The Minuteman Project Inc.

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For a group with similar objectives see Minuteman Civil Defense Corps

The Minuteman Project is a border security project started in April 2005 by a group of private United States individuals to monitor the United States–Mexico border's flow of illegal immigrants, although it has expanded to include the United States-Canada border as well. They have officially stated that, MMP has no affiliation with, nor will we accept any assistance by or interference from, separatists, racists, or supremacy groups,. The name comes from the minutemen who fought in the American Revolution. The group's founder and principal director is Jim Gilchrist who lives 50 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border in southern California.

The Minuteman Project describes itself as "a citizens' Neighborhood Watch on our border", and has attracted media attention to illegal immigration. While Border Patrol officials have expressed concern over the accidental tripping of border sensors [1], rank-and-file agents largely endorse the effort.[2] President George W. Bush alluded to the Minutemen as vigilantes [3], and the Minutemen are seen as vigilantes by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League.

In January 2007, a fight for control of the group broke out as Gilchrist was removed as head of the Minuteman project amid allegations of financial mishandling.[1]

Contents

[edit] Actions

On April 2, 2005, Minuteman Project volunteers, near Naco, reported the illegal immigration of eighteen people, resulting in the offenders being arrested by authorities. As of April 6, 2005, 531 volunteers had been positioned in the patrolled region. [4] [5]

On April 20, 2006, Jim Gilchrist and the Minutemen Project issued a public ultimatum to President Bush to "declare a state of emergency and deploy the National Guard and military reserves (and begin building a border security fence) by the 25th of May".

Gilchrist is critical, however, of the so-called "fence to nowhere" project launched by his counterpart, Chris Simcox of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC).

Gilchrist has expressed the opinion the civilian fence building project is nothing more than a "cash cow scam" designed by MCDC fund-raisers to convince naive donors to send in their hard earned money for a project that will build only 70 miles of costly fencing for the sole benefit of wealthy ranch owners in southeastern Arizona.

The promoters of the fence claim to need $55 million to build the 70 miles of private property fencing, according to Gilchrist.

[edit] Support for the Minuteman Project

Jon Dougherty, author of "Illegals: The Imminent Threat Posed by Our Unsecured U.S.-Mexico Border," writes that the U.S. Border Patrol Union Local 2544, which covers the Tucson sector of the border, endorses the Minuteman Project. According to their Union website[citation needed] "We want to make it clear – because we've had a lot of questions about this – we have not had one single complaint from a rank-and-file agent in this sector about the Minutemen... Every report we've received indicates these people are very supportive of the rank-and-file agents; they're courteous. Many of them are retired firefighters, cops, and other professionals, and they're not causing us any problems whatsoever". [6]

On April 28, 2005, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger praised the Minuteman Project during an interview on "The John and Ken Show" on Los Angeles radio station KFI, saying that the group had been doing "a terrific job". [7]

He reiterated his supportive comments the following day, noting that the Minutemen would be welcome to patrol the border between California and Mexico.


[edit] Renunciation by Minuteman leader James Chase

James Chase and James Gilchrist served in the same Marine Corps unit in Vietnam. They launched the Minutemen Project together and Chase left within the year. He posted a message on the Internet which read, "I cannot continue in any way, shape or form in a relationship with Minuteman Civil Defense Corps or even Minuteman Project...James Gilchrist wanted to skin Chris Simcox alive but then they went to Washington and picked up the two DC crooks Mary Lewis [Gilchrist's congressional campaign manager] and Connie Hair and the corruption machine was off and running. Now Mary is even allowing the Nazi party into the campaign and they refuse to remove Ranch Rescue, Andy Ramirez and Cliff Linquist from their links. So you have an absolute CON man Andy in your ranks sucking many thousands of dollars away from the cause. I have standards of right...sending email and letter requests for money to all of our people, even to my grandchildren, sister-in-law, and distant English ex-step mother is just without all class or civility. I am sad that some of you are so desperate, so gah gah, over what was a super lightning rod for the anti-illegal immigration movement, that you refuse to see that ethics and honesty must come above all else. May the Lord open your eyes to see and your nostrils to smell the manure before us."

Gilchrist comments that Jim Chase has an unpredictable temperament and that he had to dismiss him from The Minuteman Project in April, 2005 due to unruly and anti-social behavior. Chase since has targeted Gilchrist and Simcox for his wrath, Gilchrist claims: "Chase dreams up as much sinister rhetoric as one can possibly imagine and then he posts it on the internet as if it is absolute truth," Gilchrist says. During his congressional campaign in the fall of 2005, Gilchrist claims Chase was instrumental in collaborating with propagandists and violent adversaries of the "no borders/no sovereignty" crowd to see that the Gilchrist congressional campaign would lose.

Gilchrist attributes his loss in that election to Chase, who spent "almost every day of the campaign calling and emailing everyone he could in the congressional district, screaming that my campaign was a front for the KKK and Nazi movements."

In December, 2005 James Chase turned over leadership of the California Minutemen (CMM) & the Border Watch Federation (BWF) to his son, Mike Chase. Recruits, operations and the influence of the California Minutemen continued to grow, and the N. County Times [8] complained of Mike Chase's appointment to the political steering committee of California Senator Bill Morrow's campaign for the 50th District Congressional seat vacated by Randy "Duke" Cunningham.

In January 2006, Chase's California Minutemen stopped a program[citation needed] sponsored by Humane Borders and the government of Mexico to supply over 70,000 maps to migrants to aid their unlawful entry into the United States.[2] Faced with the knowledge of several Title 8 United States Code section 1324 prosecutions in the United States[citation needed], including from similar groups such as No More Deaths, along with the fact that thousands of Minutemen now openly roamed the American border lands 24/7, the volunteers and Mexican government decided to suspend the program. Miguel Angel Paredes, a spokesman for Mexico's National Human Rights Commission said "This would be practically like telling the Minutemen where the migrants are going to be" and as such, they'd have to "rethink this".[3]

The California Minutemen continued to patrol several miles of the US/Mexico border until May 2006 when they disbanded in favor of more localized groups with different target agendas. Campo Minutemen volunteers (former CMM members) still patrol in the areas left by CMM in Campo, California which is located 40 miles east of San Diego, California USA.

[edit] Criticism of the Minuteman Project

[edit] Criticism

The project has generated controversy and former Mexican President Vicente Fox has criticized the group. United States President George W. Bush, expressed dislike for "vigilante" border projects. [9]

Hector Carreon of the controversial Hispanic nationalist and irredentist organization Nation of Aztlán, writes, "The Minutemen have proven to be nothing less than a gang of anti-Mexican racists and their actions have the potential of alienating Mexico, its government and the millions of Americans of Mexican background." [10]

International ANSWER, the Revolutionary Communist Party [11] and other leftist groups claim the organization is supported entirely by Neonazi white supremacists. Minuteman supporters have argued that opponents of the organization have struggled to find legitimate reasons to oppose the group, and have thus launched blind accusations of racism.

[edit] Counterprotests at Minuteman events

Counterprotestors against the Minutemen have included Anti-Racist Action, International ANSWER the Revolutionary Communist Party, the Progressive Labor Party, the International Socialist Organization, the AntiMinutemen Defendants, the Free People's Movement, the Bay Area Coalition to Fight the Minutemen, Coalicion Deporten a la Migra, the Brown Berets, the Zapatista Solidarity Coalition, the Philadelphia Revolutionary Marxist Collective, the Sacramento Mexican American Political Association, the Brown Syndicate, the Brass Liberation Orchestra, the Chicano Consortium, Sacramento Food Not Bombs, anarchists, and other anti-conservative and anti-border activists.

[edit] Columbia University Incident

On October 4, 2006, approximately forty students and demonstrators stormed the stage of Alfred Lerner Hall during a Minuteman presentation at Columbia University in New York City, where Gilchrist had been invited to speak. The student protesters rushed onto the stage with a yellow banner stating "No one is Illegal" in English and Spanish. The protesters then gathered outside the Columbia University gates and continued chanting. The protest was quickly broken up by security. The event spawned a public discussion at Columbia over freedom of speech and transparency regarding the process through which controversial speakers are invited to speak .[12][13] Columbia University president Lee Bollinger stated in a campus-wide email that "No one...shall have the right or the power to use the cover of protest to silence speakers." [14] The event was monitored by several media organizations, and notably commentator Bill O'Reilly stated that the protesters had crossed the line by infringing on Gilchrist's constitutional right to freedom of speech.

On October 11, 2006, Gilchrist appeared on Democracy Now to debate Karina Garcia of the Columbia University Chicano Caucus. Shortly after being pressed by Garcia about allegations of immigrant abuse, Gilchrist withdrew from the discussion, claiming that he was advised to do so by legal counsel. On the same day, hundreds of videos directed by Minuteman volunteers and Gilchrist-affiliated Save Our State members, in which participants stalked, harassed and blew portable air horns in the ears of unsuspecting day laborers, were removed from the video sharing site YouTube after complaints about the videos were lodged. Many of the videos appeared to show Minuteman volunteers actively violating the group's stated procedures."BorderWatch Operations Manual". The ban came on the same day that Gilchrist prematurely withdrew from a radio debate on Democracy Now; no evidence has been presented that the ban and withdrawal were connected.

[edit] T-shirt incident

On April 6, 2005, three Minuteman Project volunteers convinced a 25 year old illegal immigrant to hold a T-shirt and pose for a photograph and a video with one of the volunteers. The T-shirt, which was also worn by volunteer Bryan Barton, read "Bryan Barton caught me crossing the border and all I got was this lousy T-shirt".

The volunteer encountered the suspect near a main highway while off duty from patrolling. He then contacted the Border Patrol. The volunteer shook the suspect's hand, held up a lettered T-shirt to commemorate the event, and gave the man $20 as the U.S. Border Patrol arrived and took the suspect into custody. Critics of the MMP raised questions about the incident, but an investigation by the Cochise County Sheriff's office cleared the volunteer of any wrongdoing. The Border Patrol and the Mexican consul agreed that no crime had been committed.

The ACLU issued a press release concerning this incident. [15] Bryan Barton since has launched a political campaign for a San Diego congressional district, and video of the actual incident can be viewed and downloaded at his campaign site. [16]

[edit] Watchdog groups

Various media representatives, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and observers from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) are also in the patrol zone attempting to observe Minutemen volunteers at work. The Human Rights Coalition of California (HRCC) announced its establishment and campaign against the Minuteman Project and the Friends of the Border Patrol. President of the Human Rights Coalition of California, Ed Herrera stated: "We do not believe that we must put human right and human worth aside simply because they are undocumented immigrants; First and foremost they are human beings... The Minuteman Project is not simply about national security and terrorism it is about a deeprooted concern for an evershifting ethnocultural shift in the American population." The HRCC has been present along the California U.S.-Mexico border since the arrival of the California Minutemen (A division of Friends of the Border Patrol). In November 2006, ACLU released a report detailing the Minuteman Campaign[17] and stated that a large number of daily newspapers "wildly exaggerated" the number of volunteers who actually participated in the group’s operation in southeastern Arizona in April 2005.[18]

[edit] Garden Grove incident

On May 25, 2005 James Gilchrist spoke in Garden Grove, California to the California Coalition for Immigration Reform at the Garden Grove Women's Club. According to reports approximately 300 protesters attended to protest Gilchrist's appearance. Hal Netkin, a Minuteman supporter who was leaving the speech, drove through a crowd of protesters who had surrounded his van. Protesters alleged that Netkin drove through the crowd unprovoked and struck two people. Minuteman supporters and the Garden Grove Police said that protesters rocked and banged the vehicle, and that the two protesters fell as the van approached them. The two attended local hospitals for minor injuries, while Netkin was temporarily held and released without being cited. [19] After reviewing videotape of the incident, the Garden Grove Police said that Netkin's actions were justified. Five protestors were arrested for unruly action. Critics have accused the police of partiality and of not carrying out justice for releasing Netkin so quickly. Supporters have said that Netkin had no other choice due to the violent and threatening actions of the protesters.[20] Of the five protesters who were arrested, two were released with no charges filed. The remaining three were charged with numerous misdemeanors, ranging from resisting arrest to animal abuse of police horses.

[edit] Laguna Beach Day Laborer Center

The Minutemen held a protest at a day laborer center, located within the city of Laguna Beach, upon hearing that the city was leasing the land from the State of California. The protest took place on July 15, 2006. During the protest, according to la.indymedia.org, a female member of the Minutemen drove her vehicle into a passing bicyclist. The driver of the vehicle was not cited by the Laguna Beach Police who were present at the event. [21]

Reportedly, the protests between the day laborers, their supporters, and the Minuteman slowed traffic to a snarl along Laguna Canyon Road, as roughly 60 day laborer supporters and 40 Minutman activists traded insults. Joe Turner the head of Save Our State, a nativist organization, was at the event saying "I am Spartacus" and began shaking his fist over his head. [22]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Jennifer Delson. "A Minuteman meets his hour of crisis: Minuteman Project co-founder Jim Gilchrist is battling three of his board members in court for control of the organization", Los Angeles Times, March 11, 2007.
  2. ^ Associated Press (Jan. 26, 2006)Mexico Halts Border Maps Hand-Out
  3. ^ Washington Times (January 27, 2006): Mexico nixes border maps for migrants

[edit] External links

[edit] Related videos

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