Arizona

This summer, we noted that the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps’ project to build their own fence along with U.S.-Mexico border was falling short of promises, while contributors raised questions about where all the money went. One major donor sued the anti-immigrant vigilante group, and a number of the group’s officials and state coordinators challenged MCDC leader Chris Simcox’s financial management, only to have Simcox fire them all.

Now CNN has picked up the story, sending a reporter down to look for the much-vaunted high-tech “Israeli-style” fence, and finding little more than a cattle guard on one ranch and a short stretch of mesh wire on another.

The Minutemen quickly responded to the negative press—with a fundraising e-mail:

It's not news that the Minutemen have critics and are under constant assault from the liberal media and open border alliance organizations. But in spite of all this, the Minutemen press on! Giving leadership and hope to America since our patriots sounded the first national call in 2005 to Secure Our Borders NOW, our committed and courageous Minuteman Civil Defense Corps volunteers are showing that good people CAN make a difference in the defense of our nation’s security, sovereignty, safety and prosperity.

According to the MCDC, the vigilante group is only trying to do a job the “feckless federal government” won’t do, but its complaint sounds more like the criticism of its own fence:

[The government] is long on talk and short on performance, selling the American people short as it has for decades. The Feds are stalling, wasting time, putting up inferior fencing at vast expense on delayed timelines—all in the hopes that the people of this country will be won over by their political grandstanding and public relations.

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:

“We are holding a political protest,” said Chris Simcox, head of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, of his group’s vigilante gatherings on the U.S.-Mexico border. Minutes before, he had complained to the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference that the border patrol was not rushing to the scene when he called them from his stakeout. For Simcox, this was evidence of a crisis on the border, a lack of “operation control” that politicians should address “by all means necessary.” On the other hand, it could be that the border patrol agents have day jobs.

Simcox was the star of an immigration panel at CPAC on Saturday, where he called on activists to “take this battle to city councils, state legislatures,” and Congress, and to sidestep what he called the “lamestream media.” He announced that “We the people in Arizona” are circumventing Congress by introducing two more ballot measures this month: one to “abolish all sanctuary laws” and train every law enforcement officer to enforce federal immigration laws, and a second to require employers to prove their employees are not violating immigration laws. Simcox also criticized the immigration positions of the many GOP presidential candidates to speak at the conference, with the exceptions of Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo: “I’ve met many wonderful conservatives [at CPAC]. Unfortunately, none of them are running for president.”

Simcox was joined by Georgia state Sen. Nancy Schaefer, sponsor of what she called the “strongest piece of illegal immigration legislation in the nation.” Her reasons for such concern about immigration ranged from supposedly “spiraling costs” and “overcrowding” of public schools to “sex predators” to the mythical threat of a “North American Union” being secretly formed by the Bush administration to unite the U.S., Canada, and Mexico as one sovereign entity. She has already introduced a resolution in Georgia on that matter.

Like the other panelists, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) encouraged the audience to look for ways that states could take over federal immigration policymaking, although he did not mention his own current effort: King is suing his home state for offering voter information in multiple languages. Instead, King took to task “powerful business interests” he said were behind the “flood” of immigrants, as well as liberals, who he said support immigration because immigrants “will assimilate into the left-wing liberal enclave” of majority-Hispanic congressional districts. These forces conspire, according to King, to produce the “massive price we are paying in the streets of America.” King, at some length, cited his own fictional statistics about “criminal aliens” involved in rape and murder. In order to account for his wildly inflated numbers, King explained that young men will bring most of “society’s pathologies” from their home countries, which have higher murder rates than the U.S.

But King did see hope in the recent immigration raids at Swift meat-processing facilities: “They were Caucasian-Americans lined up for those jobs.”

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