Minutemen

“[O]n the pro-control side, the pro-borders side, the kooks and the racists are at the fringes,” said Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies on CNN’s Glenn Beck show last week. “They're nuts, you know, living in their mother's basements.”

Krikorian, fellow guest Jim Gilchrist, and host Mike Brooks were complaining that the California Department of Transportation is moving the adopt-a-highway sign of the San Diego Minutemen to a less prominent area. But if these anti-immigrant commentators wanted to make the point that the anti-immigrant fringe is not part of their side of the debate, perhaps they would have been more convincing had they not been defending one of the most militant and radical vigilante groups in the country.

On this blog we’ve seen the San Diego Minutemen:

• on film aggressively harassing day-laborers,
• conducting an over-the-top protest of a Catholic church that offered breakfast to day-laborers (see photo),
• and ransacking a campground where a number of migrant workers lived—also on film.

A profile of the San Diego Minutemen by the Southern Poverty Law Center notes that the group was disowned for extremism by both major national Minutemen factions—including the Minuteman Project, founded by Gilchrist. But on CNN, Gilchrist said the dispute over SDMM was a matter of “those opposed to immigration law enforcement.”

CNN’s panel—composed of three anti-immigrant activists—was timely evidence for the importance of a new project from the National Council of La Raza to stop the increasing appearance of hate groups and extremists as “experts” in the immigration debate. Indeed, Gilchrist is listed on the site as a “suspect spokesperson,” a self-proclaimed vigilante featured as an immigration expert, and Glenn Beck is named as one of the prominent media hosts of extremism.

With his career as an anti-immigrant activist stalled and his unemployment running out, Ted Hayes has announced that he is running for Congress against Los Angeles Rep. Maxine Waters (D).

Hayes first came to our attention in 2006 as a spokesman for Choose Black America, a front group assembled by the Federation for American Immigrant Reform, a mainly-white anti-immigrant organization that has, as the Southern Poverty Law Center noted, taken “more than $1 million from the Pioneer Fund, a foundation that funds writers seeking to prove that black people aren’t as smart as whites.”

“This illegal invasion, in my opinion, is the greatest threat to American black citizens since chattel slavery itself,” said Hayes, who also headed his own anti-immigrant “Crispus Attucks Brigade.” According to Hayes, the idea behind these groups is to put a stop to solidarity between blacks and Latinos struggling for civil rights: “They got some brothers running around here like Jesse Jackson and them talking about brown and black unity and ignoring the real issue,” he said. That issue, apparently, is immigrants supposedly taking away the civil rights of blacks: “Don't come here telling us about our civil rights. These aren't yours; these are ours. And you can maybe holler human rights here, and we'll give you some wiggle room on that. But you can't have them civil rights, brother.”

(Hayes embracing Minuteman co-founder Jim Gilchrist. AP photo via SPLC.)

Before converting to the Republican Party a few years ago and joining the anti-immigrant movement, Hayes was famous as a homeless activist who started the Dome Village shelter in L.A. But his divisive immigration rhetoric—along with his Minuteman connections and confrontational protest style—failed to catch on. A Los Angeles Times article from just two weeks ago noted his events haven’t drawn crowds and his groups haven’t gotten many members or donations. Meanwhile, Dome Village shut down, and Hayes is almost broke, with his unemployment benefits set to run out this month.

But in announcing his congressional campaign, Hayes was hardly looking to move on from the anti-immigrant rhetoric that’s defined him for the past two years. Instead, immigration is the focus of his run:

Hayes says it is unfortunate that many of the new residents have become very belligerent to the blacks. "As the numbers increase, they begin to take on a whole other mindset," says Hayes, "[that implies] 'get out Negro, this is now Mexico' -- and they're threatening people and forcing them out of the community with violence, in fact. In the high schools, they begin to have an intimidating presence and they begin to attack the black children."

The congressional hopeful says he is challenging Waters this fall because blacks are feeling the ill effects of illegal immigration more than any other group. According to Hayes, illegal aliens are taking jobs that used to go to black citizens. "They'll take less than half the amount of money that we normally should be paid. They're forcing us out of our homes. They're forcing us out of our hospitals. They're claiming that what they're doing is their civil right to do so," he offers.

After Minutemen co-founder Jim Gilchrist endorsed Mike Huckabee last week, other anti-immigrant border vigilantes rushed to repudiate their erstwhile comrade. Chris Simcox, who split with Gilchrist in 2005, dismissed the latter’s influence and criticized Huckabee’s “duplicitous” immigration program. The leader of another Minutemen splinter group called the endorsement “disturbing.”

A variety of anti-immigrant groups also came out of the woodwork to pile on Gilchrist in a letter distributed by Americans for Legal Immigration: “We denounce Jim Gilchrist's solo endorsement of a pro-amnesty and Open Borders candidate for President. Mr. Gilchrist does NOT speak for us!” Signatories included representatives of a number of local Minutemen franchises, a FAIR front group, Mothers Against Illegal Aliens, Save Our State, California Coalition for Immigration Reform, and many more.

This week, Gilchrist is facing heavy pressure from WorldNetDaily reporter Jerome Corsi, the premier advocate of the “North American Union” conspiracy theory. Corsi’s approach, rather than simply denouncing Gilchrist, was to confront him with the claim that Huckabee’s immigration program contained some element making it unacceptable to them. In response, Gilchrist “backtracked” on his endorsement, according to a Corsi article titled “Minuteman reconsiders Huckabee endorsement.”

The only problem with Corsi’s friendlier approach—helping Gilchrist along with his retraction of the endorsement—is that Gilchrist denies it:

But Gilchrist says Corsi's article is not accurate. "I am holding firm. I am endorsing Governor Mike Huckabee for president. I'm not wavering or waffling," he states.

And as for the WorldNetDaily report? "I have to say that Mr. Corsi really made me feel like he was interrogating me like a police investigator or a prosecuting attorney, rather than interviewing me," Gilchrist asserts. "He kept insisting that I was waffling -- and I did not say that; he kept saying that. And apparently he had an agenda."

But Corsi says he sticks by his story. "If Jim can't keep his story straight from one day to the other, ... I'll be happy to play back [for him] the recordings I made of him each day and Jim can listen to himself saying that he was going to reconsider the endorsement of Huckabee," he says.

What’s strangest about this exchange between Corsi and Gilchrist—with misunderstandings, hurt feelings, agendas—is that the two know each other very well. They wrote a book together on the Minutemen last year. Now, sadly, it seems they are no longer on speaking terms: Corsi’s latest article, which accuses Gilchrist of going soft, ends with the poignant line, “Gilchrist declined to comment.”

While Tom Tancredo continues his efforts to push the Republican presidential race further and further towards anti-immigrant extremism, it’s important to remember that the candidates who are following his lead are the ones with a chance of winning the party’s nomination. Rudy Giuliani is attacking Mitt Romney over his landscapers, and Romney is running an ad in Iowa attacking Huckabee over past support of education programs for undocumented immigrants.

Not to be outdone, Huckabee apparently borrowed his immigration platform from an anti-immigrant group, the Center for Immigration Studies. And this week he announced a surprising endorsement: Jim Gilchrist, co-founder of the Minutemen border vigilante movement. Lest anyone forget that Huckabee is the far-right candidate who’s “not angry about it,” the former governor said at the press conference, "I'm not angry at anyone. I'm angry at the government. I'm not angry immigrants want to come here."

Gilchrist, whose Minuteman Project split from Chris Simcox’s Minuteman Civil Defense Corps back in 2005, has been struggling since his own board ousted him over alleged financial mismanagement, and the extent to which he remains an influence over the fractious Minuteman phenomenon is unclear.

So while Gilchrist may give Huckabee some kind of anti-immigrant credibility among the right-wing base, it may be that Huckabee is giving a much greater boost to Gilchrist. Huckabee, whose “nice guy” persona contrasts starkly with the armed-and-dangerous image of the Minutemen, even went out of his way to apologize for perceiving the vigilantes as fringe activists:

"There are times when I, probably in the early days of the Minuteman, I thought, 'What are these guys doing . . . what are they about?' " he told Gilchrist during their press conference in Iowa. "I confess, I owe you an apology for even questioning why in the world you guys would do it. As all of us have seen, the federal government has failed to secure the borders -- they failed to bring a policy that is good for everybody involved."

With such generous pandering in play in this election cycle, anti-immigrant activists and groups are likely to stick around. Indeed, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (like the Center for Immigration Studies, part of John Tanton’s network of anti-immigrant “grassroots” groups) is planning to bring right-wing radio talkers to Iowa just days before the caucuses, as the group releases a report purporting to show “rapidly escalating costs resulting from illegal immigration” in the overwhelmingly white state.

Handily, the Southern Poverty Law Center has just published an article on FAIR’s connections to racist hate groups. Now, if we could only get it into the hands of Republican presidential candidates …

(Image from Noam Scheiber at The New Republic.)