide have 200 chapters and 200,000 individual members, Bueler said. Turnaround for chapter applications normally takes a week or two, he said.

"They just need to go online, print out our pledge, sign it and mail it tous," he said.

Meanwhile, some leaders of the Fremont anti-illegal immigration group said they are trying different methods to galvanize support. Last week, Dirkman led a Bible meeting attended by a handful of people to put the immigration issue in "biblical terms," he said. Dirkman added that he intends to keep separate the East Bay Coalition for Border Security and the smaller Christian gatherings unless the group's officers decide otherwise.

The Fremont organization's next rally — its first since taking its new name — will be from 5 to 7 p.m. June 2 at Fremont Boulevard and Mowry Avenue.

The group has held several rallies at that same location in the past month in response to pro-amnesty marches held state- and nationwide. The debate continued Wednesday when the U.S. Senate voted 73-25 to advance a bill that would tighten border security, stiffen penalties for employers hiring illegal immigrants and give immigrants a chance to become citizens after illegally entering the country.

Grass-roots organizations say they hope to influence the imminent debate on the Senate and House's harsher bill, which would charge illegal immigrants with a felony.

"It seems like it's all growing so fast, and there are all kinds of little groups (opposed to illegal immigration) forming across the country," Dirkman said. "As long as there's this momentum, they're going to find a way to relate with each other."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Minuteklan heed rancher, scale back fence plans

2006-05-25T06:07:00.000-04:00

05.25.2006

Minutemen heed rancher, scale back fence plans

350 volunteers expected for weekend work

By Arthur H. Rotstein

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

A border-watch group will alter its plans for an elaborate border security fence southeast of Tucson to accommodate the needs of the host rancher, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.

The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps will be building two parallel 14-foot high, 150-feet-long steel mesh fences over the Memorial Day weekend to serve as a model on Jack Ladd's ranch in Palominas, but its design will be changed at his request, spokeswoman Connie Hair said.

Minuteman volunteers also will build about 10 miles of fortified range fencing for Ladd, including five-strand barbed wire fortified with vertical steel rail posts, backed by coiled concertina wire and behind that, angled and crisscrossed steel rails embedded in concrete to act as vehicle barriers. The rails also will be designed to keep Ladd's cattle from reaching the concertina wire, Hair said.

In all, 350 volunteers will construct the fencing, she said. Several hundred more will set up stationary observation posts along the Mexican border near Naco over the holiday period, notifying the U.S. Border Patrol if they spot any illegal immigrants trying to cross.

Drug smugglers in heavy-duty pickup trucks routinely crash through Ladd's current barbed-wire fencing. The wire fencing also is frequently cut by coyotes — smugglers leading illegal immigrants about three miles north across his property from the border to Arizona 92.

The original heavy-gauge mesh fencing complex was to have included a 6-foot deep trench to the south, facing Mexico.

Based on an Israeli security design, the trench was intended to keep vehicles from crashing through, with coiled and razor-edged concertina wire between the trench and the mesh fencing.

A graded dirt road initially was planned between the two mesh fences, with more concertina wire and another trench planned for the north side of the interior fence.

But Ladd told the Sierra Vista Herald that he didn't want a fence of that design. "What we want is a barbed-wire fence with metal railings that will keep the drive-throughs from occurring and keep Mexican cattle out."

In the model, concertina wire will be placed between the parallel mesh fences, Hair said.

"The trench and the concertina wire (on the outside) are not going to work because he has cattle," Hair said.

"He wanted to change and modify the design. This was what he wanted. And so we are always happy to defer to the rancher."

The work also calls for mounting inexpensive video cameras on posts. The cameras can be monitored from home computers.

Hair said some materials and equipment and all the labor have been donated. A Phoenix home builder, Jim Campbell, has donated $100,000, bringing total donations to $380,000 since the group first put plans for building a border fence on its Web site about three weeks ago, Hair said.

There are plans to install the mesh-style fencing on a neighboring ranch within the next month, she said.

Utah Minuteklan protests Vicente Fox's visit to Salt Lake City

2006-05-24T13:27:00.000-04:00

Demonstrators on Tuesday protest against Mexican President Vicente Fox
and illegal immigration in front of the Governor's Mansion while Fox and
Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. dine inside. Brandt Barker, left, 20, of West Jordan,
recites the Pledge of allegiance Tuesday in front of the Governor's Mansion
during a Utah Minutemen rally. (Jim Urquhart / The Salt Lake Tribune)

Utah Minutemen protest Vicente Fox's visit to SLC

'Go back to Mexico': Some demonstrators blame the president for Mexicans coming across the U.S. border illegally

By Lisa Rosetta

The Salt Lake Tribune

5/24/2006 09:47 AM

Toting American flags and waving large banners, about 100 people assembled in front of the Governor's Mansion on Tuesday night, yelling and chanting at Mexican President Vicente Fox's motorcade as he arrived for the State Dinner.

"Go back to Mexico, Fox, we don't want you here!" one man yelled. "Take care of your own people, Fox! Take care of your own citizens so they don't have to come here!"

Standing behind yellow police tape near the edge of the sidewalk, the demonstrators, most of them Utah Minutemen, cheered as drivers on South Temple honked their horns and waved, signaling their support.

Other drivers crept along, their windows rolled down, and waved - with one finger.

Upset by the Utah Minuteman Project's protest, Troy C. Gottfredson showed up with a flattened Corona beer box with his own message scrawled on it: "Welcome President Fox."

"They [the Minutemen] want them [undocumented workers] lynched. They want them dragged out," said Gottfredson, who saw the Minutemen protest on TV and rushed to the Governor's Mansion to stage his own protest - against the Minutemen.

"There's just no positive; it's angry," he said. "It's unfortunate. It's just too angry for me."

Utah Minutemen, however, said their message is not imbued with racism or hatred. Securing the borders, and deporting undocumented workers here, is a matter of national security.

Wally McCormick, a Utah Minuteman who visited the U.S.-Mexico border in April 2005, said American families there carry guns on their hips and live in constant fear. Mexicans knock on their doors in the middle of the night, demanding food, water and liquor.

McCormick and Darrel Wood, another Minuteman who visited the border, said they're angry Fox is in Utah, dining with Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. and initiating political dialogue.

"He's a socialist dictator oppressing the lower class, so much so that they [Mexicans] are forced to leave their country," Wood said. "I think he is responsible for a lot of deaths on the border."

Close to Wood, Salt Lake City police officers ushered some Minutemen off the sidewalk and toward the street for security reasons, a move that raised the ire of Land Reay, a Taylorsville man who showed up to support the Minutemen's cause.

"He [the police officer] should have that much spine at the Rio Grande!" Reay yelled through cupped hands.

Vicki Smith, who is not a Minuteman but supports the group's cause, said her family is fighting wars in two countries.

While her son is disassembling explosives in Ramadi, Iraq, Smith says she is battling illegal immigration on her home soil. Undocumented workers, she said, are a drain on social services and American taxpayers.

"When my ancestors immigrated here they didn't do it on the backs of other Americans. There was no welfare or bilingual education," she said. "We need to be defending the border, and we need to be doing it faster, harder and long before now."

Ranch owner wants Minutemen to scale back fence

2006-05-23T22:56:00.000-04:00

A rancher whose land is to be used for a border security group's elaborate fence may ask that it be scaled back.

Palominas rancher Jack Ladd, who owns the property where the fence is to be built, is also uneasy with the barrier design.

"(The Minutemen) had a diagram of what they wanted to build, and we did not want something like that," he said. "What we want is a barbed-wire fence with metal railings that will keep the drive-throughs from occurring and keep Mexican cattle out."

The proposed Minuteman Civil Defense Corps fence, two parallel 12-to-15-foot fences with anti-vehicle ditches and eight feet of coiled barbed wire on either side, also has caught the eye of county officials.

"I do agree that people should be able to build fences, and I don't think the government should inhibit that," said Cochise County Supervisor Paul Newman. "But seeing the diagram (posted on the Minuteman web site), it concerns me that it really is a military-like structure-- in fact it's designed after an Israeli military barrier."

Minuteman President Chris Simcox said in April his group would start building fencing because the government has failed to secure the nation's southern border. The group chose a design similar to one used by Israel in Gaza and the West Bank that has proven effective in curtailing terrorist attacks.

The group's national executive director, Al Garza, said the Minutemen are willing to alter the design to suit the ranch owner, but not the county government.

"It's going to be (Ladd's) preference, obviously, so if he wants to change it, he certainly will have the option," he said.

But Garza said they're not obligated to clear plans with local officials.

"How do illegal immigrants get into our country? Do they ask permission? They do not," he said.

The group plans to kick off its fence-building this weekend.

Organizers said they have signed up 1,000 people to help with construction and have collected $225,000 in donations to pay for materials.

The group hopes to raise another $10 million to build more fencing along the border.

Minuteklan Camps Out in Bay Area

2006-05-23T20:08:00.000-04:00

Minutemen Camp Out in Bay Area

(KCBS) -- A controversial group of civilian border watchers, dubbed the "Minutemen" may be opening their first chapter here in the Bay Area, in a move that is already being denounced by immigration supporters.

Instead of watching the border, KCBS' Matt Bigler reported these men will be watching street corners where day laborers gather, hoping to catch employers hiring illegal immigrants.

"We're looking at going after particularly abusive and gross violators of our employment laws. That is, businesses that are hiring in a very blatant manner, illegal immigrants," said Charles Birkman with Golden Gate Minutemen.

Birkman said he formed the Fremont group in response to the recent wave of pro-immigration rallies in the Bay Area.

However, wherever the Minutemen go, controversy seems to follow.

"I think the Minutemen are misguided individuals," said Richard Konda with the Asian Law Alliance.

Konda told CBS Five there are other ways to solve the current immigration system without using vigilante tactics.

Last night the first meeting of the Golden Gate Minutemen attracted about fifteen people.

Sunday's Protestors May Face Misdemeanor Charges

2006-05-22T17:45:00.000-04:00

Sunday's Protestors May Face Misdemeanor Charges

(CBS) LOS ANGELES The three counter-demonstrators that were arrested during Sunday’s downtown rally that was held by the Minutemen and other groups opposed to illegal immigration may face misdemeanor charges of interfering with a march.

About 100 people -- including homeless activist Ted Hayes, who has sided with the Minutemen -- participated in a march from Broadway and Olympic Boulevard to City Hall yesterday, outnumbered at least two to one by pro-immigrant demonstrators.

Helmeted police officers, who tried to keep the groups separated, reported that the counter-demonstrators threw eggs and a glass bottle at them.

The three suspects were booked at Parker Center on suspicion of interfering with a march or disobeying an officer's orders, said Los Angeles police Sgt. R.L. Johnson of the Central Station.

Prosecutors with the City Attorney's Office will decide whether to charge the three, whose names were not immediately released.

Hayes said illegal immigrants drive down wages and create intolerable working conditions by working for "emploslavers."

"We're saying, as blacks, we will not work slave wage jobs, and we will not allow our companeros to be slaves either," Hayes said.

Simon Blanco, 25, denounced the marchers as fascists.

"What is more criminal, to work to help your family and lift the economy of this country or to sow hate and attack ethnic groups?" he asked in Spanish.

P acted as a barrier between the marchers and the counter-protesters on the sidewalks.

"The people are very angry, the tensions are flying," said immigration amnesty supporter John Osmand, 36, of Ventura, who charged that the Minutemen sought to trigger a riot while pro-immigrant activists demonstrated "a great deal of self-restraint."

Minuteklan offshoot pickets day-labor site

2006-05-22T16:09:00.000-04:00

Encinitas group targets illegal-immigrant hiring

By Elena Gaona

UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

May 21, 2006

ENCINITAS – In its first official action, the Encinitas Citizens Brigade protested the hiring of illegal immigrants at a popular day-labor site on Encinitas Boulevard yesterday.

Some two dozen residents from Encinitas and around Southern California had just formed the Minuteman offshoot group over coffee and eggs at 7 a.m.

“Glad to see you all here,” group founder Saul Lisauskas, 62, a mechanical engineer in Encinitas, told the group over breakfast. “Welcome. This is the start of this group.”

As tensions rise over illegal immigration, the Encinitas Citizens Brigade joins the Vista Citizens Brigade and the San Diego Minutemen out of Oceanside as the third Minuteman Project offshoot group of citizens organized against illegal immigration in North County. Armed with signs, flags and cameras, the new group then headed to a day-labor spot just west of Interstate 5 where about two dozen laborers and about a dozen immigrant supporters waited with their own flags, signs and video cameras.

A rotating group of about four sheriff's deputies kept watch over the generally peaceful protest, which escalated no further than tense, face-to-face discussions between the two camps and a few heated shouts.

“We're just U.S. citizens protecting our country,” said Minuteman and retired lab technician Larry Culbertson of San Juan Capistrano, who helped the local group get started.

“No trabajo hoy!” –no work today – he shouted to day laborers and in the direction of their would-be employers.

“Only Traitors Hire Illegals,” one sign read.

A handful of hirings still took place across the street and behind the crowd, but roofers, landscapers and painters drove their trucks past the site and drove away without workers.

Lisauskas said the Minuteman groups are accomplishing their purpose – to remove the work incentive for immigrants to come to places such as North County.

The Encinitas Citizens Brigade members were given yellow fliers to hand out to potential employers, warning them: “Hiring Illegal Aliens is a Federal Crime! . . . DO NOT pick up workers from day labor sites. The majority of the workers are in this country illegally.”

Day laborers saw few jobs and instead held up flags and signs, saying they are glad to be in America and just want to work.

“They are racists,” undocumented immigrant Erik Lopez, 17, of Guatemala said as he stood looking at the crowd. “They treat us like dirt, when we are the ones who keep their homes in order.”

Lopez, who has been coming to the pickup site for about a year, said Minuteman groups have visited the site about seven times and that it is decreasing the number of jobs he gets.

Claudia Smith, an attorney with California Rural Legal Assistance, was at the demonstration and says such rallies are bullying tactics that infringe upon the rights of permanent U.S. residents who may seek work at day-labor sites.

The Minutemen have a policy of not asking for the documents of any workers, said San Diego Minutemen founder and retired Marine Jeff Schwilk of Oceanside. Schwilk says the groups aren't racist, and that it is Latino activists who appear to be racist by not assimilating.

Though the Encinitas protest was peaceful, similar gatherings in Vista have gotten ugly, immigrant supporters said.

Minutemen in Vista recently harassed day laborers and Latino store owners at a popular day-labor site at a Vista shopping center, said Sylvia Ramos with Vista's Coalition of Justice, Peace and Dignity, a human-rights group.

Self-employed furniture finisher Mike Spencer of Vista, who helped start the Vista Citizens Brigade, said the group's actions are peaceful.

Patrols of day-labor sites and monitoring of camps where immigrant workers live in crude shanty homes will continue in Vista, Fallbrook, Ramona, Poway, Carlsbad, Oceanside and Escondido, the groups' members said.

“We need to get on with the job the president will not do,” Lisauskas said.

Fremont group considers joining the Minuteklan

2006-05-21T11:50:00.000-04:00

Fremont group considers joining the Minutemen

Activist says Bushs guest worker program is slap in face to Americans

By Chris De Benedetti, STAFF WRITER
Inside Bay Area
05/21/2006 02:39:08 AM

FREMONT — A grass-roots group opposed to granting amnesty to illegal immigrants will meet Monday to consider organizing formally as a Fremont-based chapter of the national civilian border watch group known as the Minutemen.

Casey Fargo, a local foe of illegal immigration, said he and other anti-amnesty protesters will discuss if they want a local chapter, possibly called the Golden Gate Minutemen, to represent just the Tri-City area or the entire Bay Area.

Were trying to move ahead while weve got quite a bit of momentum, said Fargo, a Livermore resident who works in Fremont.

National leaders of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps garnered attention recently when they announced that next week the group will begin building a fence on private U.S. land near the Mexico border.

Critics have charged that the Minutemen are vigilantes whose border-watch activities are racist and hinder the Border Patrols enforcement as much as they help.

But Minutemen members strongly deny those accusations. They point to their membership pledge, which states there is no tolerance of racism among Minutemen, and they assert that legal immigrants who have respected the law are being unfairly hurt by the presence of an estimated 12 million illegals nationwide.

However, amnesty advocates argue that illegal immigrants labor provides several benefits to Americans, including keeping prices down for U.S. consumers.

In Fremont, organizers Fargo and Charles Dirkman say they have made contact with Minutemen members and protesters in Santa Clara and Napa in hopes of expanding their network of anti-amnesty activists.

Fargo and Dirkman also held a rally Friday at the intersection of Mowry Avenue and Fremont Boulevard, the location of several other protests they have planned in response to the pro-amnesty demonstrations held statewide since March.

Some leaders in both the Democratic and Republican parties responded positively to President Bushs speech Monday on the immigration issue. But like the Minutemen, local opponents of undocumented immigrants strongly disagree with many of the new proposals Bush outlined in his speech.

Bushs temporary guest worker program proposal, for example, is a slap in the face to every American worker out there, said Fargo, 25. Its not that were not doing the jobs, its that we cant do the jobs at those wages. Its real degrading to the American worker.

The gathering, which planners have termed the Minuteman/Patriots Organizational, Planning and Covenant Meeting, will begin at 6:30 p.m. Monday in the Fukaya Room at Fremont Main Library, 2400 Stevenson Blvd.

Minuteklan speaks at Republican Women's Club in Texas

2006-05-19T16:12:00.000-04:00

By Stephen Webster
Investigative Reporter
For: The Lone Star Iconoclast,

Photo by Stephen Webster
Brian Burns, a member of the Texas Minuteman Project, spoke at the Republican Women's Club of Denton County on Wednesday, May 17, 2006.

“We should get some of them crazy Florida ‘gaters’ an’ put ‘em in the river,” said an old, wrinkled woman. She reached up to her overlaid, curly, gray bowl-cut and goosed it with the base of her right palm. “That way, when them Mexicans come runnin’ across the border, they’ll git eat’n up. And it’ll be good ‘cause our boys in the patrol’ll be able to see ‘em an’ hear ‘em. Heh-heh. They’ll just run up on ‘em and put one b’tween they eyes real easy.”

“Yeaap,” said the old woman’s equally old and wrinkled husband, his mostly-hairless chrome dome dotted with liver spots and cancers. “Gett’um,” he concluded in a guttural tone. The crowd laughed and clapped and rolled their heads. Women with makeup so thick their faces looked like mannequins hee-hawed and stomped their feet; elder, burly-looking husbands sitting in the corners of the Republicans Women’s Club, snickered and held their heads down slightly, keeping at eye-level with each other. The day’s speaker, Brian Burns – a member of the Texas Minuteman Project – smiled and looked down. A much more cordial and well-spoken man, he seemed uneasy with this type of speak, but joined in the chorus of laughter nonetheless.

On Wednesday, May 17, the Denton County Republican Women’s Club met at Golden Corral in Denton to hear a guest speaker from the Texas Minuteman Project. Burns, who owns a home inspection company in Dallas, is a member of this group of vigilantes who have taken it upon themselves to patrol the Texas/Mexico border in search of Mexican citizens attempting to cross illegally.

“However, everyone,” said Burns. “You should know that Golden Corral is one of the top employers in the U.S. for hiring illegal aliens and Mexicans.” Several of the organizers frowned and glanced around the room nervously. “And you can find out the others by going to ‘www.wehirealiens.com.’ Okay? Everyone get that address?”

Roughly 25 party faithful were in attendance, including Denton County’s new District Attorney Paul Johnson. Diane Edmondson, the party’s chairwoman for the region, introduced Burns to the group, calling him ‘a hero’ and ‘a brave and honorable man.’

“The President and our Senators are ignoring us, ladies and gentlemen!” said Edmondson. “Bush is a phony and a liar if he thinks he can just send a few National Guard people down there for a year. He’s in bed with Vicente Fox. Now look, I don’t really think you came to hear me speak, so take a listen to our guest today. He’s a Texas Minuteman and has spent lots of time on the border. Please welcome Brian Burns.”

The audience applauded. One man whistled.

Burns introduced himself by giving the audience a brief history of his professional career. Though presently the owner of Burns Home Inspections, LLC, he spent six years prior as an Air Medic pilot for Children’s Medical Center. “I first got interested in this problem with the Mexicans when I was making flights over El Paso,” said Burns. “We started picking up pregnant illegals who had just crossed the border that day and wanted to have their children in the county hospital – which is paid for, for free.”

Several present gasped, shaking their heads and covering their mouths in disbelief.

“One trip costs us about five-grand in the aircraft I flew. Five thousand going there and five thousand going back. So, about ten grand. But that is just for the flight. Then, it is about seven to ten thousand for the birth. So, we’re talking anywhere between ten, fifteen, twenty thousand dollars … ah, every time they come across. Yeah. Got my interest.”

On the tables in the banquet room, the group had laid pamphlets and business cards with contact names and phone numbers for various Texas Minutemen “officers.” There were several pamphlets lying around. One, titled “Common Sense on Mass Immigration,” depicts the New York City skyline shrouded in clouds, three bright rays of light shining down. Under the rays of light, the clouds are burned away, revealing where the twin towers once stood, remembered in this image draped in American flags.

A single-sheet flyer the group was circulating reads, “Don’t give up the fight against guest worker/amnesty legislation!” It lists eight bullet points, most one sentence or less, that it calls “strong evidence,” but provides no substantiation or reference. Evidence such as, “In a shocking [revelation], the Senate’s ‘immigration reform plan’ would: Let an estimated 103 million immigrants into the U.S. over the next 20 years – that’s over one-third of the current population of the United States. Grant immediate amnesty for 10 million illegal aliens … Open the door for nearly four times as many permanent worker visas as are now issued” … and “[p]rovide for the largest expansion of the welfare state ever and cost the American taxpayer $46 billion per year. … [H]alf of all adult illegal immigrants in the U.S. have less than a high-school education. In addition, recent immigrants have high levels of our-of-wedlock childbearing, which increases welfare costs and poverty.”

“You know what,” said Burns. “Every single time Bush opens his mouth about immigration, I swear to you, border traffic, people coming in illegally, it increases by about 25 percent.” Again, the audience seemed shocked. Riveted, even. Several men stood together, shaking their heads and holding their plates. They walked out and headed back for the buffet. They returned with apple pie and ice cream.

“I am very upset with the fact that he said … He, he wants to please everybody,” continued Burns. “He wants to look at Vicente Fox and say, ‘I’m not being bad!’ But then he wants to turn to the American people and say, ‘Oh, ah, I’m being tough on illegal immigration. Bush can’t have it both ways. His plan is completely watered down. If you talk to any military man and you tell him, ‘You can’t carry any weapons, and you can’t enforce the law,’ they’re gonna be extremely frustrated.”

Burns’ conclusions? “We need military intervention. They need to go in there and do what they do. They need to be keeping our laws. These are foreign nationals coming in our country … This has no conflict with Posse Commitatus. Everyone knows that Posse Commitatus says the military cannot act in a role of law enforcement. And they’re not. They’re not turning around and arresting American citizens. They would be turned around, facing Mexico. Faxing the national border. There should be no excuses for this!”

“What we need is a bio-metric social security card,” concluded Burns. “We need a national database and a new type of social security card with a finger print, the number, your photograph and a smart chip inside.”

This reporter raised his hand, as other had prior, to ask a question.

“Yes sir?” said Burns.

“You’re talking about a National I.D. card? That is exactly what Tom Ridge proposed a few years ago. A new type of ‘social security.’”

“Ah, no. No it isn’t,” said Burns. “That’s … That’s something totally different. I’m not even gonna touch that one.”

I shrugged and Burns continued on.

“Some say we have to deport all of them and raid the workplaces and punish the employers. I don’t know that is possible. There are others that actually want to give American citizenship to these people for free. Well … I don’t think so. But nobody ever mentions the other solution: attrition. Ya see, if you just cut off our social services to them over night, that would do the trick. If you stopped educating their kids, stopped providing free health care of any kind, if you stopped letting them go to work … You’d just about solve the problem overnight. If they can’t work they can’t eat. And if they can’t eat, they’ll probably just leave.”

“Here here!” shouted the old woman with the bowl-cut. “Burns for president!” Several in the audience chuckled.

Walking out of the meeting, a woman named Cindy Lou flagged this reporter down and asked to go on the record. “Hey, you with media? I wanna talk to you. I’m Cindy. Hi. I live in Denton County,” she said. “Sort of between Sanger and Denton. So it’s the county. Just say Denton County, okay?”

Cindy Lou boasted that she is one of “the original Minutemen,” and explained that she had quit two jobs to join the Arizona Minutemen on the border for 97 days. “I only saw a few of them commin’ across, you know? They’re sneaky. But I called I.C.E. [Immigrations and Customs Enforcement] on ‘em. I love taking credit for that. I call I.C.E. on every illegal ‘Messy-can’ I can.” She laughed, apparently amused by her rhyme.

“I think these Mexicans should be considered felons and deported,” she insisted. “I think the best way to get the wall built and secure our nation better is to make the deportees, prior to being deported … they should make them prisoners for a while, and put them in prison labor camps. Put the prisoners in tents, like Sheriff [inaudible] does in, um … um … Arizona. Like he does. Put the prisoners in tents, in the desert, and make them work for their food. I think all them Mexicans should be deported, but prior to being deported, they should be put in prison camps in the desert so they can build the wall for us. That way they can pay for their food and their way … their crimes against OUR Homeland.”

A brown-skinned man wearing a Golden Corral apron and torn, dirty, white baseball cap took a seat about five feet behind her, leaning over a plate of food. He glanced up at her several times, paying special attention when she said the words “Mexican” or “illegal.” He said nothing, choosing to continue eating instead.

“Yeah, and once we deport them, if they come back they need to be held a lot longer so they get it,” continued Cindy Lou. “We’ll make ‘em clean up the landscape. We have hundreds and hundreds of miles of beautiful desert that has nothing but dirty clothing, trash, toiletries … I’ve seen big piles of plastic bottles full of urine. It is disgusting. Make the ‘Messy-cans’ clean up their piss!”

I chuckled and said, “You know, truckers … American truckers … they do that thing with the urine in the bottle, too. They call ‘em ‘Trucker Bombs.’ Ever see that?”

She laughed uncomfortably. “Yeah. It’s gross. These Mexicans are everywhere. I can’t believe it.” She seemed to miss the point.

“It’s like a dog that shits on the carpet,” she said with a snort. “Before you pick up the shit, you take the dog and put his nose in it and give ‘em a few swats on the behind. You gotta tell ‘em ‘NO!’ and stick they nose in it. Look, if they are coming over to love America and be Americans, why would they trash our land? Would I come in to your country and shit on your back porch? No. Why would you do that to us?”

The Golden Corral employee was drinking from a translucent red cup. When Cindy Lou said this he slammed it down on the table, soda splashing out onto his hand and plate. He collected his things hurriedly and stood up. As he walked away, he turned and cast a dagger gaze at her over his right shoulder. She didn’t notice.

“You mean an illegal immigrant did that on your back porch?” I asked.

“Well … no, but you know what I mean,” she replied, again laughing. She reached out and touched my right arm with two fingers, as though she had known me for more than a few moments.

“They should be jailed,” she said. “They should be kep’ in tents, under guard with automatic rifles, they should be used to build the wall and if they come back again, then they need to get out there and clean up their trash. I couldn’t be happier that Halliburton is building these camps already. But I don’t think they’ll enforce it. Bush is strong on talk. He loves to talk like he’s a big, strong man and tough on crime, when he’s not. He is obviously in bed … with … you know, ah, their president. Fox. He’s just trying to make Fox happy. He’s in bed with Mexico. Bush is selling out America.”

Before walking away, she made sure to plug her blog, leaning into this reporter’s recorder. “I do the blog regularly,” she said. “All the time, actually. There’s lots of good information there. I blog at h-t-t-p, um … forward-slash. Or is it backward? I don’t know about these things, uh … Anyway, its ‘goonface.blogspot.com’ right? Check it out. I think you’ll like it.”

On Cindy Lou’s blog, titled “Un-American ‘Goonage,’” one can find a host of photographs of demonstrators from the last couple months of civil action among the Latino community. Some shots depict protesters, most of them white-skinned Americans, as “people [that] SUPPORT ILLEGAL ALIENS!” Others show convicted criminals of Latino descent. One such post shows a man who killed a police officer. The caption reads, “That’s right! Illegals doing the job Americans won’t do!” The blog’s introductory paragraph claims, “the faces you see on this page, only a mother could love,” and goes on to assert that the Mexicans plan to “take over America” and that “using violence isn’t a problem with their agendas.”

In spite of Cindy Lou’s claims, no arrests were made in Dallas on April 9, when over 500,000 people marched. No arrests were made at Dallas city hall on May 1, when 15,000 showed up for the May Day Boycott. And no arrests were made in Washington D.C., when over a million men, women and children of all colors marched in solidarity with the new civil rights movement.

“You better believe I call I.C.E. every time I see one of them. Every time,” said Cindy Lou.

“But how can you tell who is a citizen and who isn’t?” I asked.

“Well … I …” She paused, seemingly frustrated by the question. “I, uh, I have video footage of their arrests from the border and at the Home Depot, you know, where they like, go and get together and look for illegal work. And I’ve seen it happen when I didn’t call I.C.E., but I recorded the arrests anyway. I got it on tape and sent it to Congressman Burgess. At least he says stuff and stands up for us against the ‘Messy-cans,’ but he sure doesn’t do much about it. It’s almost like they’re just gonna let ‘em overrun us. We should just surrender Texas to Mexico today and be done with it. Hell, I won’t be here when it happens. Fuck that.”

San Diego Minuteklan increase political activities

2006-05-18T08:50:00.000-04:00

John Monti of Save Our State walked through a migrant worker camp in Peñasquitos Canyon after a news conference in which the San Diego Minutemen endorsed Escondido City Councilwoman Marie Waldron for Assembly.

Minutemen increase political activities

Group backs candidate, enters migrant camp
By Leslie Berestein
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

May 18, 2006

Day-labor pickup sites in North County have been getting some additional visitors lately, and not the kind who are there to hire anyone.

An anti-illegal immigrant activist group called the San Diego Minutemen and an offshoot group called the Vista Citizens Brigade have been going to day-labor sites in Vista and Carmel Valley to try to block the hiring of day laborers, many of whom are in the country illegally.

They have stepped up their efforts after the pro-immigrant national boycott May 1, an organizer said.

Since that time, San Diego police twice have responded to the Carmel Valley area, most recently yesterday after the San Diego Minutemen attended a news conference on Carmel Valley Road near state Route 56 to endorse Escondido City Councilwoman Marie Waldron for state Assembly. Members of other anti-illegal immigration activist groups, including Save Our State, also attended.

While no one has been arrested, police said, there have been some unpleasant incidents, including a minor verbal confrontation between an activist and a police officer yesterday. After the news conference, which also was attended by Bruce Ruff, a candidate for sheriff, several of the activists entered the adjacent McGonigle Canyon to scout around the homeless migrant worker camps there, police said.

Nicholas Melchor from Guerrero, Mexico, was in his makeshift house when the Minutemen arrived. Normally, Melchor works in the fields picking tomatoes.

Many of the homeless were hiding in the bushes by the time the activists came, because some day laborers who were outside the camp used cell phones to call those in the canyon.

“We hid in the hills, because they were going in there with their cameras, filming,” Aniceto Lopez Millán, 25, a homeless farmworker and day laborer, said in the canyon after the activists had gone.

Lopez said he had previously observed activists approaching the day-labor site above the encampment, getting out of their cars and “asking for papeles (papers), very angrily, very aggressive.”

Jeff Schwilk, who started the San Diego Minutemen last fall, said that his group has not harassed anyone for papers. Schwilk said the activists have been harassed by “hostile” police but that they are not breaking any laws.

“My people are told not to do anything like this,” he said. “They are told not to have any contact with the laborers.”

Instead, Schwilk said, the activists who have gone to the day-labor sites are focused on stopping employers from hiring laborers without checking legal status.

“We're there to inform and keep people from hiring from there,” said Schwilk, 42, a retired Marine. “To inform them they are violating federal law.”

He said the group has been out to the Carmel Valley site twice, once May 2, after visiting the homeless encampments, and again yesterday.

Police have responded on both occasions. The first time, they were there for at least a half-hour, said Florencio Pineda Benitez, a Latino catering-truck owner and longtime legal resident. Pineda said he was harassed and he was asked in Spanish for his papers, as were several day laborers.

“I told them they aren't cops or immigration (agents) to be asking for papers,” said Pineda, who said he has lived in the United States about 30 years. “He yelled in my face, 'I'm American.' I said back, 'I am a resident.' And he said back, 'Go back to Mexico.' ”

Schwilk said he recalled the yelling match, but denied any activists asked Pineda or anyone else there for papers.

Yesterday, a campaign manager for Waldron said the candidate was glad to have the endorsement of the San Diego Minutemen group. Waldron, who is running for the 74th District seat to be vacated by Assemblyman Mark Wyland – who is forced out by term limits – is making illegal immigration a major part of her campaign platform.

Waldron was not specifically aware of any of the group's operations, campaign manager Cynthia Determan said. Determan said the candidate did not go into the canyon with the group after her news conference.

Greensboro, NC- Passions unleashed with Minuteklan visit

2006-05-17T08:42:00.000-04:00

Passions unleashed with Minutemen visit
Jordan Green News editor

The cofounder of the Minuteman Project, the controversial group that has fielded activists along the US-Mexico border to discourage illegal immigration, electrified Greensboro with his arrival at a tattered High Point Road shopping center without even stepping out of a recreational vehicle that comprised part of the group's caravan from Los Angeles to Washington, DC.

As throngs of local Minuteman supporters traded insults with a group of boisterous protesters across the street on May 10, 57-year-old Jim Gilchrist, a Vietnam-era Marine and retired accountant, ushered two print reporters into his mobile living quarters.

But the first order of business was security.

"I need at least two bodyguards and a regular joe," he barked from inside.

Then he launched an attack on the media, focusing special attention on the alt-weekly reporter. The first misconception about the Minuteman Project is that the group is anti-immigrant, Gilchrist said.

"I want you to put down that we're a multi-ethnic law enforcement advocacy organization," he said. "I dislike what's happening to us because of the way the media portrays us. Our black and Hispanic friends are getting attacked for joining us. A sixty-seven-year-old lady was bashed with an aluminum can. Rocks, bottles, eggs - we get all of that."

The Minuteman cofounder said senators contemplating regularizing millions of illegal immigrants were "bordering on treason," called President Bush "tantamount to an alcoholic," and wondered aloud whether Department of Homeland Security was involved in a plot to put Minutemen's lives at risk.

Propping his feet up on a low table, Gilchrist commented on a news report published by the Daily Bulletin in Ontario, Calif. on May 9 that disclosed that US border authorities have arranged to notify the government of Mexico any time the Minutemen assist in apprehending illegal border crossers, or vigilante groups carry out acts of violence against immigrants.

"When they're transferring information about our location to the Mexican government, which is tantamount to the drug cartels, there has to be something underneath," he said. "I'm not a conspiracy person - I still think there was only one person who shot Kennedy, and that was Lee Harvey Oswald - but there has to be some kind of sinister conspiracy going on."

"I get threats all the time," he added. "Am I scared? No. Do I want to die? No."

Gilchrist took note of the protesters across the street, whom he acknowledged had disrupted the Minutemen's plans for Greensboro.

"We use words and the pen to fight," he said. "They use words and the pen too, but they go beyond that."

From the start, the Minutemen's stop in Greensboro seemed enveloped in uncertainty, with supporters and protesters alike trying to guess where the group might appear. Despite a report in the News & Record that the rally had been canceled because the owner of American Furniture Market withdrew an offer to host the group in his parking lot, local Minuteman supporters, protesters and an attendant media squad assembled there.

As the two opposing groups grew in number, the face-off took on a raw edge of hostility. The protesters, who were drawn from communist and anarchist groups, from community colleges and university graduate programs in Chapel Hill, held imposing banners urging, "Minutemen get lost" and "Ni jefes, ni fronteras - para anarchismo" - roughly translated as "No bosses, no borders - for anarchism."

"Amnesty is a prerequisite," said 21-year-old Matt Ivey, a member of the International Socialist Organization who plans to attend GTCC in the fall, by way of explaining the protesters' aims. "When organized labor can stand on both sides of the border, we won't have this problem. We can say to the bosses: "We're not going to take the wage cuts."

The protesters sometimes baited the Minutemen supporters with epithets of "racist," "fascist" and "Klan," and cursed them. The supporters sometimes taunted the protesters back, but generally responded by saying the Pledge of Allegiance and singing the national anthem. At one point, when the two groups had squared off on either side of High Point Road, a Greensboro police officer asked the supporters to step back from the roadway.

The supporters, who traveled from as far away as Asheville and Pittsboro, represented a cross-section of the state's workforce, including school employees, social services providers, factory owners, restaurant employees and corporate managers. Many of them said they welcomed immigrants, but wanted them to respect the law. Some of them disparaged Bush, lashed out against the liberal media, and attacked public schools and social welfare. As a group they conveyed the sense that something has gone dreadfully wrong in America.

Amidst a cluster of Minuteman supporters clutching small American flags, Theresa Greenwell, a Forsyth County Health Department employee who works in the federally funded Women, Infants & Children program, or WIC, nodded in agreement with the assertion made by one of her cohorts that illegal immigrants are imposing a burden on the nation's social services.

"That's right: I work in a welfare office, and that's all we have is illegals," said Greenwell, who wore a black T-shirt bearing the image of the Pink Floyd album Dark Side of the Moon. "And you should see the gang members with the tattoos on their faces."

Later she elaborated in an interview: "I don't believe they should have those services. They have many babies. You and I couldn't get the benefits. They're encouraged by friends to not report their incomes. Their children are obese."

When pressed to elaborate on why the children of illegal immigrants should suffer for the transgressions of their parents, she disclosed that she doesn't much like the idea of social services as a matter of principle.

"Social services is a problem for both legal and illegal immigrants because you don't have value for what you have," she said.

As speculation about when the Minutemen might show up circulated through the crowd, Reagan Sugg, who identified himself as being with the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, began to speak. He gestured toward the group of pro-immigrant demonstrators across the parking lot, and referenced a request by Hispanic community leader Deborah Kelly more than a week earlier that demonstrators put away red flags at a May 1 rally at Governmental Plaza.

"May first is a communist holiday," Sugg said. "The lady was saying, "Put away your red flags; you're not helping our cause." It's an imported ideology. They're subverting our country. It's international socialism, Big Labor and - I hate to say it - Big Religion."

He assured the supporters that the Minutemen caravan would be coming soon, telling them, "Your voice will be heard."

Then he addressed a variety of subjects. The wall he and some others would like to see built along the US-Mexican border, for one.

"Four billion," Sugg said. "That's all it would take to build an Israeli-style border fence. That is pocket change. We're spending that every day in Iraq."

He disputed the notion wielded by detractors that the Minutemen are a violent group of vigilantes.

"All we were doing was sitting and reporting to the authorities," he said of his experience patrolling the border with the Minutemen. "Make no mistake, the leftists wanted us to be a paramilitary."

To another supporter, he said: "Make no mistake, Big Business has a vested interest in depressing wages."

Supporters stood on the roadside, displaying their viewpoint to passing traffic. One held a hand-written sign that declared, "Illegal immigration is cultural terrorism." Another waved a flag with the words, "Don't tread on me." A Greensboro Fire Department engine cruised by and the driver honked his horn, cheering the supporters.

Just then, two recreational vehicles appeared, then two large pickups with campers. An American-made muscle car of - 60s vintage painted in red, white and blue rolled past, and its driver squawked through a megaphone: "Take a stand. One nation under God. Thank you for coming, Americans."

The caravan passed by the crowd, pulling into the Westgate Shopping Center across the street. Their arrival prompted a rush by supporters and media members across High Point Road's five lanes of traffic to join them.

Greensboro police Capt. Robert Flynt said the Minutemen and their supporters, along with the counter-demonstrators, had permits to demonstrate on the sidewalks. The parking lot across from American Furniture Market is considered a public vehicular area, and since the owners of the Westgate Shopping Center didn't complain the caravan wasn't considered in violation of any law.

The Minutemen supporters took particular pride in having a smattering of immigrants and people of color within their ranks.

When the protesters shouted, "Go home, you're not welcome here," Robert Vansteen of Greensboro retorted: "Who's not welcome? The black guy, the Chinese woman or the Mexican guy behind us?"

His wife, May, said, "I came here from China. To me, I strongly stand for the [principle] that the laws should be enforced. I came here legally. I worked for a US corporation. I love this country."

Another Minuteman supporter, Yadi Brooks of Pittsboro, who like May Vansteen gained legal residency by marrying an American citizen, said she was once an illegal immigrant herself. She said she sympathized with the desire of millions of illegal immigrants to stay in the United States but she didn't think it was right that they demand amnesty.

"I met my husband," she said. "I got married. People think just because I got married I turned my back on my people. I'm ashamed of my government in Mexico because they're telling their own people to cross the border, but they do send back illegal immigrants from Honduras and Guatemala."

Gilchrist, the Minuteman Project cofounder, argued that the movement isn't really against immigrants at all.

"Notice that we've never said the word "immigration" this whole time," he said. "Eighty percent are economic refugees who are being bought and sold like cattle. They're rapidly expanding our lower class, diminishing our middle class and shrinking our tax base."

Gilchrist candidly discussed his aims: build a wall between the United States and Mexico, and deport all illegal immigrants.

The decision by the furniture store to withdraw the Minutemen's invitation marked the second time the group was forced to change plans for its Greensboro stop, he said. Originally the group was scheduled to hold a rally downtown at Governmental Plaza.

"The police department told me a socialist group got in there before us to secure the permit rights," Gilchrist said. "This is the first time we've had to go to an alternate site."

To comment on this story, e-mail Jordan Green at jordan@yesweekly.com

Center ties hate crimes to border debate

2006-05-17T08:24:00.000-04:00

Russ Dove, right, holds a burning Mexican flag, while Laine Lawless, director of the Border Guardians, center, looks on during a counter-protest to an immigration-rights rally April 10. Lawless says she does not recruit neo-Nazis.

Center ties hate crimes to border debate

Posted 5/16/2006 11:57 PM ET

By Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Tension over illegal immigration is contributing to a rise in hate groups and hate crimes across the nation, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. It says that racist groups are using the immigration debate as a rallying cry.

The center — an Alabama-based non-profit organization that tracks racist, anti-immigrant and other extremist groups — says in a new report that there were 803 such hate groups in the USA last year, up from 762 in 2004 and a 33% jump since 2000.

The center's report says the national debate that has focused on Hispanic immigration has been "the single most important factor" in spurring activity among hate groups and has given them "an issue with real resonance."

The debate over immigration "has been critical to the growth of the hate movement," says Mark Potok, editor of the center's quarterly report on extremists. "More and more groups are turning to immigration to help recruitment."

Potok says the center has seen increasing signs that groups that have encouraged a particularly aggressive response to illegal immigration are working with neo-Nazi organizations to try to intimidate illegal immigrants.

He cites groups such as Arizona-based Border Guardians, whose members burned a Mexican flag last month in front of that nation's consulate in Tucson.

Border Guardians is a relatively new organization and was not included on the center's 2005 list of hate groups. Its director, Laine Lawless, disputes the center's report last month that she has encouraged neo-Nazi groups to threaten and to steal money from illegal immigrants. In an interview, Lawless said her group supports only "lawful actions."

Lawless said she gets "contacted by all sorts of groups" and that "some of them are Nazis," but she said she does not recruit neo-Nazis. Lawless went on to describe the most vocal organizers of last month's immigrants' rights marches as militant "brown Nazis" whose activities threaten to ignite a "civil war" in America.

The building tension over illegal immigration's impact on America comes at a time when the FBI says that the number of hate-crime victims in 2004 — the last year for which figures are available — was 9,528, up nearly 5% from 2003.

The numbers don't approach the 12,020 hate-crime victims reported in 2001, when there were a rash of attacks against Muslims across the nation in the weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

There are about 12 million illegal immigrants in the USA.

Such immigrants — particularly Hispanics who cross from Mexico in search of work — also have become targetsfor private groups that have formed patrols along the southwestern border, usually against the wishes of law enforcement.

One of those groups is American Border Patrol. Its efforts have included rounding up illegal immigrants and turning them over to law enforcement. The Southern Poverty Law Center has accused ABP of abusing and illegally detaining immigrants, and the center lists ABP as a hate group.

ABP's director, Glenn Spencer, is a vocal critic of illegal immigration but says his group has done nothing wrong.

"Our borders are unprotected, and the (U.S.) Border Patrol is derelict in its duty," Spencer says. "We are trying to help by any means necessary."

Minuteklan, Latino Leaders Respond to President's Plan

2006-05-16T23:41:00.000-04:00

Minutemen, Latino Leaders Respond to President's Plan

May 16th, 2006 @ 4:44pm

John Daley Reporting

The day after a pivotal speech by President Bush on immigration, the plan is winning both praise and criticism. The reaction is ranging from those who say it's a "reasonable solution" to others who call it "window dressing."

Massive immigration rallies here in Utah and elsewhere helped drive this whole debate. The President knows many of those marchers are future voters, but he also knows anything but a "get tough" immigration policy could alienate his conservative base.

Rallies ignited the national debate. Then, last night, the President laid out his vision for tougher border security with 6,000 National Guard troops and a guest worker program.

One organizer of Utah's rallies doesn't agree with Bush on much, but says this proposal is reasonable.

Tony Yapias, Community Activist: "I applaud the president for taking the courage to speak to the nation on a very sensitive issue."

But conservatives, like many at recent Minuteman rallies, argue the Bush plan, driven by poor poll numbers, is just "window dressing."

Alex Segura, Director, Utah Minuteman Project: "What I'm hearing is a tradeoff, 'I'll give you border security, you give me guest worker.' But he's not giving us guest worker, he's pushing the guest worker thing with all his might."

President Bush, "There are some in our country who say, 'let's just deport everybody.' it's unrealistic!"

But Alex Segura, director of the Utah Minuteman Project, thinks the government should add more National Guard, perhaps 10-thousand, pay them more and deport any undocumented person who has committed a crime. He says anything less is a broken promise.

Alex Segura, Director, Utah Minuteman Project: "Sooner or later you know when you cry wolf, no one tends to believe you. Unfortunately for our president, he's going down that road."

Political analysts see Bush pushing a double election-year message -- compassion for those here already, combined with getting tough at the border.

Kirk Jowers, Hinckley Institute of Politics: "There are a lot of very frustrated conservatives on this issue and a couple of others like fiscal responsibility, and so following the Karl Rove playbook of 2004 of we don't need to convert people as much as get them to vote."

Congress is expected to try to hammer out a deal on immigration in the coming weeks, but compromise may be tough. Either way, the issue is likely to loom large in fall's midterm elections.

Immigration: a polarizing issue

2006-05-16T23:40:00.000-04:00

Immigration: a polarizing issue

Updated: May 16, 2006, 11:18 AM

by BRAD EDWARDS

GRAND RAPIDS -- Following President Bush's speech on immigration, 24 Hour News 8 talked to two notable local figures on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Ione Johnson, a Grand Rapids great-grandmother, thinks rounding up the illegals "would be the best idea." A card-carrying member of the Minutemen, a militia group dedicated to guarding the southern border, Johnson said, "We have to secure (the border.) You just see droves (of people) coming over."

But Richard Kessler, an immigration lawyer, said, "We have some pretty big differences on immigration policy."

Kessler has spent the majority of his professional life dedicated to immigration reform, and said President Bush's speech was "a significant benchmark" to talk about "a comprehensive program for people already here."

The most recent and available census data shows there are 38,000 foreign-born people, both legal and illegal, in Kent County.

Twenty-two percent are from Europe, 25 percent are from Asia and 46 percent are from Mexico.

"To me the illegals have no intention to assimilate into our culture or society," said Johnson.

"For many people without education or family they can't get here lawfully," said Kessler.

The president has made his plans clear, but the debate will continue.

Minuteklan Dismiss Bush's Border Plan

2006-05-16T23:38:00.000-04:00

Minutemen Dismiss Bush's Border Plan

(AP) -- A civilian border watch group considers President Bush's crackdown plan on illegal immigration insufficient and is sticking to plans to start putting up a short border security fence on private land along the Mexican border.

On Monday, the president announced his intent to temporarily deploy up to 6,000 National Guard troops to support the U.S. Border Patrol -- but not conduct patrols themselves -- as part of an effort to gain control of the porous southwestern border with Mexico.

In a nationally televised address, Bush endorsed a temporary worker program and said he wants new, secure identification cards for legal foreign workers; would let illegal immigrants with otherwise clean records pay a fine and start along a path to become citizens and would make employers take responsibility for those they hire.

Chris Simcox, the head of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, said last month that unless military reserves or the National Guard were deployed to the border and the White House endorsed more secure fencing, his group would begin constructing fencing on private land along the border.

Last week, the group said construction would begin May 27 because it was not anticipating any imminent effort to put troops on the border.

On Tuesday, Minuteman spokeswoman Connie Hair reiterated that position, despite the president's announcement to have guardsmen fill in on some behind-the-lines Border Patrol jobs while that agency's force is expanded by 6,000 by 2008.

"This is a token deployment of unarmed and grossly inadequate numbers of National Guardsmen to the border, placing them in the same demoralizing position as the Border Patrol ... outmanned and outgunned against the international crime cartels," Hair said.

"We're now more determined than ever to build it, because this is not by any means putting troops on the border. It's adding more people to the mix who will not be in position to do actual patrols," Hair added.

Hair said the plan remains to build 50 to 150 feet of a double fence on a privately owned ranch over the Memorial Day holiday weekend.

Nearly 1,000 Minuteman volunteers had signed up on the group's Web site, but probably 300 to 350 will be used to work on the fencing, according to Hair.

Others who turn out at a gathering point in southeastern Arizona will help set up stationary observation posts Friday through Monday along a stretch of the border with Mexico. The observers will watch for and report illegal border crossers to the Border Patrol.

Hair said the president could well be placing those National Guard troops who are to be assigned to build roads along the border in a perilous situation, where they potentially could come under fire from criminal elements across the international boundary.

"From everything we can tell, they're going to be unarmed," she said. "Who will guard the National Guard? If it's the Border Patrol, doesn't that defeat the idea of sending troops to the border in the first place?"

San Bernardino City Council Rejects Minuteklan's Anti-Immigration Legislation

2006-05-16T23:22:00.000-04:00

Joseph Turner is the executive director of Save Our State which has close organizational ties to the Minutemen...

May 16, 2006

California City Council Rejects Anti-Immigration Legislation

By CINDY CHANG

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif., May 15 — The San Bernardino City Council declined on Monday to enact an initiative that would punish city residents who hire or rent property to illegal immigrants, setting the stage for a contentious special election.

The initiative was proposed by Joseph Turner, 29, an anti-immigration advocate who told listeners in the packed council chambers that illegal immigrants were turning American cities into "third world cesspools."

Immigrant rights lawyers called the initiative blatantly unconstitutional and said they would sue if it were approved by voters. Officials of the city, about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, also questioned the legality of the proposal, which they said would require them to take on immigration enforcement powers reserved for the federal government.

"It turns ordinary residents into immigration agents, something they're neither authorized nor trained to do," said Hector O. Villagra, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union.

In addition to denying city permits or contracts to anyone who employs illegal immigrants, the initiative proposes fines of at least $1,000 for leasing property to them. It also includes restrictions on hiring day laborers and would make English the sole language of official city business.

"I got tired of illegal aliens invading our country and not assimilating," Mr. Turner said. "When they come to our country, they should adapt to our culture and speak our language. That's it."

Mr. Turner submitted his initiative to city officials on April 24 with over 3,000 supporting signatures. Under the city charter, an initiative with the required number of signatures must be passed into law by the City Council or sent to voters in a special election. A date for a special election has not been set.

Utah Minuteklan Still Plan on Action Despite the National Guard

2006-05-15T22:57:00.000-04:00

Minutemen Still Plan on Action Despite the National Guard
May 15th, 2006 @ 12:31pm

Jon Dunn Reporting

The leader of the Utah Minutemen project, Alex Segura, is buying a truck today. He says he needs the four wheel drive for future trips to the border, trips that won't change even with America's National Guard keeping watch.

Alex Segura: "Actually what it will do is get us more pumped up, because we want to be part of this whole effort."

The Minutemen have been calling for the military on the border for a while; still Segura calls the president's plan a political ploy.

Alex Segura: "They're saying upwards of 10,000, but because our troops are spread so thin--particularly the National Guard--it looks to me like it will end up being a half-dozen with the money to support them."

Segura does think the Guard will help, once word makes it to those in Mexico thinking about heading north.

Utah Minuteklan Plan Demonstrations During Fox Visit

2006-05-15T22:43:00.000-04:00

Utah Minutemen Plan Demonstrations During Fox Visit

May 15th, 2006 @ 7:11am

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- When Mexican President Vicente Fox visits Utah next week, the Utah Minuteman Project and possibly other groups opposed to illegal immigration will hold protests.

The group plans protests May 23 at the governor's mansion and May 24 at the Capitol.

Jeff McNeil, a Utah Minuteman, said he will be among 150 or so people who plan to protest undocumented workers, if the group's permit is approved by the Secret Service. The federal agency provides security for visiting heads of state.

McNeil said he is angry Gov. Jon Huntsman invited Fox, who leaves office in December.

Fox should be "considerate of the United States and help to protect its borders and sovereignty," McNeil said. "And if he's going to come, most of the things he needs to talk about are how he is going to do that."

Trade will be the main topic when Fox visits, Huntsman spokesman Mike Mower said earlier.

Wally McCormick, a Utah Minuteman who has twice patrolled the U.S.-Mexico border, said it is important to protest during Fox's visit "to get our word out to the public officials. Each one of us represents 1,000 people who wish they could be here doing the same thing."

By allowing undocumented workers to remain here, taking advantage of programs and benefits paid for with tax dollars, the United States is encouraging illegal immigration, he said.

Phyllis Sears, chairwoman of the Citizens Council on Illegal Immigration, said her organization's board will discuss what the group will do during Fox's visit, but it is unlikely members will travel to Salt Lake City during the visit. Most plan to attend the second national "Unite to Fight" illegal immigration conference in Las Vegas over Memorial Day weekend, she said.

Mike Sizer, chairman of Utahns for Immigration Reform and Enforcement -- UFIRE, said Fox's visit has stirred interest among advocates for changes in immigration laws.

"Certainly a lot of people have been asking about it and calling about it, wondering about what they can do about it," he said.

Sizer speculates Fox will talk to Huntsman about an amnesty proposal.

He said members of UFIRE may join the Minutemen in their demonstrations.

Strangers in the Land: An Old Theme Replayed

2006-05-15T18:05:00.000-04:00

An essay on immigration history...

Strangers in the Land: An Old Theme Replayed

By Dino E. Buenviaje

Dino E. Buenviaje writes for the History News Service and is a graduate student at the University of California, Riverside.

5-15-06

The United States begins the 21st century just as it began the 20th, by revisiting the debate on immigration and its impact on American cultural identity. The general boycott highlighting the plight of illegal immigrants on May 1, 2006, posed the question of what it means to be an American, a question that continues to polarize all Americans. Despite the hysteria concocted by cable news networks, this issue is as old as the Republic.

While the topic of immigration reform is one that deserves candid discussion, all serious dialogue inevitably gets hijacked by demagoguery that stokes the old fears of being overrun by alien peoples. What is ironic is that those who say that immigration threatens to destroy the fabric of our society are themselves the descendants of immigrants similarly abused. Historically, such rhetoric has resulted in policies that betray the promise of the American dream, so central to our heritage.

With the founding of the United States, the question of immigration began to bedevil its fledgling society. The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 not only attacked free speech; they lengthened the naturalization process from five to fourteen years and provided for the deportation of those aliens deemed a threat to national security.

By the 1840s, anti-immigration sentiment resurfaced as Irish immigrants flooded into New York and Boston, escaping the horrors of the Irish potato famine. The nativist movements incited anti-Irish sentiment on many fronts. By defining American society as Protestant, nativists raised fears of being swamped by Catholics, whose political allegiance would always be called to question by their loyalty to the Pope. Nativists used ancient English stereotypes of the savage Irish to argue their inability to assimilate to American culture. Economics became a tool for nativists as they argued that Irish immigrants would drive down wages and drain limited public resources, a theme introduced recently to gain support for cracking down on illegal immigration.

The economic expansion that the United States experiences in 2006 owes a great deal to immigrant labor, as it did more than a century ago. By the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as large scale industrialization got underway, immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe provided cheap and abundant labor for the American industrial machine. The numbers of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe pouring into Ellis Island were the largest the United States had ever known. The same reactions resurfaced.

Notable figures such as Henry Adams and Theodore Roosevelt questioned whether the United States, built on its Anglo-Saxon heritage, could accommodate large numbers of Slavs and Italians whose birthrates were outstripping those of old stock Americans of Northern European descent. These sentiments culminated in the Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1922, which severely restricted immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, creating ominous consequences for Eastern European Jews during the Second World War.

Nor has the East Coast been the only source of cultural tensions surrounding immigration. The West Coast was the flashpoint for vehement actions and policies against Asians. Chinese immigration, which was crucial to the construction of the transcontinental railroad, raised similar fears that Western states like California would be overwhelmed by an alien and inassimilable people who would bring down wages and threaten the American way of life. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first American law designed to restrict immigration, ended Chinese immigration and condemned generations of Chinese men to lead lives of enforced bachelorhood because they could not send for brides from China.

Similar measures were proposed for Japanese immigrants, leading to the Gentlemen's Agreement of 1906 by which the Japanese government voluntarily restricted the number of its citizens emigrating to the United States. Thirty-five years later, Executive Order No. 9066, signed in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack, relegated Americans of Japanese birth or descent to internment camps because they were deemed threats to national security. It would not be too much of a stretch to say that were it not for the discredited precedent of that internment, a similar fate might have awaited Arab-Americans after September 11, 2001.

Anti-immigration rhetoric and policies have a long history in our country. The same fallacies and arguments about the dilution of national identity and quality of life have been continually repeated, whether applied to Irish or Mexican immigrants. At the beginning of the 21st century, we Americans have the opportunity to break the cycle of hysteria and draft imaginative new policies that realize the untapped potential of all immigrants and further enrich our nation. Let's not continue to fall prey to the siren song of demagogues.

Bush expected to order National Guard troops to defend border

2006-05-13T22:42:00.000-04:00

In the wake of Minuteklan tour...

Bush expected to order National Guard troops to defend border

By Ron Hutcheson and Drew Brown
Knight Ridder Newspapers

Saturday, May 13, 2006 - 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON — President Bush is expected to announce plans Monday to send thousands of National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to help stop illegal immigration.

Details were still being cobbled together Friday night, but administration officials said Bush was considering deploying at least several thousand troops to help beef up border security. The president will outline his plans Monday night in a TV address.

"We are looking at a range of options," a senior administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The speech is timed to influence Senate debate next week on legislation to overhaul immigration laws. Bush is intent on winning a comprehensive bill that includes border protection, a new guest-worker program and a means for some of the 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants already in the United States to gain temporary status as legal workers, with some eventually able to apply for citizenship.

The senior administration official said Bush would propose ways to plug security gaps until thousands of new Border Patrol agents can be hired and trained.

The White House plan is to use National Guard troops, contract workers or local law-enforcement officials in support jobs so that Border Patrol agents can focus on catching illegal immigrants, the official said.

The official stressed that active-duty troops would not be deployed to the border and that the National Guard units could provide surveillance, transportation and construction of infrastructure such as berms, fencing and other border barriers.

The Defense Department also would be directed to use some of its assets — including aircraft, helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles and sophisticated monitoring devices — to enhance surveillance along the nearly 2,000-mile border.

The official disputed speculation that Bush would call for the deployment of 10,000 soldiers.

"The numbers are fluid right now. It will be in the thousands, but not that high," the official said. "There's a lot of different ways they can help without having to do the actual apprehension."

A Pentagon official confirmed the military had been asked to begin drawing up options for the use of National Guard troops. But the official said neither the scope of the mission nor the number of troops had been defined.

Immigration rallies

The debate over immigration has spurred massive national rallies of immigrants complaining that Congress is threatening sanctions against workers who represent a significant share of the U.S. economy, and it has also spurred such protests as one Friday in Washington, D.C., by an anti-immigration group known as the Minuteman Project. Capitol Police intervened as activists from both sides confronted each other with emotional slogans and signs.

According to the National Guard Bureau in Washington, D.C., National Guard troops have been used on the border with Mexico in recent years primarily for anti-drug missions.

The use of troops on the border is a sensitive issue for a variety of reasons.

Federal law prohibits the military from performing law-enforcement duties.

Critics of the idea worry that putting armed troops on the border increases the risk of violent confrontations with heavily armed drug traffickers or with immigrants. Some military units already help with border surveillance.

In 1997, a U.S. Marine patrol assisting with border surveillance near Redford, Texas, shot and killed Ezequiel Hernandez, 18, a goat herder. The Marines said Hernandez fired at them, and the corporal who pulled the trigger wasn't charged with a crime.

For Mexico, the presence of U.S. troops could evoke memories of the U.S. Army's incursions into Mexico from 1916-19, when Gen. John Pershing's troops and other U.S. military units roamed the country in search of Pancho Villa, the Mexican revolutionary and bandit.

Asked for comment, Carolina Diaz, the director of international information for Mexican President Vicente Fox, said: "President Fox ... will wait until Monday to see exactly what President Bush proposes. Until then, there won't be any official comment."

Some U.S. officials questioned the wisdom of giving another assignment to National Guard units that have been stretched thin by repeated deployments to Iraq.

National Guard troops normally serve under the command of state governors, but the president can press them into federal service when needed. Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, hundreds of thousands of National Guard personnel have been activated for duty in Iraq, Afghanistan and in homeland-security missions.

Governors unhappy

"The Bush administration and the federal government should put up the money to create the kind of protection that the federal government is responsible to provide, not use our National Guard soldiers that are coming back from Iraq," said California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican.

And New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat, said he was concerned that the administration has not consulted with him or other governors of border states. "While the immediate deployment of troops may create a short-term fix, it creates further problems and concerns regarding our National Guard troops who may be called upon to respond to other emergencies and natural disasters," he said.

Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, called the National Guard proposal "cheap political theater" in an interview with CNN.

But Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, chairman of Senate subcommittees that oversee immigration and border security, said the staffing and equipment that the National Guard could offer are needed immediately.

"The truth is, we must use all available federal assets to secure our borders," Cornyn said.

The Senate is scheduled to begin debate on its version of the immigration bill starting Monday.

The Senate bill would increase border security and establish a guest-worker program allowing participants to work toward citizenship. It would also give most of the nation's illegal immigrants a way to earn citizenship, based on the length of their stay in the United States.

Many House Republicans oppose the Senate bill and support House legislation, approved in December, that focuses solely on border security and immigration-law enforcement. It would require construction of a 700-mile wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and make illegal presence in the United States a felony.

Material from the Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News, The Washington Post and the Seattle Times archive is included in this report.

Minuteklan, protesters square off at U.S. Capitol

2006-05-12T20:56:00.000-04:00

Minutemen, protesters square off at U.S. Capitol

Fri May 12, 2006 3:10 PM ET

By Andy Sullivan

WASHINGTON, May 12 (Reuters) - Illegal immigration protesters wrapped up a cross-country caravan on Friday with a rally in the shadow of the U.S. Capitol, as immigrant-rights activists chanted for them to "go away."

Members of the Minuteman Project and other border-patrol groups warned the United States was in danger of being overrun by Mexicans if the Senate passes a bill that would give millions of illegal immigrants a chance to earn citizenship.

"They should be rounded up and deported, every single one of them," John Clark of the American Immigration Control Foundation said to a cheering crowd of about two dozen. "Leave them here and in 10 years this will not be the United States of America."

Fifty yards away a similar number of counter-protesters chanted "Minutemen go away, immigrants are here to stay" behind a line of police.

Millions of Latinos have taken to the streets in massive protests to demand greater civil rights in recent weeks. Minutemen founder Jim Gilchrist said such protests underlined the growing threat posed by the estimated 11.5 to 12 million illegal immigrants now in the country.

"They are not assembling to protect their rights. They are assembling to strip us of our rights," Gilchrist said.

Gilchrist and others launched a convoy from Los Angeles on May 3 to push for increased spending and active military involvement on the U.S.-Mexico border, where hundreds of thousands of migrants enter the country illegally each year.

Only a handful of vehicles were in the convoy when it left Los Angeles, a number that Gilchrist said swelled to 50 during the cross-country trek.

Richmond, VA- Minuteklan makes a stop here; opponents rally

2006-05-12T00:24:00.000-04:00

Raymond Herrera, a national rally organizer and a spokesperson for the Minuteman project, exchanges comments with counterprotesters outside the Capitol on 9th St., in Richmond, on Thursday.

Border dispute comes to city
Minutemen's march against illegal immigration makes a stop here; opponents rally

BY JUAN ANTONIO LIZAMA

TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

Friday, May 12, 2006

About 100 people on a quest to bring awareness against illegal immigration stopped in Richmond last night on their way to the nation's capital.

A counter-protest group about half that size gathered on the opposite side of Ninth and Franklin streets for a war of words.

"Close the borders!" shouted members of the Minuteman Project group and local supporters.

"Minutemen, go home!" yelled the local group, organized by the Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality.

The Minutemen launched a cross-country caravan May 3 to counter recent rallies across the country supporting illegal immigrants.

Since last year, the Minuteman Project, which claims to have about 1,000 members, has helped organize groups of civilians to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas.

But the group has not been confined to the border. When a labor day center was approved in the Northern Virginia community of Herndon last year, the group protested it vigorously. The center was established for immigrants, some of them undocumented, to have a safe place to meet employers looking for temporary laborers.

Richmond was one stop on a 13-city journey across the country that will take the Minuteman Project to Washington today for a final rally at Upper Senate Park.

"We want to make the nation aware of the illegal alien invasion that is jeopardizing the future of America," said Jim Gilchrist, founder of the Minutemen. "Why more political forces have not come forward has baffled a lot of Americans."

Gilchrist said he was seeing too many foreign flags being flown in neighborhoods and decided to create the Minutemen.

"Racists, go home!" counter-protesters shouted.

"If you really want to say we are segregationists, look at this!" Gilchrist yelled, hugging a black man and a Hispanic woman.

Gilchrist said his group has had many supporters join along the way and also has met many adversaries.

News reports indicate the Minutemen had difficulty finding a place for a rally Wednesday in Greensboro, N.C., and the event was nearly canceled because of a last-minute decision by a property owner to deny them a promised gathering point. The rally turned dicey with the Minutemen and counter-protesters almost clashing.

The location in Richmond, near the Capitol, was not finalized until late in the afternoon, and the rally was peaceful.

Counter-protesters came out waving signs, including a large one that said "Full Rights for Immigrants. Legalizaci?n Ahora!"

"A group like this shouldn't be allowed to come here without opposition," said Phil Wilayto of Defenders for Freedom, who had yelled over a megaphone that Richmond did not have a place for racists.

Richard Tharrington of Henrico County said he wants the government to deal with the illegal immigration issue.

"The federal government's job is to protect our borders," he said, "but it is not doing that for whatever reason."

Edward Crotzer, a retired engineer from Ashland, came to support the Minuteman group. His great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents went through the process of legalization, he said.

"I think everybody should stand in line like they did in Ellis Island," he said. "I think they should be examined. It's only fair."

Contact staff writer Juan Antonio Lizama at jlizama@timesdispatch.com or (804) 649-6513.

San Diego, CA- Minuteklan Denies Harassing Immigrants

2006-05-12T00:18:00.000-04:00

San Diego Minuteman spokesman Jeff Schwilk

Group Denies Harassing Immigrants Spokesman Say Group Is Targeting Day Laborers' Employers

UPDATED: 6:24 pm PDT May 11, 2006

SAN DIEGO -- A spokesman for the San Diego Minutemen says his group isn't harassing immigrant workers outside a North County strip mall.

Images: Immigrant Workers Say They're Being Harassed

Instead, Jeff Schwilk said his group is putting pressure on the would-be employers, urging them to stop hiring the workers, many of whom, Schwilk's group claims, are illegal immigrants.

"We're not doing anything illegal," said Schwilk. " We're not doing anything we shouldn't be doing. We're exercising our rights as American citizens and of the community of Vista, and we don't really have a problem with that."

Schwilk said, though, that the day laborers make a mess of that shopping center and that some shop owners support what the Minuteman group is doing.

For their part, the day laborers claim that they are being harassed while waiting for work at the Vista shopping center near Escondido Boulevard and South Santa Fe Drive.

Civil rights attorney Claudia Smith told NBC 7/39 on Wednesday that a group of self-appointed Minutemen had been harassing the workers, demanding to see their immigration papers. She said that she gave them cameras to document the alleged harassment.

Two other Minutemen groups -- the Minuteman Project and the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps -- told NBC 7/39 that they are not involved in the North County dispute.

Winston-Salem, NC- Minuteklan Project rally spurs face off over immigration reform

2006-05-11T11:30:00.000-04:00

Minuteman Project rally spurs face off over immigration reform

By Dan Galindo
JOURNAL REPORTER
Thursday, May 11, 2006

GREENSBORO

Supporters of the Minuteman Project, a group formed to vigorously oppose illegal immigration, waved signs and shouted slogans last night, as counterprotesters shouted back from across a busy road.

Each side traded chants and insults. The counter-protesters said that the Minuteman supporters were racists. A few Minuteman supporters called the counterprotesters "Europeans," an apparent insult.

Last night's impromptu demonstrations tried to salvage an effort by the Minuteman group to hold a protest downtown.

A caravan of Minuteman members is headed to Washington for a rally on Friday against allowing illegal immigrants to stay in the United States and had planned for a similar rally in downtown Greensboro. Those plans fell through when the group did not give the city 48 hours notice for a rally permit.

That didn't stop about 40 local supporters from gathering on High Point Road, in the parking lot of American Furniture Warehouse.

Supporters said that illegal immigration is out of control and that the federal government has ignored the problem.

The caravan - a group of about 20 RVs, cars, trucks and SUVs - drove by to cheers from supporters and jeers from about an equal number of counter-protesters from local chapters of the International Socialist Organization and Anti-Racist Action.

A blue SUV in the front of the caravan slowed as it neared the local supporters. "Is the local media here?" a man inside asked. Assured that they were, the SUV pulled in and parked across the street from the furniture store.

The leader of the Minuteman Project, Jim Gilchrist, gave interviews to reporters. Gilchrist said he hoped that the caravan would serve notice to politicians considering immigration reform that would give any form of legal status to those here illegally.

After media interviews, the caravan left, its stay in Greensboro lasting about an hour.

Yesterday's impromptu demonstrations came after several changes in the location of the rally.

American Furniture Warehouse had agreed to play host to the Minuteman rally after the group failed to get a permit to rally downtown. The store changed its mind after it learned more about the group, an employee there said yesterday.

The Minuteman Project takes its name from an effort in April 2005 to patrol a section of the border in Arizona.

Members of that effort have now become two Minuteman groups - the Minuteman Project, which advocates against illegal immigration and formed yesterday's caravan, and the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, which continues to organize civilian border patrols.

Tuscon, AZ - Minuteklan to build border fences

2006-05-10T12:43:00.000-04:00

Penny Magnotto, of Riverside, Calif., talks about her opposition to illegal immigration during a rally in Birmingham, Ala., Tuesday, May 9, 2006. Magnotto is traveling to Washington with a caravan organized by the Minuteman Project. (AP Photo/Jay Reeves)

Minutemen Aim to Build Ariz. Border Fences

By ARTHUR H. ROTSTEIN
The Associated Press
Tuesday, May 9, 2006; 9:48 PM

TUCSON, Ariz. -- A civilian border-patrol group said Tuesday that it plans to build two short security fences on a ranch in southern Arizona, the busiest illegal entry point on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Chris Simcox, a leader in the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, said last month that the group would break ground on the fence unless the White House deployed U.S. troops to the border by May 25 and endorsed more secure fencing.

"We are not anticipating that the White House will make any effort in the next 2 1/2 weeks as far as putting troops on the border," Minuteman spokeswoman Connie Hair said.

The group initially plans to erect two parallel 15-foot steel-mesh fences, which will be from 50 to 150 feet long. An unpaved road will run between the fences.

Hair declined to reveal the location of the fences out of concern the project could be a target for harassment or retaliation.

Todd Fraser, a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman in Washington, said the agency has no position on such fencing.

"If private citizens want to construct something on their property ... who is the Border Patrol to say they can't do it?" Fraser said.

Plans call for the fence to be constructed using an Israeli design.

On the south side facing Mexico, a 6-foot deep trench will keep vehicles from crashing through the fencing. Behind that, coiled and razor-edged barbed wire will be placed in front of a 15-foot steel mesh fence angled outward at the top to make climbing more difficult. The second fence will be built on the other side of the road.

Video cameras will be mounted between the fences and monitored from home computers.

Other Minuteman groups have also undertaken fencing projects.

About 200 Minuteman volunteers began building a 6-foot barbed wire fence last month along a quarter-mile of rugged terrain about 50 miles east of San Diego. It connected to an existing 12-foot high government-built fence.

US, allegedly, gives info to Mexico on Minuteklan patrols

2006-05-10T12:36:00.000-04:00

U.S. tipping Mexico to Minuteman patrols

By Sara A. Carter, Staff Writer
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

While Minuteman civilian patrols are keeping an eye out for illegal border crossers, the U.S. Border Patrol is keeping an eye out for Minutemen -- and telling the Mexican government where they are.

According to three documents on the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations Web site, the U.S. Border Patrol is to notify the Mexican government as to the location of Minutemen and other civilian border patrol groups when they participate in apprehending illegal immigrants -- and if and when violence is used against border crossers.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman confirmed the notification process, describing it as a standard procedure meant to reassure the Mexican government that migrants' rights are being observed.

"It's not a secret where the Minuteman volunteers are going to be," Mario Martinez said Monday.

"This ... simply makes two basic statements -- that we will not allow any lawlessness of any type, and that if an alien is encountered by a Minuteman or arrested by the Minuteman, then we will allow that government to interview the person."

Minuteman members were not so sanguine about the arrangement, however, saying that reporting their location to Mexican officials nullifies their effectiveness along the border and could endanger their lives.

"Now we know why it seemed like Mexican officials knew where we were all the time," said Chris Simcox, founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. "It's unbelievable that our own government agency is sending intelligence to another country. They are sending intelligence to a nation where corruption runs rampant, and that could be getting into the hands of criminal cartels.

"They just basically endangered the lives of American people."

Officials with the Mexican consulate in Washington, D.C., could not be reached for comment Monday.

Martinez said reporting the location of immigrant apprehensions to consulate representatives is common practice if an illegal immigrant requests counsel or believes they have been mistreated.

"Once an illegal alien is apprehended, they can request counsel," he said. "We have to give their counsel the information about their apprehension, and that includes where they are apprehended, whether a Minuteman volunteer spotted them or a citizen."

Martinez said Mexico's official perception of the civilian groups is that they are vigilantes, a belief the Border Patrol hoped to allay by entering into the cooperative agreement.

One of the documents on the Web site, "Actions of the Mexican Government in Relation to the Activities of Vigilante Groups," states that Mexican consulate representatives stay in close contact with Border Patrol chiefs to ensure the safety of migrants trying to enter the U.S., those being detained and the actions of all "vigilantes" along the border.

"The Mexican consul in Presidio also contacted the chief of the Border Patrol in the Marfa Sector to solicit his cooperation in case they detect any activity of `vigilantes,' and was told to immediately contact the consulate if there was," according to the document.

"Presidio" refers to Presidio County, Texas, which is in the Big Bend region and a gateway to northern Mexico.

The document also describes a meeting with San Diego Border Patrol sector chief Darryl Griffen.

"(Griffen) said that the Border Patrol will not permit any violence or any actions contrary to the law by the groups, and he is continuously aware of (the volunteer organizations') operations," according to the document. "Mr. Griffen reiterated to the undersecretary his promise to notify the General Consul right away when the vigilantes detain or participate in the detention of any undocumented Mexicans."

The documents specifically named the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and its patrols, which began monitoring Arizona's southern border in April 2005, as well as Friends of the Border Patrol, a Chino-based nonprofit.

TJ Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, a union representing more than 10,000 Border Patrol agents, said agents have complained for years about the Mexican consulate's influence over the agency.

"It worries me (that the Mexican government) seems to be unduly influencing our enforcement policies. That's not a legitimate role for any foreign nation," Bonner said, though he added, "It doesn't surprise me."

Border Patrol agents interviewed by the Daily Bulletin said they have been asked to report to sector headquarters the location of all civilian volunteer groups, but to not file the groups' names in reports if they spot illegal immigrants.

"Last year an internal memo notified all agents not to give credit to Minuteman volunteers or others who call in sightings of illegal aliens," said one agent, who spoke on the condition he not be identified. "We were told to list it as a citizen call and leave it at that. Many times, we were told not to go out to Minuteman calls."

The document also mentions locations of field operations of Friends of the Border Patrol, which patrolled the San Diego sector from June to November 2005. Mexican officials had access to the exact location of the group founded by Andy Ramirez, which ran its patrols from the Rough Acre Ranch, a private property in McCain Valley.

Ramirez said that for safety reasons, he disclosed the location of his ranch patrol only to San Diego Border Patrol and law enforcement officials. The group did not apprehend or spot any undocumented migrants in that area.

"We did not release this information ... to the media or anyone else," Ramirez said. "We didn't want to publicize that information. But there it is, right on the Mexican government's Web site, and our government gave it to them."

Visit the Mexican Government's Secretary of Foreign Relations Web Site. Third Report on the Activities of Vigilantes. http://www.sre.gob.mx/eventos/minuteman/reporte3.htm

San Francisco, CA- Minuteklan spreads to the north

2006-05-10T12:25:00.000-04:00

Minutemen spread to the north

By Nathaniel Hoffman
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
Posted on Tue, May. 09, 2006

John Clark spent thousands of dollars in legal fees and several years trying to get his Chilean girlfriend -- now his wife -- into the United States.

So when he saw the Minuteman Project launched in April 2005 to guard the U.S.-Mexico border, he signed up to stop people from sneaking in.

Just back from a weekend along the California-Mexico border repairing border fence and spotting border crossers, the 36-year-old water quality technician from Napa is forming a Northern California Minuteman chapter.

"This country is the United States," Clark said. "I mean, countries are defined by borders. Every other country in the world defends their borders and has people on their borders and doesn't allow illegal immigration."

The Minuteman Civil Defense Corps Inc. is an outgrowth of the original Minuteman Project, a small gathering on the Arizona border in April 2005 that aimed to guard against illegal border crossing, garnering international media attention.

Twenty-three chapters have formed across the country, and last week, Clark secured funding from an anonymous donor in Farmington, N.M., to start one more.

"I believe I'm doing the right thing and I'm a nonviolent person," Clark said, adding that he expects some resistance to the Minutemen in the Bay Area. A quarter of the participants in a recent monthlong Minuteman camp near Boulevard on the California border came from Northern California, and Clark said he knows 15 to 20 people who would join a local group.

Fund raising for the border-control group has risen since large pro-immigrant marches began in March, said Minuteman spokeswoman Connie Hair, going from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars nationally. When the group secures its tax-exempt status, specific fund-raising numbers will become public.

While the movement has become well known, it has been widely criticized as well.

President Bush warned against vigilantism before the original Minuteman Project began in Arizona last year. The Mexican government decried the effort and immigrant advocates have protested and monitored the presence of the Minutemen along the border.

"They've made their language more moderate to make the tent wider," said Isabel Alegria, communications director for the California Immigrant Welfare Collaborative. "But I have no question in my mind that the origins of the Minutemen are racist and anti-immigrant."

Clark first applied online last year to become a Minuteman but no one called him back. More recently he heard about the plan to build a fence on private property along the border and applied again. He paid $50 for a criminal background check and was vetted by California chapter President Tim Donnelly.

"Basically they are trying to make sure you are not a racist in any way, shape or form," Clark said. While some openly racist groups embraced the idea of a civilian border patrol, volunteers are quick to distance themselves from racist positions.

"The whole Hispanic thing is not what motivates me," said Anna Ford of San Jose, an official Minuteman who spent April packing a pistol and radio, keeping an eye out for people walking across from Mexico into remote Boulevard. "For me, we don't know the nature of the people coming across."

Ford and many Minutemen, including founders Chris Simcox and Jim Gilchrist, say the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon spurred them to do something about border security.

Yet frustrations with illegal immigration and with immigrants in general are major factors in their thinking as well.

"Now, five years after 9/11 we are strip-searching Caucasian grandmothers at the airport and we have a wide-open border," said Donnelly, head of the California Minuteman chapter.

Donnelly, a salesman from Twin Peaks, near Lake Arrowhead, said his work with the Minutemen was motivated by the terrorist attacks, but he also traces it to the arrival of immigrant workers in his town, initially brought in to cut trees.

"All of a sudden our whole community changed," he said.

Clark, who speaks Spanish with his two sons and has traveled extensively in South America, said he finds himself hankering for the "good old days."

"The Day of Non-Inmigrantes, that day you know, what it reminded me of, it reminded me of the good old days," Clark said of the May 1 general strike and boycott in which many Latinos skipped work and shopping in protest. "I went shopping at Safeway and there was three checkers open and there was one person, two people in each line, I just flowed right through there, it was great."

Clark met his wife while traveling in Chile in 1996. They corresponded for a while and then he applied for her to come visit and was denied twice. After several years, he successfully applied for a fiancee visa and the two married before the 90-day limit.

She declined an interview.

Clark said his Minuteman chapter, which he hopes to launch in a month, will recruit for the border effort -- the group plans to build its own fence if the federal government does not send troops to guard the border by Memorial Day. But it also will monitor day labor sites, taking down license plate numbers and posting on the Internet the names of people who use day laborers.

Clark, who likens his activity to the Boston Tea Party, has coined the phrase "no taxation with illegal immigration" to show his opposition to paying for services that undocumented immigrants may utilize.

"It's a message to President Bush that, hey, we're down here doing a job that the U.S. government should be doing."

Birmingham, AL- Minuteklan rally against illegal immigrants draws small crowd

2006-05-10T12:09:00.000-04:00

Michael Wisnieux of Los Angeles stands on top of a picnic table as he leads
the singing of the national anthem at a rally against illegal immigration Tuesday
in Birmingham. The demonstration was part of a national caravan to Washington
staged by the Minuteman Project, which stages watches in the desert to keep people
from crossing the Mexican border.

Rally against illegal immigrants draws small crowd in Birmingham

JAY REEVES
May 10, 2006
Associated Press

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Larry and Judy Ball drove 705 miles from Michigan to Alabama to add their voices - and vehicle - to a national caravan against illegal immigration as it rolled through Alabama on Tuesday.

Married 48 years, the couple said they have never been involved in any sort of protest. But they're so worried about illegal immigrants that they drove to Birmingham from Scotts, Mich., to join up with a cross-country convoy organized by the Minuteman Project, which stages watches in the desert to keep people from crossing the Mexican border.

Sign in hand, Ball said the solution to illegal immigration is to seal up the nation's southern border and jail any employer that hires someone who is in the country illegally.

"Then we won't have to round them up. They'll go home on their own," he said.

About 70 people attended a rally in a pavilion at a city park after the caravan arrived. Speakers said their opposition to illegal immigrants wasn't based on racial or ethnic bias but on the desire to seal the nation's borders to protect jobs for U.S. citizens and keep out terrorists.

"No racists allowed," Alabama Minuteman Gary Buie said in laying out some of the rules of the organization. Speaker Phil Ernst of Phoenix, Ariz., said he has no problem with Hispanics trying to help their families but added that they "just aren't our culture."

Gerald Welch of Birmingham said while he doesn't dislike anyone on the basis of their race, he gets angry at the idea of illegal immigrants using government assistance programs like Women, Infants and Children, or WIC, which provides dairy and other nutrious products for pregnant women and babies.

"I was at Winn-Dixie the other day. They couldn't even speak English and they were using WIC. I about blew up," said Welch, carrying a sign against amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Some of the rhetoric was similar to speeches delivered at a Ku Klux Klan rally held in northwest Alabama over the weekend. Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist drew some of his loudest applause with criticism of civil rights attorney Morris Dees of Montgomery, who was also mentioned during the Klan demonstration.

Dees, whose Southern Poverty Law Center has been critical of the Minutemen, is a "disgusting example of humanity," said Gilchrist. "Go to the Southern Poverty Law Center Web site and you will meet Satan," he said.

Center officials have said the Minutemen Project, while drawing a wide base of support, have racists and extremists among its leaders.

Copies of an anti-semitic newspaper featuring a front-page article by former KKK leader David Duke were available at the rally, but most copies remained bundled on a picnic table after the demonstration.

From Birmingham, a caravan of about 15 cars, campers and pickup trucks headed to Atlanta. The group is scheduled to arrive in Washington on Friday.

Nashville, TN- Minuteklan caravan makes stop at Capitol

2006-05-10T12:03:00.000-04:00

Jim Thomas of Ridgetop holds a sign that asks "Illegal immigrants,
what part of 'illegal' don't you understand?" during a Minuteman rally at War Memorial Plaza.

Minuteman rally seeks support for stricter immigration laws
Cross-country caravan makes stop at Capitol

By AILENE TORRES
and KATE HOWARD
Staff Writers

Published: Tuesday, 05/09/06

Waving American flags and signs denouncing illegal immigration, members and supporters of The Minuteman Project rallied at the state Capitol on Monday night to show their support for stricter immigration legislation.

Founder Jim Gilchrist encouraged about 150 people in attendance to stop supporting politicians without a record opposing illegal immigration as a step toward solving the influx of undocumented workers.

Politicians have failed for decades to stop the incremental "invasion" of illegal residents, Gilchrist said.

"We don't know what their intentions are," he said. "All we know is their intentions are not to assimilate into the United States."

The Minuteman Project caravan began in Los Angeles on May 3 and came through Nashville on Monday for the rally favoring stricter immigration laws. The group planned to move on to rallies in Birmingham, Ala. and Atlanta next.

Last month's immigration rights rally in the same location shocked Jim Thomas of Ridgetop, who came to both rallies with a sign reading: "What part of 'illegal' don't you understand?"

"I was frightened that many illegals can march in the streets unopposed," Thomas said. "They'll hurt our economy on the back end and they jeopardize our job security."

The Minuteman Project is a coalition of Americans from different racial backgrounds working to secure the nation's borders, said Tim Bueler, the organization's spokesman. The Minutemen are known for the armed vigilante troops they have posted along the U.S. border with Mexico.

David Lubell, director of the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition, did not protest Monday's rally, but said his group is concerned about the "real message."

"While cloaked in the red, white and blue of American history, today's Minutemen, in reality, represent the most recent of many waves of (native) vigilantes in America, inciting fears of a new 'cultural invasion,' " Lubell said. "The minutemen need to learn that immigrants today … are learning English, fueling job growth in the Tennessee economy and proudly becoming Americans."

Dobbs cited misleading Zogby poll to report that Americans support House version of immigration bill

2006-05-10T12:01:00.000-04:00

CNN host Lou Dobbs also cited the poll to claim that "voters overwhelmingly believe the House of Representatives has a better plan than the Senate." But the Zogby poll -- which was commissioned by an anti-immigration group -- misrepresented both proposals, and most polls on the issue run counter to Zogby's conclusions.

Full story: Media Matters

Racists riding wave of anti-immigrant fervor

2006-05-10T11:16:00.000-04:00

Violence against Hispanics

Racists riding wave of anti-immigrant fervor

MARY SANCHEZ
The Kansas City Star

So the nation continues to obsess about a Spanish-language national anthem.

And a 17-year-old Texas youth lies in a hospital, miraculously hanging onto life.

His plight has been buried by never-ending discussions about a song that no one is pushing to replace the true national anthem.

The young Latino was found naked last month in a Houston area backyard. He’d been attacked by two other young men, one a known skinhead.

They beat the student, shoved a piece of PVC pipe into the young man’s rectum, then plowed it deep into his organs by kicking it. One attacker wore a steel-toed boot.

They also tried to carve on his chest, stomped on his head and poured bleach over him, yelling Hispanic slurs throughout the attack.

He lay in the yard for 10 hours.

But hey, did you hear that President Bush had Jon Secada sing a blended Spanish/English version of the anthem at his 2001 inauguration? Did you hear Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice note that she had heard rap, country and classical versions of the anthem?

The national anthem is not in danger.

But Latinos, trapped in the wrong place at the wrong time by the wrong thugs, might be.

Like the vermin they are, hard-core white supremacists have latched onto the immigration issue.

They view it as fertile soil. Reading online versions of their mantras shows they predictably find ways to link even immigration woes back to a Jewish conspiracy.

These are not people honestly concerned with the costs of illegal immigration — with the problem of keeping violent immigrants from entering the country, with labor abuses that have cost U.S.-born people jobs in some industries. Those are valid concerns. Those who raise them are not racist.

Other people proudly earn that title. David Henry Tuck, 18, is well on his way.

Tuck is one of two teenagers charged with aggravated sexual assault for the Houston area beating. Keith Robert Turner, 17, has also been charged but is being portrayed as a follower.

Tuck was also involved in the beating of a Hispanic man in 2003. He was with two men, both admitted skinheads, later convicted in the crime. They beat the man unconscious while at least one shouted, “Dirty Mexican,” “Border jumper,” “Spic,” and “We kill people like you,” the Houston Chronicle reported, using accounts in court records and from the victim.

Reports have also said Tuck taught younger kids in his neighborhood the “Heil Hitler” salute, has an affinity for the Nazi swastika, and is tattooed with symbols beloved by white supremacists.

Adolf Hitler’s birthday, long a day of honor for supremacists, was a few days prior to the recent beating.

At the very least, Tuck is the sort of troubled youth susceptible to crazy anti-immigrant rhetoric.

One woman, well known to people who track hate groups, recently posted a few e-mail suggestions to white supremacists under the title “Get rid of them.”

She suggests stealing the money of undocumented immigrants as they enter banks. She says to be “creative” in discouraging Spanish-speaking children from attending school. And she promotes a propaganda campaign to “warn that any further illegal immigrants coming here will be shot, maimed or seriously messed-up.”

A few talk radio hosts have also called for violence against Hispanic immigrants.

The FBI has reported more than 2,500 hate crimes toward Hispanics since 2000, according to a new report by the Anti-Defamation League.

The young man barely alive in Texas probably will not be added to hate-crime tallies.

Prosecutors note that the teens were smoking pot, drinking alcohol and taking Xanax that night, so proving ethnic hate as a clear motivation would be difficult and would not increase penalties. Because the assault was at a private home, it does not fit federal hate-crime criteria.

The question often asked after such violence is, “How do people hate so much?”

Easy.

Fervent little hearts can be twisted by older people already indoctrinated. Supremacists are not unintelligent, but they do tend to be anti-social people looking for a cause, a place in society. Their numbers are fleeting, with groups often fighting amongst themselves, causing splits.

They are often dismissed as harmless, fringe lunatics — at least until real violence occurs.

And sadly, their hatred finds more room to ferment while so much of society is lured toward mundane nonissues.

To reach Mary Sanchez, call (816) 234-4752 or send e-mail to msanchez@kcstar.com .

Grand Rapids, MI - Group confronts Anti-immigration rally, exposes them as racists

2006-05-08T23:11:00.000-04:00

On Saturday, about 40 people gathered at the Calder Plaza for an anti-immigration rally, under the guise that they opposed what they termed as "illegal immigrants." Local people who felt it necessary to take a public stand, particularly with the Latino community, met the rally with their own signs, drums and statement that "we are all immigrants."

With the representation of at least three national organizations, all of which promote White Supremacy and White Purity, this anti-immigration rally was not just organized by disgruntled citizens.

Full story: Media Mouse

Oarnge County can you say ... 'anti-Mexican'?

2006-05-08T12:21:00.000-04:00

By Gustavo Arellano,
GUSTAVO ARELLANO is a staff writer with OC Weekly, where he writes the "¡Ask a Mexican!" column.
May 8, 2006

I TEND TO SNORE during plays, but my peepers didn't flutter once when I attended a staging of "The Mexican OC," a new play highlighting the history of Mexicans in Orange County. Though the vignettes jump from the 1892 lynching of a Mexican laborer by Santa Ana civic leaders to the student walkouts of this March, the theme remained the same: If you're a Mexican in the county of milk and Mickey, expect mucho discrimination.

"The Mexican OC" retells many familiar yarns — about the Minutemen, gentrification battles, Mendez vs. Westminster (the 1945 legal case that desegregated schools in Orange County and that Thurgood Marshall cited in arguing Brown vs. Board of Education). My only complaint with the play was that it only scratched the surface of my county's bizarre history of hating the Mexican.

For instance, it didn't mention the late INS Commissioner Harold Ezell, a Newport Beach resident and local GOP stalwart who once told reporters that "illegal aliens shouldn't be deported; they should be deep-fried." Or the recent incident in which a Rancho Santa Margarita woman accused three maids of stealing her purse and got the Orange County Sheriff's Department to help deport them before officers determined that this Desperate Housewife had left the purse at a McDonald's.

Truth is, Orange County is the Mexican-bashing capital of the United States. Our racist sneezes become national hurricanes.

County residents birthed both the notorious Minuteman Project and Proposition 187, the 1994 initiative that scared us with images of shadowy Mexicans crossing the border and spawned copycat measures nationwide. Costa Mesa Mayor Allan Mansoor and O.C. Sheriff Michael Carona are seeking to transform their respective police and sheriff's departments into la migra, a plan other municipalities across the country are considering. And members of our Republican congressional delegation — some of whom boycotted President Bush's recent amnesty-touting speech in Irvine — played a crucial role in crafting the notorious Sensenbrenner bill, HR 4437, which would make assisting an illegal immigrant a crime. Orange County is even home to the headquarters of Taco Bell and Del Taco, the worst apings of Mexican culture since a brown-face Charlton Heston hammed it up in "Touch of Evil."

What explains our Mexican-bashing ways? The old stereotype of Orange County as a bastion of wealthy white conservatives doesn't suffice; a Mexi-phobic streak even exists among assimilated O.C. Mexicans, who use a unique-to-Orange County slur —"wab" — to deride recently arrived Mexicans. The deep well of racism stems directly from the county's foundation.

Unlike East Los Angeles or other regions with significant Mexican communities, the lords of Orange County never let their Mexicans become anything other than Mexicans. After receiving generations' worth of cheap Mexican labor to power the county's chief industries — citrus before World War II, real-estate development afterward — the O.C. psyche is wired to view brown-skinned folks as perpetual peons. City ordinances forced Mexican immigrants like my great-grandfather and grandfather to live in shoddy citrus camps instead of the good parts of town for decades; the resulting barrios still exist and account for our continued housing segregation. Orange County's recent emergence as a gateway for Mexican immigration — the county seat, Santa Ana, is percentage-wise the most Latino city in the U.S., with a population of more than 100,000 — also ensures that the trek toward assimilation and acceptance won't begin anytime soon.

Ask the haters, and many will insist that some of their best friends are Mexicans; it's illegal immigrants they despise. But the slope here between "Mexican" and "illegal immigrant" has always been a Slip 'N Slide. And even if immigration stopped tomorrow, Orange County would still look down on Mexicans.

I'm a fourth-generation descendant of naranjeros (orange pickers), barely speak Spanish and am lighter-skinned than most of my gabacho friends. Still, a couple of years ago, I attended a fundraiser at the Balboa Bay Club — the Musso & Frank's for O.C.'s old money, and John Wayne's favorite drinking well — and while I was standing in line for a horrid Mexican buffet, a skinny, prissy thing approached. She asked if I could serve her some beans. I laughed. While I waited for the valet later that night, the same woman asked if I could grab her car. "Not unless you want it on cinder blocks," I replied. My Camry arrived. I paid the $5 charge and slipped the Mexican valet an extra $20.

The Mexican-hating here isn't all bad, I guess — it does provides for delicious, ironic comedy. Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist has a Mexican son-in-law and owns a Chihuahua named Tia. An Anaheim club that used to be host to white-power rock shows is now one of the county's most popular Mexican nightclubs. And two days after viewing "The Mexican OC," I got to watch a group of about 60 prune-faced white folks do their comical worst to counter-protest the tens of thousands of Latinos demonstrating in downtown Santa Ana at the "Day Without Immigrants" rally. Under the cover of mounted police, the furious fogies hurled chants of "tacos," "welfare" and "amigos" to the bronze-skinned moms and dads, kiddies and abuelitas.

Orange County, as always, was itching for its Mexicans to riot. But most of the marchers were too busy waving American flags to notice.

Tucson, AZ- black leader skeptical of worry voiced by Minuteklan

2006-05-08T12:19:00.000-04:00

Ernesto Portillo Jr. : Tucson black leader skeptical of worry voiced by Minutemen

Ernesto Portillo Jr.

Tucson, Arizona | Published: 05.07.2006

The names in the American pantheon of black civil rights leaders is long.

It stretches from Crispus Attucks, a slave of black and American Indian parents who was killed in the 1770 Boston Massacre by British soldiers, to Andrew Young Jr., a 1960s civil rights leader and later Atlanta mayor.

Now there's an effort to add a new name to the list: Minutemen.

The lawn-chair brigade, which appointed itself border guardians last year, has now taken it upon itself to become guardians of black America.

The Minutemen, lead by cofounder and failed congressional candidate Jim Gilchrist of California, launched a crusade Wednesday citing undocumented immigrants as the cause of black unemployment.

Immigration politics is making for stranger-than-usual bedfellows.

The Minutemen are the successors of the Know-Nothings, a mid-19th century anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant movement, and White Citizens Councils, the anti-integrationist and anti-semitic Southern groups of the 1950s and 1960s.

Now the largely white Minutemen members say they stand arm in arm with their black brothers and sisters.

But don't tell that to longtime Tucson civil rights leader, Clarence Boykins, who is the executive director of the Tucson-Southern Arizona Black Chamber of Commerce and president of the NAACP's Tucson chapter.

"The Minutemen don't speak for me or blacks in Arizona or America," said Boykins, who spoke at the April 10 rally at Armory Park.

He said the answer to illegal immigration is a comprehensive plan. He supports a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants and improved border security without fences.

It's true that within the black community, there are concerns over the impact of illegal immigration on black employment and the political future. While some blacks jeered Gilchrist and a few Minutemen in Los Angeles this week when the group launched its caravan to the nation's capital, there were other blacks who supported the border watchers.

"Illegal immigration has had and is having a devastating effect on the black community," the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, a Los Angeles Minuteman supporter and critic of the NAACP, told the Los Angeles Times. "Black Americans are being put out of jobs, they're put out of their own homes."

Black unemployment has persistently lagged behind white. The joblessness rate for whites 16 years and over was 3.9 percent. For blacks it was 8.8 percent, the Department of Labor's reported for April.

In 2004, 72 percent of black men in their 20s who did not complete high school did not have a job. That compared with 34 percent of white and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts.

In some cities with large black populations, legal and undocumented immigrants have entered the work force, competing for low-wage jobs.

The Minutemen want black Americans — and everyone else for that matter — to make a connection between black unemployment and illegal immigration.

But it's an overly simplistic and incorrect connection, Boykins said.

Black unemployment is due to the lack of quality education and job opportunities, he said. State and national governments are not providing sufficient money to improve education and job training, he said.

Illegal immigration is a factor in the unemployment rate but it's not the culprit. The national rate is a relatively healthy 4.7 percent.

The Minutemen are trying to divide blacks and Latinos over jobs, Boykins said. "Nothing of what they profess is closely related to our issues."

As the small caravan of Minutemen drives to Washington, D.C., what they really want is to drive is a political wedge between blacks and Latinos.

● Ernesto Portillo Jr.'s column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach him at 573-4242 or eportillo@azstarnet.com.

Minuteklan Project comes to Memphis

2006-05-08T12:13:00.000-04:00

May 8, 2006, 09:40 AM
News 3 WREG-TV

MEMPHIS -The Minuteman Project's caravan will visit Memphis and will push its political platform on illegal immigration.

The Minuteman Project wants stronger borders, and organizers hoped the trip would help counter marches around the nation demanding amnesty for illegal immigrants.

They will visit downtown Memphis at 12:00 p.m. Monday and will protest outside the Memphis Visitor's Center.

Sunday, an estimated 15,000 people showed up in Little Rock's River Market area for a Cinco de Mayo celebration. The Minuteman Project held a protest just blocks away and drew significantly fewer people, and less controversy than at other stops.

Project Leaders began their cross-country tour Wednesday, launching a caravan to the nation's capital from a heavily black neighborhood in Los Angeles. Many residents there shouted at the civilian patrol group to go home.

The stop in Little Rock was met with minimal protest.

Day 4 of Minuteklan Project's "Johnny Appleseed" tour

2006-05-07T11:40:00.000-04:00

New voice joins minuteman caravan

Outspoken O.C. Hispanic turns into key figure in Minuteman effort against illegal immigration.

By PEGGY LOWE
The Orange County Register
Sunday, May 7, 2006

Minuteman member Cindy Lou of Denton, Texas, right, greets Lupe Moreno of Santa Ana at the “Rumble at the Ranch” rally.

CRAWFORD, Texas Lupe Moreno grabs a Diet Pepsi, a large bag of pretzels and a folding chair, slowly moving to sidestep the puddles.

She's under a large white tent, trying to duck the pounding rain and get to the front of the temporary theater that will stage the "Rumble at the Ranch," a protest in President Bush's hometown to decry his immigration programs.

Suddenly, Moreno is rushed by two young men doing a report for a Web broadcast called infowars.com. They gush like groupies, telling Moreno how excited they are to meet her.

They train their high-definition Sony video camera on Moreno and remark about how she cried while telling her story via telephone on their show last week. They tell her that they admire her because she lives in California but has the guts to fight against illegal immigration.

They see what Orange County politicians familiar with the outspoken Republican from Santa Ana always get: the full-on Moreno, unedited.

"People have to say no to these sonsabitches," Moreno says to the camera. "Everybody's terrified. Even the police are terrified. You know what? I say, 'Stop it. Quit being sissy boys.'"

Among the new troubadours-turned-stars of the great American immigration debate is Lupe Moreno, one of the few Hispanics who are openly, virulently, colorfully countering those who are marching for immigrant rights. If Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist is the anti-illegal-immigration movement's Willie Nelson, the all-American outlaw, then Moreno is Julio Iglesias, the Hispanic crooner lauded for pouring out heart and soul.

Moreno, who flew to Waco, Texas, from Orange County, is welcomed as a fresh soldier Saturday by the dozen sleep-deprived people traveling in the Minuteman caravan, which literally braved hail, high water and mechanical hiccups in its trek across Texas on Friday.

After leaving New Mexico, the travelers got caught in severe thunderstorms around Lubbock. Then organizers of a planned Friday night rally in Abilene, the next stop, canceled it because of baseball-sized hail.

That's when the caravan broke apart, some deciding to stay in Lubbock and others driving all night to Crawford.

The Winnebago that Gilchrist and his wife, Sandy, are traveling in has also proved problematic, losing electrical power a few hours after they fixed the water tank. Sandy Gilchrist joked Saturday that they finally ended up at what she called "the Bates Motel," a scary sleepover in Gatesville that typically houses people visiting the nearby state prison.

But the soldiers were reunited by noon Saturday and spirits once dampened were now back to determined.

Gayle Nyberg of Riverside is wearing the same patriot outfit she wore during the Phoenix rally and is ready to go. The woman who goes by the name "MinuteMaMa" had on her Salvation Army-bought uniform of knickers, a ruffled white shirt, felt tricorn hat and a large black purse on her arm.

"Our country is in trouble and we need to wake up America if we have a chance to fix it," Nyberg says. "That's the state we're in. We don't have time to waste."

The Rumble at the Ranch, which is actually at the Tonkawa Falls RV Park four miles from the Bush property, is part tent revival, part political rally.

When the rain finally stops, about 500 people listen and testify – "Vamos a Mexico," offers one woman as an amen – and the rally goes on for more than four hours in the muggy, muddy park. Hand-painted signs are covered in plastic to protect them from the rain. One reads "What next? A guest terrorist plan?", a swipe at Bush's guest-worker proposal.

Sid Sullenger, 45, and his buddy Kim Fromme, 49, are standing under shade trees at the back of the audience. Sullenger, in a yellow rain duster and 10-gallon straw hat with a brass star on the front, says he and Fromme are Minutemen and are doing some of the monthly patrols at the border.

"We watched all these illegals rallying in our streets," says Fromme, adjusting his camouflage-colored cap. "This is the least we can do. I support these people 100 percent."

Sullenger adds, "We seen this invasion day and night."

Yep, Fromme says, "Day and night."

Gilchrist's followers are very loyal, looking to him as the leader and reveling in tales of his years spent in Vietnam as a Marine, and in their own Minutemen war stories.

Cindy Lou of Denton, Texas, says she lost her security guard job when her company moved to Mexico. She joined the Minutemen and was with Gilchrist during the first border patrol in April 2005.

Lou, all Texas twang, is on her third telling of the story of working the front-gate security detail at Miracle Valley Bible College, which was headquarters for the Minutemen during that patrol. Gilchrist was one of the good soldiers, working a night detail, which she can prove because she still has the security logs.

"He'd throw me a bullet-proof vest and say 'Put it on or get inside,'" she says. "I said, 'No, honey, I can't leave my post.' Bless his heart."

Then there was the night a "credible threat" came in and Gilchrist had just brought her a steak and shrimp dinner. He told her to eat it, as it might be her last meal.

"I would follow Jim into hell," Lou says, stopping to swallow the lump in her throat, "with a gallon of gasoline. Proudly."

As the rally's speeches go on, Moreno, 48, is approached by her fans. She signs books, listens to stories and bosses around her younger sister, Angie Morfin Vargas, 47, in Spanish. The sisters are dressed exactly alike and are asked several times to pose by the big Liberty Bell being pulled by a truck that's parked near the portable toilets.

"Thank you. God bless you," Moreno tells all who approach.

She gives one of the keynote speeches, telling the audience of her life as the daughter of a Mexican smuggler, marrying an undocumented Mexican, deciding to speak out against the Hispanic activists. Vargas, whose son was killed by an illegal immigrant, helps Moreno, and they say they have both been vilified by the other side.

"My sister called me one day and said, 'They called me a papier maché Latina.' I said, 'a fake Mexican?'" Moreno recalls. "Who the hell cares? You're an American!"

The crowd loves it, giving Moreno a standing ovation when she begins to cry and says that what she really wants to do is be home baking cookies for her grandchildren.

She finally comes off the stage and Gilchrist grabs her in a bear hug, the crowd still on its feet.

"I love you," Gilchrist says.

"I love you, too," Moreno says.

She sits down on her folding chair, wiping away the tears, and another reporter approaches, hoping to get Moreno for an exclusive interview later. The infowars.com reporter, Kevin Smith of Austin, returns, kneeling down at Moreno's side. He places his arm around her and pats her back.

"I thanked her for personalizing this story for us," Smith says, "for wearing her emotions on her sleeve."

Cowboys call for immigration compromise

2006-05-07T10:26:00.000-04:00

By PAULINE ARRILLAGA
AP NATIONAL WRITER

Saturday, May 6, 2006 · Last updated 9:22 a.m. PT

PALOMINAS, Ariz. -- Bud Strom knows darn well how outsiders have pegged ranchers like him, those whose land serves as America's front porch to illegal immigration.

When reporters flock in from their big-city offices, they want to know:

Is he packing heat? Can they get the pistol on camera? (Even if it's loaded with snake shot meant for vermin.) Then, when he answers "no" to the second question, they ask: Isn't he ticked off about all the "illegals" traipsing through his brush?

The answer to that one: Well, yes and no.

Along the same stretch of border where Strom raises cattle, father and son ranchers Jack and John Ladd have played host to politicians promising a get-tough approach to immigration. The Ladds show them piles of clothes and water jugs left on their land, the gaping holes slashed in their fences. But talk of a wall, or any so-called "enforcement-only" solution, is flat-out absurd, the ranchers say.

Then there's Paul Palmer. Feedlot operator. Died-in-the-wool Republican. A good Baptist. "Papa" to the grandson he keeps watch on while sorting cattle. And, oh yeah, he supposes "criminal" is fitting, too.

For years, Palmer employed illegal farmhands until their fear of working in a region swarming with Border Patrol agents drove them elsewhere. Now he'll preach to anyone who will listen about America's need to legalize its illegal work force.

"I'm conservative right down to the bone," he says, "but I think that sometimes we have to do the right thing."

These fellows don't just talk about illegal immigration, they live it by making their homes in the heart of the nation's busiest illegal crossing corridor, the mesas of southern Arizona. They own the land that gets trampled, feed their wives, kids and grandkids from the money they eke out of it. And they'll endure the repercussions of whatever Congress does or does not devise to rectify the problem.

They don't care for outright amnesty; the recent migrant marches make their stomachs turn.

They also don't want immigrants branded felons, rounded up and shipped out, and insist a sealed-off border isn't the answer either.

But they do have a message:

In a debate often argued in extremes - even here, in the land of militias and Minutemen - there's a middle ground to be found.

----

A few statistics about Cochise County, Ariz.

Residents: 117,755. Nonresidents caught crossing illegally since October: 52,885. Border Patrol agents who do the catching: 750.

Cowboy poets: At least one.

Strom is strolling from his horse corrals to his bunkhouse for some iced tea when suddenly he stops and launches into one of his favorite ditties in perfect baritone pitch. He calls it, "We're Doing Business Just the Same," a lament on the travails of a border rancher and certain events that occurred over a two-week period two years ago in June.

"Border Patrol came through,

"broke my gate down, too,

"as they cut my water lines.

"Said they'd fix it soon,

"by tomorrow noon.

"These delays take too much time. ...

"Illegals cut my fence,

"and it makes no sense,

"'cause there's gates they could go through.

"'Course my cows are hopin'

"that they find 'em open

"to parade Route 92."

Strom's ranch, the Single Star, is sandwiched between Mexico and state Route 92, a good two-hour drive southeast of Tucson. He figures hundreds of immigrants a week make the three-mile trek from the border to the highway, through his straw-tinted grasses, past the Simmentals nursing their calves, under the tower that operates four Border Patrol cameras.

At 74, Strom still struts with the commanding presence of a career Army man. (The ranch name alludes to his rank of brigadier general, retired.) He calls himself a moderate conservative - "I can't stand (Sen. Ted) Kennedy, and some of the Republicans I can't stand either." A bumper sticker inside his bunkhouse reads, "To Hell With the Whales, Save the Cowboy."

Strom takes a gulp of tea, then enumerates his inventory of immigration horror stories.

"I've run across 15 milk bottles ... half full of milk."

He stops, rises and disappears for a moment, returning with a tiny sandal, perhaps big enough for a 3-year-old. Its flowered embroidery is smudged with dirt. "I have this," he says, setting the lonely shoe down. "And then wedding pictures. Birth certificates."

His fences have been cut but also run over, usually by drug couriers fleeing U.S. authorities by heading back into Mexico.

He fears his cows will eat a plastic water bottle and tear up their insides; he's got one lying in agony at this very moment, sick from he doesn't know what. "She's blind. She's not eating."

All of this, Strom accepts, is what he signed up for when he signed on as a rancher on the Arizona-Mexico border 16 years ago. Illegal immigration isn't unlike his constant struggle with drought - sometimes eased but never ended.

Still, he wonders if this problem could be solved, if only the politicians would "stop bickering."

"I'm violently against amnesty, but I do think there's got to be a process worked out because the growers and the pickers in our country have got to have help," he says. "I would like very much to go down to Naco (Mexico) and get a team of workers who can legally come across ... and have them rebuild some of my adobe walls."

But walling-off the border, as the U.S. House proposes in its immigration bill, reminds him of Berlin during his Army days.

"No," says Strom, "I don't want that. ... It just doesn't seem like a very American thing to do."

---

"My wife's family initially settled this ranch in 1896."

Jack Ladd is rocking in a plush recliner next to the picture window that frames the San Jose Mountains a few miles south in Sonora, Mexico. He is 79, with hearing aids in both ears, a mild voice, gentle blue eyes. Each word is chosen carefully, because Ladd is nothing if not a thoughtful man. He spent years as director of labor relations for Phelps Dodge Mining Co. He knows a bit about compromise.

He holds a pile of papers - six 8 1/2-by-11 pages of single-spaced, neatly scribed reflections on illegal immigration and what might curb the problem and help bring some peace to his final years on the family cattle ranch.

He has titled this, "Jack Ladd Observations." It describes the three groups of 15-20 migrants he saw crossing his ranch in broad daylight not long ago. "I dread the flood of illegals that would result if amnesty was actually granted ..." he writes. But he also bemoans as "just for show" politicians' proposals for more walls, more lights, more agents. "They are not the answer," he says.

Nor is any absolute ban on the employment and presence of illegal workers in the United States, he says. "I don't believe this is realistic, possible or humane."

So Ladd's answer goes something like this:

1. Establish a system to register and identify illegal workers.

2. Provide such workers with counterfeit-proof IDs.

3. If employers need additional workers, put in an order with the immigration service, which could allow the required number in.

4. Expedite citizenship for those now waiting and allow illegal residents to apply, but consider them only after those already in line.

"That's dreaming, I'm sure," he concludes. "But that's the way it could work."

A dog barks, and John Ladd walks into the ranch house. He is the contrary yang to his dad's composed yin.

He uses the pejorative term "wetback," saying he refuses to be politically correct. Pro-migrant rallies incense him because he believes some Hispanics are looking to "take back" the Southwest.

Nevertheless, the 50-year-old son agrees with his father on the need for a worker program and a mechanism to expedite the citizenship process. "Anybody that doesn't believe we need workers coming in is an idiot," he says.

Though it pains him, he also agrees with Arizona's Democratic governor, Janet Napolitano, that walls and fences won't solve anything. The Ladd ranch has a wall, a few hundred feet of steel barricading a small slice of border. John calls it "ugly"; immigrants walk around it. He'd much prefer a shorter rail barrier that migrants could hop but that would keep his cattle penned in and Mexican cattle out.

"Show me a 50-foot wall," he says, "and I'll show you a 55-foot ladder."

---

Palmer never imagined that ranchers living at the border's edge might see things his way.

His property is 40 miles north, so the foot traffic, trash and cut fences are more sporadic than what Strom and the Ladds are used to. If the stream was nonstop, he'd be so mad he couldn't think straight. He felt like that years back when he put 27 splices in a half-mile of fence immigrants severed.

"I was about to shoot every one of 'em myself," he says.

He's since changed his tune - because Palmer doesn't just live with the effects of immigration, he needs immigrants to live.

He grows corn silage and alfalfa and runs a feed lot on 360 acres in Cochise County. He does this, nowadays, with the help of no one - save his wife, Ann, and his 3-year-old grandson, Colten, who on this morning is running to alert Grandma Ann that Papa Paul might need help getting cattle out of a pen.

"I can't get the kind of help I need without getting guys out of old Mexico," says Palmer, 52. "I keep hearing all this whining about these guys taking jobs, but I haven't had anyone come looking for work."

Anyone other than those Palmer calls "documentally challenged." He could use about three documentally challenged laborers. He's got fences and equipment needing maintenance, painting to be done. But the workers Palmer employed in the past have moved on because they feared being caught working so close to the border.

So Palmer talks to friends at church, folks at the chamber and fellow farmers about the need for a legal way to hire foreign workers.

Certainly, not everyone agrees with him. In Cochise County, home to the Minuteman Civil Defense Corp., some ranchers scout for illegal crossers with infrared goggles or hold immigrants at gunpoint until the Border Patrol shows up.

Resident Dave Stoddard, a retired Border Patrol agent, believes employers like Palmer don't want to pay what it takes to hire American workers. Those touting a guest-worker program "already have a supply of workers available if they would pay more, give better benefits and working conditions," he said in an e-mail.

Others, like rancher Ruth Evelyn Cowan, are skeptical the government could come up with a functioning worker system. Cowan sold half her cattle herd and moved full-time back to Phoenix last year after getting fed up with the immigration traffic and trash.

"I would like for the Mexican government to take care of their people and I would like the Mexican people to demonstrate against their own country," she says. "We have laws on the books. Enforce 'em. The end."

For Palmer, the center is a strange place to be.

"I'm a patriot, and I'm ready to whup anybody that means harm to this country. But we've got to look at this thing realistically," he says. "I'm not usually a middle-of-the-road guy. But surely there's something in the middle."

Fort Worth, TX- Minuteklan “Stop the Invasion” rally confronted by anti-racist activists

2006-05-07T09:36:00.000-04:00

Marchers want immigration crackdown

By JOHN GUTIERREZ-MIER
STAR-TELEGRAM STAFF WRITER

Posted on Sun, May. 07, 2006

SPECIAL to the star-telegram/RICHARD W. RODRIGUEZ

Dozens attend the "Stop the Invasion" rally Saturday in downtown Fort Worth. German native and Forest Hill resident Joachim Saupe, right, holds a sign that reads, "What part of illegal don't you understand?"

FORT WORTH – Waving American flags and chanting slogans, about 70 people turned out this morning to show their support for tough immigration reform.

Demonstrators first gathered near the intersection of Third and Commerce streets, then walked a few blocks to the old Tarrant County Courthouse.

Along the way, some motorists honked and gave participants a thumbs up in support, while a few others booed and made obscene gestures at the group.

Ira McKeon of Arlington said he was relieved that a demonstration by people who believe that stiff penalties be levied for those who enter the U.S. illegally, and employers who hire them, finally materialized.

“I wondered if anyone was ever going to put a demonstration together,” McKeon said. “I don’t mind immigrants coming over here. I just want them to do it legally.”

The rally dubbed “Stop the Invasion” remained relatively peaceful.

A group of about six people, who said they were part of the Anti-Racist Action Network, met them at the courthouse. Police, however, kept them on opposite sides of the street.

The two groups heckled one another for more than an hour.

One woman, Tory Cloud, of Austin, who is part of the Anti-Racist Action Network, a coalition of groups that opposes racism, sexism and homophobia, was issued a citation by police after she made an obscene gesture, a class C misdemeanor.

Cloud said she was there to counter what she says is discrimination against immigrants.

“Hate speech breeds hate crimes,” Cloud said. “There should be cultural awareness. People shouldn’t forget that this country was founded by immigrants.”

Demonstrators chanted several slogans during the two-hour rally. Among them, “Secure our borders and that’s an order!” “build a wall” and “no se puede,” or no you can’t. At recent marches by those who support lenient immigration reform, participants chanted “Si se Puede.” Or yes we can.

Lisa Perdue who organized the event said that she was encouraged by the people who turned out and predicts that those numbers will increase at future demonstrations.

“It’s a good response,” said Perdue, of Fort Worth. “Our attitude represents a huge majority of what people are feeling right now in the debate.”

The U.S. Senate is currently debating their version of immigration reform. In December, the U.S. House passed its version, legislation that would make illegal immigration a felony and calls for building a wall along much of the U.S./Mexico border.

Connie Daniel of White Settlement held the American flag upside down, a signal of distress.

“Our country is under attack,” she said as tears streamed down her face. “This is not about immigration, it’s about colonization. This country is being taken over by Hispanics and Muslims. It’s time we open our eyes.”

Demonstrators also gathered Saturday in Crawford near President Bush’s ranch. They were there to protest the president’s support of immigration legislation that includes a guest worker program and a path for citizenship for many of the estimated 11 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants already living in the United States.

John Gutierrez-Mier, (817) 390-7155
jmier@star-telegram.com

Phoenix, AZ- Sheriff Posse to Arrest Immigrants

2006-05-06T18:35:00.000-04:00

Sheriff Posse to Arrest Immigrants

By AMANDA LEE MYERS,

Associated Press Writer

PHOENIX - A posse of 100 volunteers and sheriff's
deputies will patrol the Phoenix area and arrest any
illegal immigrants, the county sheriff said.

The group likely will be deployed across parts of
Maricopa County by the weekend, Sheriff Joe Arpaio
said Wednesday.

Volunteers will be drawn from the department's
3,000-member posse, whose members are trained and are
often former deputies.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio

"It's important to send the message out to stay in
Mexico and don't come roaming around here hoping
you're going to get amnesty," said Arpaio, who in
years past gained notoriety for putting inmates on
chain gangs and issuing them striped uniforms and pink
underwear.

Arpaio's deputies have already arrested about 120
illegal immigrants using a new state smuggling law.

"We're going to arrest any illegal who violates this
new law," he said. "I'm not going to turn these people
over to federal authorities so they can have a free
ride back to Mexico. I'll give them a free ride into
the county jail."

Under the law — as interpreted by the Maricopa County
attorney — illegal immigrants can be arrested and
prosecuted for conspiracy to smuggle themselves into
the country. The law's authors have said they intended
it to be used to prosecute smugglers, not the
immigrants being smuggled.

Lawyers for nearly 50 undocumented immigrants charged
with conspiracy to commit human smuggling have filed
motions to have the charges dismissed.

A Los Angeles attorney brought into the case last week
by the Mexican Consul General's Office in Phoenix
plans to file another motion claiming Maricopa County
Attorney officials are violating state and federal law
because it's the federal government's job to control
illegal immigration.

Both motions are to be argued in county court on May 23.

Downtown Rockford, IL Blocked Off for Minutemen

2006-05-06T18:32:00.000-04:00

Downtown Rockford Blocked Off for Minutemen

Narina Crain

Controversy surrounding the minuteman project and recent immigration rallies have Rockford police preparing for a mob of angry people outside the Rockford Public Library Saturday.

Police will block off streets between Wyman and Church Street and from West State Street north to Jefferson.

"We're planning in the event they do show up to be able to handle and keep everyone safe. There won't be a breach of the peace or violation of any laws," says Deputy Chief Theo Glover.

Rockford police are surveying and mapping out the area around the Rockford Public Library. Deputy Chief Theo Glover says they're prepared for thousands of protesters.

"We've had information, nothing definite, but we will not be caught by surprise."

But representatives from two Hispanic groups, La Voz Latina and Alerta say they are not planning on publicly protesting.

"I don't think these people will deserve so much attention from us when we have other things to celebrate and unify our people," says Cristina Gloria.

The director of the Illinois minuteman project doesn't expect her group will be able to meet without opposition.

"The message is loud and clear. The American people need to sit down and shut up. That's what the other side is telling us," said Rosanna Pullido.

Deputy Chief Glover says police will not allow people to walk through the Mulberry Street area Saturday unless they have tickets to the meeting or are protesting. There is an exception; people will be allowed to go see the show at New American Theater.