Kenneth Brown
Captain
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2003
- Messages
- 3,481
Border Agents Back 'Minutemen' <br />6:35 pm PST, 20 April 2005 <br /><br />By Jon E. Dougherty<br /><br />[7AM] -- Despite complaints from immigrant rights groups, as well as local and national officials about the actions of civilian volunteers patrolling a section of Arizona-Mexico border, a number of agents with the U.S. Border Patrol who have interacted with them say they are helping deter illegal crossings and smuggling.<br /><br />The volunteers, who are associated with an operation dubbed the "Minuteman Project," set up camp near Naco, Ariz. April 1, with the intent of patrolling sections of U.S. border for 30 days. Event organizers James Gilchrist and Chris Simcox said their volunteers, armed mostly with binoculars and radios, don't interdict illegals themselves. Instead, they call Border Patrol agents when they encounter undocumented migrants crossing into the U.S. from Mexico to report the migrants' location.<br /><br />Gilchrist and Cox say the sole objective of their effort is to deter illegal crossings. But critics say their group is comprised of individuals who are behaving more as vigilantes and have put migrants in danger because some volunteers are carrying firearms.<br /><br />The American Civil Liberties Union's Immigrants' Rights Project, which has sent monitors to Arizona to keep watch over the Minuteman volunteers, says there have been "growing reports" migrants are being abused and mistreated. The civil rights group also alleged, in a statement, that "private citizens near the Arizona border are engaging in illegal treatment of immigrants."<br /><br />"The Minuteman project has created a powder-keg situation with the potential to go beyond harassment and false imprisonment to real violence," Eleanor Eisenberg, Executive Director of the ACLU of Arizona, said. "We hope that our observer project will continue to shed light on the activities of the Minutemen and will ensure that private citizens do not detain, harass or humiliate others in violation of the law."<br /><br />But volunteers say no such abuses have occurred. And as for Border Patrol agents in the area, many say the volunteers are well-behaved, helpful assets.<br /><br />"You know it is only the brass and D.C. that feel the Minutemen are not wanted," one agent said, speaking on condition of anonymity. "I reached out with a lot of the line agents and they all love them."<br /><br />A second agent, also speaking on anonymity, who said he is one of the 534 agents the Border Patrol reassigned to the Arizona border in March, also says he and colleagues approve of the civilians and support their effort. <br /><br />"The on the line, most of us, are Americans who want to secure the sovereignty of the United States, our language and culture," the agent said. ". . . Border Patrol Agents may work for the U.S. government, but we are Americans first, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and friends, members of the community...then we are citizens of the United States, then we are Federal employees.<br /><br />This agent also said the biggest discrepancy between the patrol and the Minutemen is coming from management. <br /><br />"The only conflict between the Minutemen and the Border Patrol is with the Border Patrol management, which is really a clash with the status quo," said the agent. "The Republicans want slave labor and the Democrats want welfare recipients."<br /><br />Additionally, Border Patrol Union Local 2544, which represents the Tucson area, officially sanctioned the deployment of the group, saying in a statement published on its Web site its personnel "have not had one single complaint" about Minutemen volunteers.<br /><br />"Every report we've received indicates these people are very supportive of the rank-and-file agents, they're courteous, many of them are retired firefighters, cops, and other professionals, and they're not causing us any problems whatsoever," said the union.<br /><br />But criticism of the volunteer effort has gone as high as the Oval Office, with President Bush even criticizing the operation in March, calling the Minutemen "vigilantes."<br /><br />"I'm against vigilantes in the United States of America," Bush said at a joint press conference with Mexican President Vicente Fox and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. "I'm for enforcing the law in a rational way."<br /><br />(c) 2005 7am.com.
)<br /> What's even crazier is that the European Court of Human Rights has just declared that not allowing Romanian "gypsies" into this country is racist and forced us to take more of them.<br /><br />You couldn't make it up.