Borderline (page 4 of 5)

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.

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