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Thursday, June 2, 2005

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  But although Minuteman organizers said nearly 1,000 volunteers from around the country were ready, Texas civil rights groups, clergy, newspaper editorial boards and politicians are folding up the welcome mats.

"I think it's a problem all of Texas has with having vigilante groups from other parts of the country come to our state to try to tell us how to run our business," said Democratic state Sen. Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa, an author of a resolution that urged Gov. Rick Perry to oppose Minuteman plans.

Eleven senators signed it, and Democratic state Sen. Rodney Ellis wrote Perry that Minutemen "are not welcome in Texas." Perry responded that he can't ban people from legal activity.

"He understands and appreciates the frustration that many Texans have with illegal immigration and its impact on national security, but ultimately this is a federal issue," Perry spokeswoman Kathy Walt said.

The Minuteman Project drew international attention in April when volunteers showed up in Arizona to prove the border could be secured simply by putting more personnel there. While they didn't apprehend immigrants, Simcox said the group alerted the Border Patrol to suspicious behavior and helped catch 335 immigrants.

Yet the Texas border differs from the Arizona border in key ways.

Most of the Texas land is privately owned, so Minutemen would need landowners' permission to be there. The border also is overwhelmingly Hispanic and more urban, and Minutemen opponents wonder how the volunteers will distinguish illegal immigrants.

Opponents also fear the movement is fomenting racial hatred.

"I don't think that there's any doubt that there's a tinge of racism beneath the surface in their attempt to try to stop immigrants from Mexico," Hinojosa said. "Why don't they do that in Canada?"

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in a radio interview in April said the patrols "have done a terrific job." An aide later said the governor would welcome the Minuteman Project in California.

After protesters in California threw rocks and unopened soda cans at police and attendees at a speech by Minuteman founder Jim Gilchrist, Simcox called the protesters "brown supremacists."

U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Democrat, said she smelled such trouble long ago. She wrote an amendment to a Homeland Security budget bill that blocks funding to "any border patrol activities that are unauthorized by law."

She said the Minuteman Project was "an appropriate wake-up call for the United States" about the need to better fund border security. But, she said, it has completed its mission and needs to disband because of potential for violence.

But Shannon McGauley, an Arlington resident and a founder of Texas Minutemen L.L.C., one of several groups forming under the Minuteman Project, said the group would be peaceful and wanted to call attention to the danger of terrorists as well as illegal immigrants.

"Right now, Baghdad's more secure than the border," he said.

© 2005 The Associated Press

Editor's note:
Illegal immigration threatens our security and tears at the fiber of America – Click Here!
Is liberalism a mental disorder? Michael Savage thinks so – Click Here for more!

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