Posts on Jim Gilchrist

“[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.

“We're going to win South Carolina,” said a confident Mike Huckabee last week, even as he saw his solid lead in the polls dissipating. Perhaps hoping to broaden his base beyond those looking to elect pastor-in-chief, Huckabee is once again repositioning himself further to the right on immigration.

Huckabee’s first rightward stab on immigration last month caused quite a bit of confusion. He adopted a plan from the anti-immigrant Center for Immigration Studies and announced the endorsement of Jim Gilchrist, co-founder of the Minutemen. Dozens of anti-immigrant activists soon denounced Gilchrist’s endorsement—Chris Simcox, the other Minutemen co-founder, called Huckabee’s plan “duplicitous.”

Last week, Huckabee made another attempt by convincing Gilchrist that he supported a constitutional amendment to end birthright citizenship. This, too, was met with confusion, as Huckabee quickly denied that he would push such an amendment, but left open the claim that he would advocate a fringe interpretation that simply writes it out of the Constitution.

Now Huckabee has signed a “no amnesty” pledge from another right-wing group, Numbers USA (through its advocacy arm Americans for Better Immigration). From the Washington Times:

The pledge, offered by immigration control advocacy group Numbers USA, commits Mr. Huckabee to oppose a new path to citizenship for current illegal aliens and to cut the number of illegal aliens already in the country through attrition by law enforcement — something Mr. Huckabee said he will achieve through his nine-point immigration plan. …

yesterday's pledge — signed at a press conference with Numbers USA Executive Director Roy Beck — was an effort to provide answers. It's a major reversal from less than two months ago, when Mr. Beck told The Washington Times that Mr. Huckabee was "an absolute disaster" on immigration during his time as governor. Americans for Better Immigration, another group Mr. Beck runs, has rated Mr. Huckabee's record as "poor." …

But Mr. Beck yesterday said Mr. Huckabee has made a number of key promises going forward, including to not grant illegal aliens long-term legal status; to reject a guaranteed right of return for those who go home voluntarily under his nine-point plan; and to not increase green cards as a way of allowing them to come back more quickly.

"Probably, this is the strongest no-amnesty, attrition plan of any of the candidates," Mr. Beck said.

And as part of a tag-team effort, Gilchrist is back defending his endorsement, similarly promising that Huckabee supports “no amnesty whatsoever.”

These efforts may help Huckabee in South Carolina against John McCain, who continues to take heat for supporting comprehensive immigration reform in the past. But they are still not enough to convince William Gheen of Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, who has been a leading anti-immigrant critic of Huckabee. Gheen has launched an attempt to draft Lou Dobbs, the CNN host with some far-right views on immigration, as a candidate. The dim possibility of a Dobbs candidacy was talked about back in November, but Gheen said his group is prepared to “camp outside his office” to make it happen.

More he said/he said from the Washington Times. Background here.

Jim Gilchrist, co-founder of the Minutemen, got into some hot water with his fellow anti-immigrant vigilantes after he endorsed Mike Huckabee for president last month. Minuteman Civil Defense Corps leader Chris Simcox rushed to repudiate Gilchrist, as did another Minuteman splinter group, the Patriots Border Alliance. Dozens more groups, from local vigilante outfits to sideshow acts like Mothers Against Illegal Aliens, piled on in a joint letter to “denounce” the endorsement. And Jerome Corsi, who co-authored a book with Gilchrist, seemingly tried to trick the latter into reversing his support for Huckabee.

Perhaps it’s easy for anti-immigrant activists to be picky in a Republican field competing to “out-Tancredo” each other, and despite Huckabee coming out with an immigration plan restrictive enough to attract Gilchrist—one that gives undocumented immigrants 120 days to exit the country—other activists latched on to the candidate’s feel-good rhetoric, such as his statement that “We’re a better country than to punish children for what their parents did.”

But, as if to prove himself wrong, Huckabee is now reaching for a fringe proposal that targets immigrant children in particular, according to Gilchrist.

Apparently spooked by the backlash of his Huckabee endorsement, Gilchrist caught up with the candidate and pinned him down on some red-meat anti-immigrant positions, reports the Washington Times. Along with making the pardon of right-wing folk heroes Ramos and Compean his “first act as president,” Huckabee promised to put an end to birthright citizenship, by hook or by crook, Gilchrist said.

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.”

Yesterday we wrote that Minuteman co-founder Jim Gilchrist’s endorsement of Mike Huckabee might be more of a hand up for the struggling anti-immigrant activist than for the cresting presidential candidate, given Gilchrist’s troubles maintaining leadership of his own group, much less a movement.

Sure enough, other anti-immigrant groups are rushing to dispute Gilchrist’s relevance. Chris Simcox, who split with Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project in 2005 to form the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, rushed out a mass e-mail dissing his rival:

No National Minuteman Group has endorsed Mike Huckabee. One individual Minuteman has personally endorsed him. For the sake of clarity, it is important to note that the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC), the nation's largest Minuteman organization, is a 501(C)4 non-profit organization and cannot and does not endorse any candidate for public office. MCDC is not associated with Mr. Jim Gilchrist, who today endorsed Mike Huckabee for president. Jim Gilchrist’s erstwhile Minuteman Project is itself an organization which by its own representations as a non-profit civic group cannot legally endorse candidates. It does not have any volunteers who observe illegal border activity. It has no border fence building projects. Jim Gilchrist here speaks only for Jim Gilchrist, he does not speak for the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, nor is he nationally representative of most patriots in the "Minuteman movement" – who under no circumstances could ignore the failed record nor endorse the duplicitous “plan” recently rolled out by candidate Mike Huckabee. The national media needs to recognize that Jim Gilchrist’s endorsement is his own personal statement, nothing more.

Another splinter group, the Patriots Border Alliance, called the endorsement “at best disturbing.” Group leader Bob Wright said, “[Huckabee’s] past rhetoric about the goals of Minutemen everywhere has been vicious — parroting the tired and discredited foolishness that an American citizen's desire to see the law enforced is somehow racist or xenophobic." A group called Americans for Legal Immigration also sent a mass e-mail warning against Huckabee.

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.)

With some on the Religious Right threatening to divorce the GOP and support a third-party candidate—as a way to punish Republicans if they nominate Rudy Giuliani—one has to wonder who exactly they would be endorsing. Pat Robertson and Pat Buchanan captured the far-right imagination in 1988 and 1992, respectively, but there don’t appear to be any big-name spoilers waiting in the wings this year. Even Alan Keyes, a perennial-favorite losing candidate, has thrown his lot in with the Republican field.

The third-party posturing has been led by Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, and his own love-hate past with the GOP gives us a clue. In 1996, unwilling to support Bob Dole, Dobson cast a “protest vote” for Howard Phillips, the nominee of the extreme-right U.S. Taxpayer’s Party (a.k.a. the Constitution Party). Phillips was also present by telephone at the Council for National Policy meeting that discussed the third-party strategy.

Would the real anti-immigrant vigilante group please stand up?

This summer we noted the apparent meltdown of both factions of the national Minuteman movement, anti-immigrant vigilantes that rose to stardom during an armed “border vigil” in 2005. Back then, disagreements about funding caused the group to split, with Chris Simcox heading the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps (MCDC) and Jim Gilchrist heading the Minuteman Project. More recently, Simcox faced criticism over dubious financial management, with his own volunteer leaders complaining that promised money wasn’t arriving and his IRS filings showing revenue mostly going towards “personnel services.” When several of his officers and 14 state coordinators demanded a meeting with Simcox to address their concerns, he promptly fired them all for insubordination.

Meanwhile, Gilchrist’s smaller outfit had its own trouble: The ostensible board ousted Gilchrist over money management. Gilchrist sued to regain the group’s paltry assets, and, giving up, started a new group called Jim Gilchrist’s Minuteman Project.

On Saturday, the ex-Minutemen who were booted from MCDC by Simcox assembled a “border vigil” near Palominas, Arizona, calling themselves the Patriots’ Border Alliance. Joining them is Gilchrist of the Minuteman Project.. Coincidentally, the defectors’ 30-day project, called “Operation Allied Minutemen,” began just one day after MCDC’s own 30-day “vigil,” “Operation Secure America.”

In response, reports the Washington Times, Simcox reiterated his claim that members of this new faction were terminated from MCDC for "purposefully undermining the national operations" of the organization, and that others "failed in their roles as national directors ... fixated on a conspiracy theory that our finances are not in order, and voluntarily tucked their tails between their legs and quit."

Mr. Simcox also said that while the PBA's operational procedures are in violation of county ordinances in Arizona, "We wish them luck. We continue with our extremely successful mission of ensuring our borders are secured."

As the two bickering Minutemen factions compete for the scarce media coverage of their events—a far cry from the circus of 2005—we can only imagine the scene on the border:

According to the right-wing news website, WorldNetDaily, Fred Thompson has finally and “candidly” confirmed his membership in the Council on Foreign Relations, which WND says is sometimes referred to as the “‘shadow government’ organization of elites with a global agenda.” Earlier this week, Thompson was confronted and questioned by an activist during a campaign stop regarding his association with the Council, long a bete noir of activists who suspect the United Nations and other elites of scheming to destroy U.S. sovereignty.  The activist who confronted Thompson, and was eventually forcibly removed from the event, mentioned the Council’s supposed efforts to bring about the North American Union, the latest nightmare for Phyllis Schlafly and the black-helicopter crowd.

Thompson seemingly tried to defuse the situation with polite mush:

“I didn't know they were up to that… There are several conservatives over the years who have been members of the Council on Foreign Relations. I try to learn as much as I can from all viewpoints. I have been a fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, one of the conservative thinks tanks in town, and enjoy having intellectual exercise and discussions whether I agree or not with anyone on any particular issue.”

But his association with the Council may fuel the suspicions of anti-immigrant activists who have also latched onto the North American Union as a plot to dissolve the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada.  Thompson has previously been condemned by VDARE, an anti-immigration group that has been accused of publishing white nationalist authors, but is also associated with notable commentators such as Pat Buchanan and Michelle Malkin. WorldNetDaily columnist Jerome Corsi, of Swift Boat fame and co-author, along with Jim Gilchrist, of Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America’s Borders, has been perhaps the most outspoken in attacking Thompson. Corsi, calls Thompson a “red herring” being peddled to conservatives even though, asserts Corsi, he is “not a conservative.”

An Arizona man who mortgaged his house to finance a small fence on someone else’s private land along the U.S.-Mexico border is suing the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps for putting up cheap cattle fencing rather than an “Israeli-style” barrier, and failing to complete even that.

“Jim Campbell is a great American,” declared MCDC President Chris Simcox a year ago, when Campbell gave the group $100,000 for the fence project. Campbell said then, “I can now rest comfortably knowing that I can look the next generation in the eye and say to them: ‘We stepped up and did what we could to preserve the future of your country.’” Now Campbell has changed his tune:

But Mr. Campbell said he has seen no work on the fence that Mr. Simcox promised on the Palominas, Ariz., ranch of John and Jack Ladd since he made the donation in June 2006. He said the 11 miles of fencing that MCDC says it has built consists of a five-strand barbed-wire range fence similar to what is already in place. …

"To date, MCDC has not constructed any 'Israeli-style' border fencing ... in breach of agreement between it and Campbell," the lawsuit said.

For his part, Simcox denies any mismanagement of funds, and blamed the lack of progress on lack of donors: “His $100,000 is sitting out there on the Hodges ranch. We’ve showed good faith. … I’m sorry it has not gone as quickly as we had thought, but you can only erect as much fence as you have the donations for.”

But Campbell’s accusation that Simcox diverted the money to other purposes echoes complaints raised recently by other Minuteman volunteers. MCDC’s financial filings showed revenues far lower than Simcox had claimed, and money wasn’t spent where he claimed it was – instead, most of the group’s budget went to unspecified “personnel services.”

Internal MCDC disagreements came to a head last week, when a group including officers and 14 state coordinators sent a letter to Simcox demanding a meeting. Simcox responded by accusing them of insubordination and firing the lot. “I did not expect Chris to be happy about it, but neither I nor the state leaders anticipated the paranoia driven nightmare we were about to be plunged into,” said the former deputy director of the group.

On missing $400,000.

Ousted leader Gilchrist, a CPA, did not account for $400,000, board claims.

The Los Angeles Times reports that failed congressional candidate and Minutemen co-founder Jim Gilchrist is fighting a pitched battle against the organization’s board after being ousted for mismanagement:

Gilchrist, 58, a national figure in the fight against illegal immigration, was removed as president of the Minuteman Project this month by its board of directors, which accused him of abusing his power and leaving more than $400,000 of the organization's money unaccounted for.

…

Deborah Courtney, the group's recently appointed treasurer, said in an interview that a direct mail company helped raise $750,000 for the group in 2006, but that she believes the Minuteman campaign received only $311,000. Courtney said she and others had been unable to trace the rest of the money.

…

They also said he should not have used $13,000 in Minuteman funds to defend himself in court against their allegations. He said the group must pay to defend itself against "rogues."

…

Some of Gilchrist's opponents recently filed a complaint against their former leader with the Internal Revenue Service, alleging that he did not obtain nonprofit status for the group. They say he improperly received a 40% discount nonprofit postal rate by using another organization's nonprofit status.

Constitution Party reportedly considering Minuteman leaders Jim Gilchrist and Alan Keyes, and “Swift Boat” co-author Corsi, for 2008.