Safer by the minute?
Minuteman 'safety' questioned

Published: June 21, 2005

Dulcinea Cuellar
The Monitor, McAllen

GOLIAD - Coyotes are known to take the back roads - tiny farm-to-market roads no one takes, isolated highways and small-town county roads.

"They are smart about it," Goliad rancher Elizardo "Charlie" Hernandez said of illegal immigrant smugglers who are paid more than $800 to shuttle people from Mexico. "They don't get caught."

More than 200 Texans from as far away as Houston and the Rio Grande Valley met in Goliad on Monday night to organize the first Minuteman Project in Texas, hoping to curb illegal alien activity like the type Hernandez sees on his property at least once a week.

The Minuteman Project, an activist organization that highlights illegal immigration and tries to stop it by reporting it to the U.S. Border Patrol, is forming chapters in Texas. The Goliad chapter was created Monday night and is the first one of its kind in the state. Other chapters are scheduled to follow in the Rio Grande Valley and West Texas.

The Minuteman gained notoriety in April when it staged a month-long illegal alien watch in Arizona, "ground zero" for human trafficking, according to the group. The group also favors militarizing the border.

The group has rankled civil rights organizations including the American Civil Liberties Union and the South Texas Civil Rights project.

Abner Burnett, the director of the South Texas Civil Rights Project in San Juan, called the Minuteman "vigilantes" and "xenophobes."

Burnett also called the Minuteman a militia with armed volunteers patrolling the border where they intimidate immigrants. However, farmers and other residents call the Minuteman group a "Godsend," hoping the group will be able to curb illegals from trespassing on their property and damaging their land.

Mike Vickers, a Falfurrias-area veterinarian, said the Minuteman have promised to help curb illegal immigrant crossings on his land.

"Every night there are 50 to 100 illegal," crossing his land, he said. "It's a problem all over South Texas and the Border Patrol can't get a hold of it. (Illegals) destroy property and break into homes, something needs to be done; the problem's getting worse."

Vickers, who will probably spearhead the Rio Grande Valley chapter, said he turned to the all-volunteer organization because the government wasn't helping him.

"It's always been a problem, but it seems like since 9/11 the problem keeps getting worse," he said. "A lot of (illegals who come across) are sick and have diseases, they take animals' water and break into homes."

Juanita Valdez-Cox, regional manager of the United Farmer Workers Union in San Juan, said the Minuteman forming in the Valley is not the answer to the widespread immigration problem.

"The Minuteman - that's just going to create more problems," Valdez-Cox said. "What laws can they enforce? You have to work through the process, (state) reps. President Bush." More than 200 immigrants died last year trying to cross the border, she explained. Activist groups such as the Minuteman should concentrate on saving those people.

"Immigrants are dying as they cross and people are upset because they are taking jobs. the farmer is crying," she said. "Yet our laws are not changing - it's not the Minuteman that are going to change that. It has to be immigrant reform status at the top with representatives, senators and the president."

Chris Simcox, co-founder of the Minuteman Project, told the group in Goliad that the organization is ultimately about saving lives and stopping the illegal trafficking of human beings.

"What we have now is a slave trade," Simcox told the group. "Only we have a politically correct term for it called, 'indentured servitude.'"

Simcox said he's tired of seeing people die trying to cross the border illegally.

"I'm tired of seeing people packed in trunks, the back of vans, chased on roads, children dying in the desert and women being raped," he said. "We need to stop the human smuggling trade and shut down an immoral industry - that's the American way."

San Juan farmer Fred Schuster said he believes in the Minuteman organization.

"We don't go down to the river anymore," he said of his 2,000-acre vegetable farm, which partly overlooks the Rio Grande. "It's sad, really. The illegals, the drug trade. they don't seem too concerned with getting caught."

According to the Border Patrol, the Falfurrias checkpoint detained 119,233 immigrants so far this year alone, and not all of them are from Mexico. Some are from Brazil and other parts of Latin America. Border Patrol officials in McAllen could not comment specifically about the Minuteman Project.

Simcox said the Mexican border is so porous, it's can be very easy for a terrorist to sneak in.

"Right now we have a president who has gone AWOL from serving our nation," he said. "He is derelict in his duty when it comes to protecting our nation and our way of life."

Ben Johnson, director of the Immigration Policy Center a think-tank in Washington, D.C., said name-calling isn't the best way to create reform.

"The bottom line is militarizing the border is having the National Guard on the border is not going to solve the problem," he said. "You can't build a fence tall enough to keep illegals out."

Enforcement is only part of solving the rabid immigration problem facing the United States, he said.

"We need a comprehensive immigration reform plan that encourages immigrants to go though the front door instead of the back," he said. "We need to understand why they are coming, what they want and why immigration happens."

Of the eight to 12 million illegal immigrants who enter the United States every year, about 60 percent are from Mexico, he said.

"To have these guys on the border with guns - the border is dangerous enough," Johnson said. "If they aren't careful, someone's going to get shot."