From Denting the Dilemma
You hear them before you see them -- shoes scraping on the pebbly Arizona desert floor. Then two figures loom into view, shadows among the creosote and cholla. Others follow. They enter the dirt roadway just a few feet from the patrol's post. When the figures are halfway across, the waiting men turn on their powerful lights, and the night bursts to life.There are 30 migrants in all, and most of them rush north, blinded, past the sentinels. But six -- five young men and a woman -- stop where they are. This is their fourth night in the desert, and they have given up the fight.
The men holding flashlights are members of a controversial civilian border-watch group called the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC). Tonight, 20 miles southwest of Tucson, 15 of them have set up a military-style line along a road known to be traversed by migrants coming into the United States from Mexico. It is October 2005, and similar Minutemen teams are working at locations from California to Texas. Their goal is to intercept undocumented migrants, report them to government officials, and make a dent in the country's growing illegal immigration problem.
The number of "unauthorized migrants" living in the United States, according to a 2005 Pew Hispanic Center report, is approaching 11 million, with an estimated 700,000 entering every year, mostly across the Mexican border. A 2004 report by the Center for Immigration Studies estimates that schools, hospitals and other social services used by illegal aliens cost the federal government $10.4 billion annually.
This research does not measure the cost to local and state economies, or take into account the larger economic impact, both positive and negative, of the illegal work force -- from its effect on wages and the price of goods, to the creation of a booming new market of consumers. Many industries rely on undocumented workers to perform menial or dangerous labor for extremely low wages. And ordinary citizens hire them for domestic jobs -- caring for their homes and, often, their children.
Ordinary Joes
The Minutemen are, by and large, ordinary Joes: businessmen, electricians, draftsmen. Many are ex-military; most are over 40, dressed in jeans and cowboy hats, jackets and gloves. In the dark, they sit on lawn chairs, trying to stay warm and awake. Those who can afford it hold night-vision equipment on their laps. Almost all of them bear sidearms in holsters.The MCDC was founded by 45-year-old Chris Simcox, a former kindergarten teacher who left Los Angeles after 9/11, fearing it would be the next terrorist target, and moved to Tombstone in southern Arizona. There, he decided that U.S. patrol agents weren't doing nearly enough to secure the Mexican border, and that it was going to be up to citizens to do the job themselves or to shame the government into taking the problem seriously.
The youthful, athletic Simcox says his issue is not so much with illegal laborers. He says he's more concerned with all the other stuff that's coming across the border: drugs, criminals and, potentially, terrorists. "If the U.S. government can't stop poor Mexican women carrying babies," Simcox says, "it doesn't give me much confidence that they can stop well-funded, resourceful terrorists."
Last year, the Border Patrol apprehended some 1.2 million undocumented migrants and confiscated more than 1.2 million pounds of drugs. And in January, agents discovered a half-mile-long tunnel, the suspected work of an organized drug-smuggling group, that connected a warehouse in Tijuana with one near San Diego.
Darryl E. Griffen, the Border Patrol's San Diego Sector chief, points out that as drug- and human-trafficking cartels become more sophisticated, the likelihood that they'd be willing to move terrorists and their weapons across the border grows. "One avenue of approach for those wishing to do harm to this country would be across that Southwest border," he says. "This is on our minds every day." The number of arrests of illegal immigrants from countries "other than Mexico" was 155,000 in the last fiscal year (649 from countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen), more than quadruple the number from 2002.
A Scary History
Back in the desert outside Tucson, two-way radios crackle as the Minutemen relay information to their communication center, where calls will go out to the Border Patrol. Members of the group speculate that the six who surrendered might be a sacrifice group. Human smugglers -- who charge anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000 per person -- have earned their nickname: coyotes. Minutemen speak of them with alternating admiration and disgust. Coyotes know every inch of this terrain, can lead a group along imperceptible trails on the blackest of nights, yet are said to rob their clients, to rape the women, to abandon them in the desert. The six now sitting slumped in the roadway either are completely spent from four nights of desert travel or were ordered by the coyote to surrender so the rest of the group could escape -- or both.One of the migrants looks toward the blinding lights. "Agua," he says. "Por favor. Agua."
None of the Minutemen have said a word to the Mexicans. No guns have been drawn, and there has been no physical contact. Then a Minuteman steps forward and sets a bottle of water down. "Gracias," the young man says. There is no response.
Simcox insists that his group, which claims to have recruited 4,000 supporters, is not a militia. He also eschews the vigilante label, pointing out that a vigilante is someone who takes the law into his own hands. "We simply observe and report," he says. "We're the world's biggest neighborhood watch."
But according to a 2005 report by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors hate groups and extremists, in its early days the MCDC was more hands-on. The group was originally called Civil Homeland Defense and referred to itself with such descriptors as vigilante and militia, according to the report. Simcox apparently once boasted that his group had captured a total of 5,000 Latino migrants. Mark Potok, a staff director with SPLC, insists that MCDC follows in the tradition of other, more violent and racist civilian border patrols -- including the Ku Klux Klan. "This is the latest outgrowth of a long history of American vigilantism," Potok says, "and it's a scary history."
Simcox bristles at such accusations, arguing that he was the perfect person to start the MCDC because, he says, "I'm squeaky clean." He points out that he was once married to a black woman, is the father of a biracial son, and was the head of the diversity committee at the California school where he taught. Furthermore, Simcox says, potential MCDC members must pay $50 to cover background screenings for membership in racist organizations -- and any Minuteman spouting racist rhetoric is sent home from patrols. "This is the last place those people want to be," he says, "because that's not our message."
Beliefs on the Border
The MCDC does not disclose its member count, but human-rights organizations say the number of Minutemen participants is consistently lower than the group anticipates, and that not more than a couple hundred people showed up for last October's event.Those who participate in MCDC's patrols come from all over the country, and for all sorts of reasons. Nelson Moeller of Reading, Pennsylvania, said that he was motivated to join last fall after seeing a photo of a young Mexican girl who had died in the desert trying to enter the United States. A 70-year-old Marine Corps veteran named Dave Jones saw his participation with the Minutemen as his final call to glory. "When September 11 happened, there wasn't a goddamned thing I could do about it," he says. "I volunteered to go to Iraq, but I was too old, too fat. When I heard about this, I knew it was something I could do. I want my children and grandchildren to know that I stood out here on a line and did my part."
Others are more extreme in their views, even suggesting that the tide of illegal immigration is part of a radical Mexican plot to take back the Southwest. Bob Kuhn, a land surveyor in charge of one of the group's Arizona operations, joined the MCDC because he believes the American way of life is in immediate danger. "If we don't fight for this, we're not going to have a country in another 10 or 15 years," he says. "There's the Third World, and there's us white men trying to live our way of life. Once you realize what's happening, you see that our country is being invaded." Kuhn says he's willing to die for the cause, and has begun moving into dangerous territory, nosing around suspected safe houses and drug lairs. Armed with only a handgun, he'll be in real trouble if he surprises a group of drug runners carrying AK-47s, and he knows it. But he doesn't care.
The chief critic of the MCDC is human-rights activist Enrique Morones, who is proud to be the first dual citizen of Mexico and the United States. Morones heads Gente Unida (United People), a coalition of rights groups focused on border issues. He supports Mexican President Vicente Fox's characterization of the Minutemen as "migrant hunters," and is pushing for the investigation of the mysterious shooting deaths of four migrants last summer. (The Minutemen deny responsibility, and a Border Patrol spokesman says the agency is unaware of any unexplained deaths.) "Whatever you think about illegal immigration," says Morones, "standing on the border with guns is not the answer. It promotes the worst of the American spirit."
The Border Patrol adopts an officially neutral stance on groups like the MCDC, "provided they abide by all federal, state and local guidelines," says sector chief Griffen. Their weapons must be registered, and members must not do anything that could be construed as attempts to detain migrants -- conditions by which all of Simcox's volunteers, having weathered scrapes with the ACLU, now take an oath to abide. So far, a Border Patrol spokesman says, there have been no reports of Minutemen interfering with the agency's work. To the contrary, by the end of last October's operations in Arizona, Border Patrol agents had begun eagerly accepting intelligence gathered by the Minutemen and responding quickly to their calls.
Clandestine Lives
This month, the MCDC will launch another operation in all four Southwestern border states. Meanwhile, President Bush has proposed a temporary guest-worker program that would, in part, provide safe passage for migrants who hold down jobs and become productive members of American society. Three major proposals have also been floated in Congress. Two are versions of guest-worker programs. The third, which passed in the House of Representatives and is overwhelmingly supported by the Minutemen, calls for the construction of fencing from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico. Vicente Fox -- whose country receives $20 billion annually in the form of "remittances" sent by Mexican workers to their families -- says the bill's passage was "shameful." Others argue that such a fence would probably do little to cut down on illegal immigration.One afternoon back at last October's operation, a Mexican named Vicente Rodriguez gestures toward the armed men and women seated on lawn chairs beneath American flags in an area south of San Diego. Standing on the Mexican side of a low, rusty border fence that most adults could simply step over, Rodriguez speaks in perfect English. "America needs manual labor; that's the bottom line," he says. "The problem is, the laws of the land don't fit the economic reality. The United States is changing." He nods toward the Minutemen. "They want it to stay the same."
Some of the Minutemen acknowledge that what they are reacting to is globalization. "We outsource all the jobs, and then insource all these replacement workers to whom companies don't have to pay [a fair] wage," says Tim Donnelly, head of the MCDC's California chapter. "There are people who are profiting, just as there were people who were profiting back in 1775," he goes on, making reference to the original Minutemen. "But we small few will bring this nation back in accordance with its founding principles."
In southern Arizona, a white Border Patrol pickup truck emerges from the dark. The six migrants sitting in the road quietly pile into the back of it, while two Border Patrol agents suit up in what looks like black riot gear in pursuit of the 24 who fled.
In the morning, the Minutemen will learn that all 24 were apprehended. As for the other six, they will be processed and returned to Mexico within a few hours. It is likely that they will try to come north again another day, once they've managed to save up the money. If they succeed before a solution to the border problem is found, the best they can hope for is to somehow blend into the landscape, finding work, finding family, keeping a low profile, and living out their clandestine lives in America.