In Ariz., 'Minutemen' Start Border Patrols
Volunteers Crusade to Stop Illegal Crossings
By Amy Argetsinger
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 5, 2005; Page A03
BISBEE, Ariz., April 4 -- Penny Magnotto and Gayle Nyberg stood at their post on a forbidding stretch of desert road, staring down the seven strands of barbed wire separating them from Mexico.
The Southern California women had risen at dawn in their makeshift quarters at a nearly defunct Bible college to join scores of other volunteers from around the country on the first official day of a highly symbolic crusade. Their mission: to monitor the flow of illegal immigrants crossing into the United States and to do their legal best to stop it. So they stood ready -- binoculars, walkie-talkie, sunblock, water -- and gazed at the motionless landscape of sand and brush.
"If we see any immigrants, we'll first radio someone, and then call Border Patrol," said Nyberg, 56, in a camouflage jacket.
"We can ask them if they'll wait," explained Magnotto, 61, in a red, white and blue windbreaker, "but we can't touch them."
But had they seen anyone on this stretch of border, the illegal entry point for hundreds of thousands of immigrants a year?
Well, no, they said. Not yet.
With the start of the Minuteman Project -- a combination "civilian patrol" and immigration protest -- officials with the U.S. Border Patrol were reporting a sharp drop in the number of illegal crossers apprehended along a stretch of border said to be the most porous in the nation.
Organizers of the effort -- decried by President Bush as "vigilante" activity and by Mexican President Vicente Fox as an "immigrant hunter" -- claimed an early victory. "We've completely locked down the border," said Larry Morgan, a volunteer from Long Beach, Calif. Sightings of 24 potential crossers were reported to authorities, Minuteman organizers said.
But border officials and others said the decrease probably had less to do with Minuteman vigilance than a military patrolling effort on the Mexican side of the border -- not to mention the boisterous protesters, counter-protesters and satellite-equipped TV trucks gathered on the usually desolate dirt road between Douglas and Naco, Ariz.
"Migrants aren't crossing here, that's the effect," said Scott Kerr, 29, a worker with Christian Peacemaker Teams, a relief group that leaves water and food for immigrants trying to cross the treacherous, dry terrain. "Some days we'll encounter hundreds. Today we didn't see any."
The full impact of the Minuteman Project remained elusive Monday. Organizers said more than 400 people had arrived over the weekend for orientation sessions and rallies, the first wave of the 1,300 volunteers they expect to participate in some part of the month-long desert vigil.
Thus far, there were no immediate signs of the white supremacist gangs or other troublemaking groups that local officials feared would be drawn by the event, and no reports of clashes or violations.
But the event also seemed much smaller than advertised. Organizers had promised to place teams of monitors at quarter-mile or half-mile intervals along a 23-mile length of border. But by midmorning Monday, all of the visible activity was clustered around a two-mile stretch, where a dozen or so teams were stationed. Organizers said others were as far as three miles back from the border or stationed in canyons, away from the dirt road.
Even as they gazed out at the border with binoculars, many of the Minutemen acknowledged that making a point was their true purpose.
"I'm a right-wing conservative Bush supporter, and I think Bush is wrong on immigration," Morgan said, citing the president's support of a guest-worker program that would allow more Mexicans to work legally in the United States on a temporary basis.
Morgan, 60, a general contractor, stood on a hillside with two other men, monitoring the barbed-wire fence and sharing grievances about border crossers. They complained about provisions in some states to issue driver's licenses or in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants. Darrel Wood, 44, a fiber-optics engineer, said eight of the 10 most-wanted criminals in his home state of Utah are illegal immigrants; Morgan blamed them for prison overcrowding and California's fiscal crisis.
"It's affecting my children at school," Wood said. "They're suffering, trying to get these immigrant kids up to speed."
In the five days since Minuteman volunteers began arriving, the Border Patrol had apprehended far fewer immigrants than usual -- about 100 a day, down from the usual 300, said Andy Adame, a Tucson-based spokesman for the federal agency.
But Adame said he believed the decrease was linked to an operation by Mexican officials on the other side of the border. "We don't attribute that to the civilians patrolling the desert," he said. Minuteman organizers said they have directed their volunteers to call Border Patrol if they spot suspicious activity, rather than confronting the people themselves. Adame said he could not say how many calls they had received from Minutemen, if any; he said there had been no rise in the overall number of calls they receive from citizens.
Adame also reiterated the Border Patrol's objections to the program, noting that the volunteers were setting off sensors placed along the border and blurring the footprints agents often follow in search of illegal immigrants.
"They're tromping all over the place making our job a little more difficult," he said. "It's not a major crisis, but it is detrimental to our operations."
Officials with the Cochise County Sheriff's Department reported no incidents connected to the Minuteman effort. There were, however, anecdotal accounts of testy exchanges between the Minutemen and representatives of the various organizations that oppose the program.
Kathryn Ferguson, a Tucson documentary filmmaker who volunteered as a "legal observer" with the Arizona chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, reported encounters with "a lot of verbally aggressive people" who called her a terrorist or communist.
She said that one of her colleagues -- a woman with a dark complexion -- approached a team to pet a dog and was told by its owner, "My dog's trained to keep people like you off my land." But she said other Minutemen were pleasant, chatting about how they had never been involved in a protest before or how much they enjoyed the desert.
Morgan scoffed at the suggestion that his crowd of fellow border-watchers harbored any malcontents. "This is a cross section of America, and I love being with them," he said. In the meantime, though, he wished things would liven up a bit.
"I'd like to see some more movement," he said. He was eager to put the night-vision goggles to work and had volunteered to fly a plane for aerial surveillance.
Paul Johnson, 60, a native of Jamestown, N.Y., with a sheathed knife on his belt, recalled the ominous sight the team spotted on Saturday, its first trip to the barbed-wire frontier.
"We saw 15 ready to cross the border, all dressed in black," he said. "They saw us and just stood there for an hour." He said they were later escorted away by a relief group and driven back into Mexico.
Morgan nodded. "They'll just make an attempt later on."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26339-2005Apr4?language=printer
Volunteers Crusade to Stop Illegal Crossings
By Amy Argetsinger
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 5, 2005; Page A03
BISBEE, Ariz., April 4 -- Penny Magnotto and Gayle Nyberg stood at their post on a forbidding stretch of desert road, staring down the seven strands of barbed wire separating them from Mexico.
The Southern California women had risen at dawn in their makeshift quarters at a nearly defunct Bible college to join scores of other volunteers from around the country on the first official day of a highly symbolic crusade. Their mission: to monitor the flow of illegal immigrants crossing into the United States and to do their legal best to stop it. So they stood ready -- binoculars, walkie-talkie, sunblock, water -- and gazed at the motionless landscape of sand and brush.
"If we see any immigrants, we'll first radio someone, and then call Border Patrol," said Nyberg, 56, in a camouflage jacket.
"We can ask them if they'll wait," explained Magnotto, 61, in a red, white and blue windbreaker, "but we can't touch them."
But had they seen anyone on this stretch of border, the illegal entry point for hundreds of thousands of immigrants a year?
Well, no, they said. Not yet.
With the start of the Minuteman Project -- a combination "civilian patrol" and immigration protest -- officials with the U.S. Border Patrol were reporting a sharp drop in the number of illegal crossers apprehended along a stretch of border said to be the most porous in the nation.
Organizers of the effort -- decried by President Bush as "vigilante" activity and by Mexican President Vicente Fox as an "immigrant hunter" -- claimed an early victory. "We've completely locked down the border," said Larry Morgan, a volunteer from Long Beach, Calif. Sightings of 24 potential crossers were reported to authorities, Minuteman organizers said.
But border officials and others said the decrease probably had less to do with Minuteman vigilance than a military patrolling effort on the Mexican side of the border -- not to mention the boisterous protesters, counter-protesters and satellite-equipped TV trucks gathered on the usually desolate dirt road between Douglas and Naco, Ariz.
"Migrants aren't crossing here, that's the effect," said Scott Kerr, 29, a worker with Christian Peacemaker Teams, a relief group that leaves water and food for immigrants trying to cross the treacherous, dry terrain. "Some days we'll encounter hundreds. Today we didn't see any."
The full impact of the Minuteman Project remained elusive Monday. Organizers said more than 400 people had arrived over the weekend for orientation sessions and rallies, the first wave of the 1,300 volunteers they expect to participate in some part of the month-long desert vigil.
Thus far, there were no immediate signs of the white supremacist gangs or other troublemaking groups that local officials feared would be drawn by the event, and no reports of clashes or violations.
But the event also seemed much smaller than advertised. Organizers had promised to place teams of monitors at quarter-mile or half-mile intervals along a 23-mile length of border. But by midmorning Monday, all of the visible activity was clustered around a two-mile stretch, where a dozen or so teams were stationed. Organizers said others were as far as three miles back from the border or stationed in canyons, away from the dirt road.
Even as they gazed out at the border with binoculars, many of the Minutemen acknowledged that making a point was their true purpose.
"I'm a right-wing conservative Bush supporter, and I think Bush is wrong on immigration," Morgan said, citing the president's support of a guest-worker program that would allow more Mexicans to work legally in the United States on a temporary basis.
Morgan, 60, a general contractor, stood on a hillside with two other men, monitoring the barbed-wire fence and sharing grievances about border crossers. They complained about provisions in some states to issue driver's licenses or in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants. Darrel Wood, 44, a fiber-optics engineer, said eight of the 10 most-wanted criminals in his home state of Utah are illegal immigrants; Morgan blamed them for prison overcrowding and California's fiscal crisis.
"It's affecting my children at school," Wood said. "They're suffering, trying to get these immigrant kids up to speed."
In the five days since Minuteman volunteers began arriving, the Border Patrol had apprehended far fewer immigrants than usual -- about 100 a day, down from the usual 300, said Andy Adame, a Tucson-based spokesman for the federal agency.
But Adame said he believed the decrease was linked to an operation by Mexican officials on the other side of the border. "We don't attribute that to the civilians patrolling the desert," he said. Minuteman organizers said they have directed their volunteers to call Border Patrol if they spot suspicious activity, rather than confronting the people themselves. Adame said he could not say how many calls they had received from Minutemen, if any; he said there had been no rise in the overall number of calls they receive from citizens.
Adame also reiterated the Border Patrol's objections to the program, noting that the volunteers were setting off sensors placed along the border and blurring the footprints agents often follow in search of illegal immigrants.
"They're tromping all over the place making our job a little more difficult," he said. "It's not a major crisis, but it is detrimental to our operations."
Officials with the Cochise County Sheriff's Department reported no incidents connected to the Minuteman effort. There were, however, anecdotal accounts of testy exchanges between the Minutemen and representatives of the various organizations that oppose the program.
Kathryn Ferguson, a Tucson documentary filmmaker who volunteered as a "legal observer" with the Arizona chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, reported encounters with "a lot of verbally aggressive people" who called her a terrorist or communist.
She said that one of her colleagues -- a woman with a dark complexion -- approached a team to pet a dog and was told by its owner, "My dog's trained to keep people like you off my land." But she said other Minutemen were pleasant, chatting about how they had never been involved in a protest before or how much they enjoyed the desert.
Morgan scoffed at the suggestion that his crowd of fellow border-watchers harbored any malcontents. "This is a cross section of America, and I love being with them," he said. In the meantime, though, he wished things would liven up a bit.
"I'd like to see some more movement," he said. He was eager to put the night-vision goggles to work and had volunteered to fly a plane for aerial surveillance.
Paul Johnson, 60, a native of Jamestown, N.Y., with a sheathed knife on his belt, recalled the ominous sight the team spotted on Saturday, its first trip to the barbed-wire frontier.
"We saw 15 ready to cross the border, all dressed in black," he said. "They saw us and just stood there for an hour." He said they were later escorted away by a relief group and driven back into Mexico.
Morgan nodded. "They'll just make an attempt later on."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A26339-2005Apr4?language=printer