Borderline

The Minutemen say they're making America safer. Others think they're racists out to stop Latino immigrants. Are they saints or sinners?

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.

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