Minutemen Pronounce Border Vigil a Success

PALOMINAS, Ariz. — Minuteman Project organizers yesterday declared victory after shutting down a 20-mile stretch of the Arizona border to illegal aliens, but promised to rally “tens of thousands” of new volunteers for a blockade this fall on the U.S.-Mexico border from California to Texas.

“We did in our first 10 days what the federal government and Congress couldn’t do over the past 10 years,” Minuteman founder James T. Gilchrist told a cheering crowd of 100 volunteers gathered at a meeting in the organization’s guarded base camp mess hall.

“This has been a successful and bloodless effort, proving without a doubt that the physical presence of additional bodies along the border deters illegal immigration,” he said.

Mr. Gilchrist noted that fewer than 5,000 illegal aliens will be apprehended this month by the U.S. Border Patrol in the Minuteman Project’s 20-mile patrol area compared with 64,000 in April 2004 and 73,000 in April 2003.

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WorldNetDaily.com, Apr. 19

The largest local union of Border Patrol agents in the country has declared its support for the Minuteman Project in Arizona, while at the same time slamming both the American Civil Liberties Union and President Bush.

According to its website, the U.S. Border Patrol Local 2544, which covers the Tucson sector of the agency, the volunteers involved in the border-monitoring Minuteman Project have been nothing but supportive.

“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,” says a statement on the site. “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.”

The group blames the ACLU for setting off ground sensors in the area of the Minutemen activities:

“Reports of [Minutemen] causing ‘ground sensors’ to go off are exaggerated because most of those are being set off by the ACLU sneaking around trying to find the Minutemen doing something wrong.”

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