Minuteman to expand
GDO Report
Border watchers say they'll target five more states .
The Minuteman Project will expand its border watch efforts from Arizona to include California, New Mexico, Texas, Michigan and Idaho, said organizers Chris Simcox and James Gilchrist at a press conference held in Tombstone Monday. Citizens there have begun organizing their own Minuteman spinoffs, Simcox said.
Gilchrist will also begin organizing the group's efforts to take the Minuteman Project to the nation's interior, going after the businesses that employ illegal border crossers and stepping up efforts to lobby Congress to put the National Guard or the U.S. military on the border.
Meanwhile, immigrants' rights advocates are threatening a boycott of Arizona businesses because of what they call "hate groups on the border and in the state Capitol."
The first target of the boycott would be the Arizona Cardinals football team, which is slated to play a National Football League game in Mexico in October, said Salvador Reza of Tonatierra, a human rights group in Phoenix.
"Take somebody else," Reza said they will tell the NFL. "Take the Dallas Cowboys. Take the Washington Redskins."
Members of Tonatierra and about 10 other groups from Arizona, California and Mexico are protesting Arizona state lawmakers' support of the volunteer border patrol and bills that would restrict immigrants' access to services.
Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, laughed when he heard about the threat to the Cardinals.
"The truth is, it's all a game," Pearce said. "These are people who are pro-illegal. You have to secure our borders. They would ignore all the damage to America. The shame is on them."
Pearce, House appropriations chairman, was involved in the drafting of Proposition 200, approved by Arizona voters in November to restrict illegal immigrants' access to state-funded public services.
Simcox said he was unaware of the protest or threatened boycott, but said the protesters have a First Amendment right to state their position.
Reza said the proposed boycott potentially involves thousands of people in cities nationwide, because the issues at stake affect Latinos and other immigrants.
Cathy Rion, 28, a member of Heads Up Collective in San Francisco, was among a group that traveled to the Arizona Capitol by car and plane from California to promote the protest. Travel expenses were paid by donations to the California coalition Deporten a la Migra, which translates as "Deport Immigration and Customs Enforcement." The group was formed to fight immigration raids in San Francisco, Rion said.
Human rights groups in Arizona, immigrant workers and families as well as groups throughout the country are holding meetings to decide whether to boycott Arizona, said Alexis Mazón, a volunteer in Tucson for Defeat 200, an effort that campaigned against Proposition 200. The decision will depend on what the Legislature does, she said.
On the other front, Simcox said he and Gilchrist will step up their efforts to lobby the U.S. Congress next week when they travel to Washington for an April 27 meeting with members of the congressional Immigration Reform Caucus.
Simcox said they will tell the caucus members that the Minuteman patrols will continue indefinitely until Congress commits to funding the deployment of the National Guard or military along the border.
"This is a no-compromise situation. We will not discontinue patrolling the border until the Congress funds and clears the way for the National Guard, and/or specially trained military troops, to follow our model that we've created," Simcox said. "We have the people of the United States behind us in overwhelming numbers."
Simcox said the first two weeks of the monthlong Arizona Minuteman Project have been a resounding success, exceeding expectations, choking off illegal entries along the 23-mile stretch of border in Cochise County where project volunteers have focused their efforts since April 1.
He said the project has attracted worldwide attention and sent a strong message to Congress that Americans have the will to force the government to do its job of protecting the nation's borders.
It has also brought a flood of more than 10,000 new volunteers that will allow the project to expand farther and faster than planned, Simcox said.
There was no way to independently verify his claim.
"We've proven that the border can be secured by using a different model than the Border Patrol has been using in the past," said Simcox.
But Andy Adame, a spokesman for the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector, said the Minuteman project has been more of a detriment than a help on the border. Valuable resources were diverted, he said, as agents responded to more than 150 sensor activations caused by Minuteman volunteers "wandering around the desert in search of undocumented aliens."
He said while apprehensions in the Naco and Douglas areas are down since March 31, the reason is most likely the result of increased patrolling by the Mexican military south of the border. Sectorwide, he said apprehensions are up slightly over last year at this time.
Adame said the prospect of dealing with the Minuteman presence on an ongoing basis would have a negative effect on Border Patrol operations. It is also a potentially dangerous situation, he said, for the armed and untrained civilian volunteers who put themselves in an environment that includes armed drug smugglers and ruthless people-traffickers.
"We still believe this is a very dangerous way to make a political statement," Adame said.
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