Tombstone gang guards US border
Chris Ayres, Los Angeles
April 02, 2005
THEY were gathering yesterday, more than 1000 in total, at the Tombstone Tumbleweed newspaper office on Toughnut street, in a parched corner of the Arizona desert. After being given an "orientation lecture", the armed men were to move south, towards the Mexican border.
George W. Bush calls them vigilantes. Vicente Fox, the Mexican President, says they are breaking international law. Civil rights campaigners claim they are supported by white supremacist and other hate organisations.
But the leaders of the so-called Minuteman Project describe themselves as US patriots who can no longer tolerate the number of illegal immigrants, including gang members and drug traffickers, who are smuggling themselves over the US border every day.
And so, for April, the Minutemen, including at least 40 pilots and 16 private aircraft, will patrol the border all day and all night, reporting illegal immigrants to the federal agents via radio.
"If anyone has trouble grasping what our objective is, just think of us as a neighbourhood watch group. We are looking for illegal crossings by aliens. When we spot them, we will report them to the proper authorities," James Gilchrist, the head of the Minutemen Project, said in an interview with a website called V-Dare (named after Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World). He added that the "tentative area of observation" would be a 30km stretch of lowland across San Pedro Valley in southeast Arizona.
"We will not be confrontational with anyone," he said. He added, however, that "each volunteer will be solely accountable for his or her actions".
Mr Gilchrist says his 1000 supporters include Native Americans and American Mexicans. The US Border Patrol caught about 1260 people a day last year trying to enter the US illegally along a single 420km stretch of the Arizona border, known to federal agents as "the Tucson sector".
Many Americans argue that such numbers would have been inconceivable in the 1980s. Last month, US Customs officials discovered a 180m tunnel running from a Mexican home, under two streets and an apartment block, into another home in California.
Cheap Mexican labour continues to put Americans out of work, while the cost of providing untaxed immigrants with medical care and other government services is rising.
Inexpensive Mexican labour has also helped US companies compete with overseas rivals and many Americans now take for granted the services provided by illegal untaxed immigrants.
Politicians, meanwhile, are keen to avoid upsetting the influential Hispanic vote.
The Minutemen have already claimed a limited victory after the Bush administration said it would deploy more than 500 extra border patrol agents to Arizona, boosting the total number to 3000. The Government is also using unmanned drones, similar to those deployed in Iraq, to monitor the border.
Not since the days of the Gunfight at the OK Corral has Tombstone seen such civil unrest. The town (population 1504) was the location of the legendary showdown between the City Marshall Wyatt Earp, his friend Doc Holliday and a group of cowboys.
The Minutemen's website advises volunteers that "the main opposition to anything we do here will come out of Tucson", in Arizona. It goes on to say: "We have about 30,000 Hispanics, mostly Mexican-American, with most of them concentrated in the town of Douglas."
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12725341%5E29677,00.html
Chris Ayres, Los Angeles
April 02, 2005
THEY were gathering yesterday, more than 1000 in total, at the Tombstone Tumbleweed newspaper office on Toughnut street, in a parched corner of the Arizona desert. After being given an "orientation lecture", the armed men were to move south, towards the Mexican border.
George W. Bush calls them vigilantes. Vicente Fox, the Mexican President, says they are breaking international law. Civil rights campaigners claim they are supported by white supremacist and other hate organisations.
But the leaders of the so-called Minuteman Project describe themselves as US patriots who can no longer tolerate the number of illegal immigrants, including gang members and drug traffickers, who are smuggling themselves over the US border every day.
And so, for April, the Minutemen, including at least 40 pilots and 16 private aircraft, will patrol the border all day and all night, reporting illegal immigrants to the federal agents via radio.
"If anyone has trouble grasping what our objective is, just think of us as a neighbourhood watch group. We are looking for illegal crossings by aliens. When we spot them, we will report them to the proper authorities," James Gilchrist, the head of the Minutemen Project, said in an interview with a website called V-Dare (named after Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World). He added that the "tentative area of observation" would be a 30km stretch of lowland across San Pedro Valley in southeast Arizona.
"We will not be confrontational with anyone," he said. He added, however, that "each volunteer will be solely accountable for his or her actions".
Mr Gilchrist says his 1000 supporters include Native Americans and American Mexicans. The US Border Patrol caught about 1260 people a day last year trying to enter the US illegally along a single 420km stretch of the Arizona border, known to federal agents as "the Tucson sector".
Many Americans argue that such numbers would have been inconceivable in the 1980s. Last month, US Customs officials discovered a 180m tunnel running from a Mexican home, under two streets and an apartment block, into another home in California.
Cheap Mexican labour continues to put Americans out of work, while the cost of providing untaxed immigrants with medical care and other government services is rising.
Inexpensive Mexican labour has also helped US companies compete with overseas rivals and many Americans now take for granted the services provided by illegal untaxed immigrants.
Politicians, meanwhile, are keen to avoid upsetting the influential Hispanic vote.
The Minutemen have already claimed a limited victory after the Bush administration said it would deploy more than 500 extra border patrol agents to Arizona, boosting the total number to 3000. The Government is also using unmanned drones, similar to those deployed in Iraq, to monitor the border.
Not since the days of the Gunfight at the OK Corral has Tombstone seen such civil unrest. The town (population 1504) was the location of the legendary showdown between the City Marshall Wyatt Earp, his friend Doc Holliday and a group of cowboys.
The Minutemen's website advises volunteers that "the main opposition to anything we do here will come out of Tucson", in Arizona. It goes on to say: "We have about 30,000 Hispanics, mostly Mexican-American, with most of them concentrated in the town of Douglas."
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,12725341%5E29677,00.html