ON THE US-MEXICO BORDER: As winds gust across the desert, a motley army of civilian volunteers peers into the darkness for signs of illegal immigrants trying to sneak across the sands into America.
A layer of dust coats everything — their trucks, lawn chairs, binoculars and floodlights — as they patrol the desolate US border with Mexico that cuts through the arid southern Arizona desert.
The nearly 500 Minuteman Project members, disgruntled citizens who have taken US border security into their own hands in the western state of Arizona, are kicking off their first patrol along the porous border.
Dismissed as vigilantes by US officials, they have driven and flown there from across the United States to underscore their claim that their government has failed to control the border.
They say terrorists, criminals, and drug traffickers could be among the millions of illegal immigrants who slip into the country through its south-western deserts every year.
“No one begrudges anyone looking for a job,” said Kevin Johnstone of West Virginia, who joined the group with a stated goal of spotting would-be illegal immigrants and alerting the US Border Patrol to arrest them.
“We just want them to come through the front door. They say they’re taking jobs. Americans don’t want to do those jobs. As far as I’m concerned, the only American not doing his job is George Bush.”
Armed with binoculars, radios and sometimes guns, the Minutemen brace against strong winds, frigid night temperatures and wild rumours of threats against them from a vicious El Salvadoran gang.
Landscaper Daniel Flunker drove from Texas to stand guard for a week as the volunteers launched their 24-hour watch early on Monday. The Minuteman stares across the creosote and cactus, binoculars shaded by a straw cowboy hat.
He speaks wistfully of the Houston neighbourhood he grew up in, detailing what he said were changes for the worse, many of them caused by rampant immigration from Mexico.
His landscaping business competes with truckloads of labourers who work cheaply. His isn’t the only business hurt by being undercut, he says.
“They’ll come to your door, with one guy who speaks English. You’ll ask them if they’re illegal and they say, ‘Yes.’ People don’t care if they can save 1,000 dollars on a new roof.”
While he was angry at the US government’s alleged failure to stem illegal workers from entering the country, Flunker is not armed. “Nobody out here is going to hurt anyone. I’m not, anyway,” he said.
About a third of the Minutemen were carrying side arms which they said were for their own protection. Most of those carrying pistols were from Arizona, a state where guns are common.
But as the US Border Patrol and even President Bush branded the citizens vigilantes, the Minutemen disputed comparisons that paint them as an Old West posse from the legendary nearby town of Tombstone.
“These are American citizens sitting in lawn chairs on American soil,” Minuteman Project organizer Chris Simcox said.
The Minutemen taking part in the first patrols along a 37-kilometre stretch of the southern Arizona border come from an array of backgrounds, and are not just hellfire-eyed rednecks poised to draw guns on the first alien to put a toe through the six strands of wire separating the United States and Mexico.—AFP
