Hasta la vista, baby vigilante ranchers have taken security into their own gun-totin' hands

Sydney Morning Herald ^ | December 6, 2003 | Caroline Overington

[Cincinatus' Wife]

JACK Foote says he isn't hunting humans, but it sure looks like he's hunting something. He is dressed head to toe in combat fatigues and his private army has the type of weapons you see in Terminator movies: AK-47s and AR-15s, with 520 rounds of ammunition, 17-inch knives, and side-arms powerful enough to blow a person's brains out.

Why all this firepower, Jack? "It's dangerous out there," Foote says of the journey he is about to make. "You've got rattlesnakes and scorpions, and tarantulas the size of a man's hand. And you could always get shot up."

We meet Foote on a ranch on the Arizona-Mexican border only after delicate negotiations, conducted mostly via email. He likes to be elusive. He has a drop mailbox instead of an ordinary one and an answering service instead of a telephone. And he doesn't like the media. His web site says: "News media [are] a group of pathological liars and socialist tools. Propaganda and indoctrination are their objectives. Please keep this in mind when reading any of their drivel."

This is an understandable reaction to some pretty negative press. Foote is one of the most controversial figures in the United States right now, the head of a group of heavily armed men who call themselves Ranch Rescue, which is trying to stop illegal immigrants from entering the US. Their method is simple: Foote's soldiers stake out the desert, wait until they see a group of Mexicans running over the border, round them up at gunpoint, force them to their knees and hold them there until US Customs and Border Patrol come and apprehend them.

Foote has agreed to meet, because he understands that Australia - like just about every other nation on earth - is having a long, bitter debate about illegal immigration, which is the hot-button issue of the 21st century. But before we can meet he outlines some conditions. "When you get to Douglas [a town of 15,000 people in Arizona that backs up to the Mexican border] you check into a hotel, and you ring me," he says. "Then I'll give you directions to our location. When you get to the main cattle gate, you open it. But don't get out until you're sure the dogs are in the house. Just stay in your car and honk, and I'll send somebody out to get you."

So, a few days later, I am sitting outside a ranch in Arizona, honking until Foote comes out. He checks to make sure the dogs - which, he tells me later, have been trained to a military standard and "speak only German" - are in the house, and then lets me into the yard, where Foote's army is gathered.

All are dressed in camouflage. Some are getting black paint smeared on their faces or decorating their tin hats with branches and leaves. Besides the guns, there are kerosene lamps and jeeps draped with branches and rope.

An army-style routine appears to be important to them: although the ranch has a kitchen, they eat outside and sleep in a makeshift bunkhouse. They boil their meat in kegs, and water is dispensed from an urn (although why this should be so is unclear, since the house has taps).

They are also anxious to show off their dogs, which Foote describes as "rottweilers with tails". When I arrive, both are inside the house, but one soon wanders out. I've been told that these dogs are trained to rip the throats out of strangers, but this one just sniffs at one of the plates on the table and moves on. But Foote has leapt into action.

"You better be introduced," he says, dragging the reluctant dog over. He orders it to sniff my closed fist [in English, since Foote doesn't speak German] but it licks my fingers instead. "It's actually very dangerous," says Foote, watching as the dog wanders off, tail wagging. "Maybe it's because the owner is here ..."

In fact, the owner is on the other side of the yard, talking on his mobile phone. I could have blown a hole through his chest from where I was standing. Certainly, I would not have been short of weapons, since the members of Ranch Rescue are somewhat - how shall we say? - cavalier about their massive arsenal. They leave their submachine-guns lying on picnic tables. At one point during our meeting, one of the guys in fatigues picks up a fully loaded assault weapon and says: "Whose is this?" Nobody knows. They just shrug and keep eating.

Foote had warned me before our meeting that few of the Ranch Rescue members would be willing to speak to the media, but Kerry Morales is keen. She lives on a ranch that backs up to the border with Mexico, which is unfortunate, because she can't stand Mexicans.

"All this crap about how they are poor and starving," she says. "Bullshit. If you get in their way, they'll kill you."

Because Morales's ranch is so close to the Mexican border, she has about 200 people passing through her property every day. Many have been walking through the desert for a week, and they are hungry and thirsty, so they drain her water tanks. Some are armed, and some are carrying drugs. It would take a particularly patient and sympathetic person to tolerate the intrusion and Morales is not that person. She is a racist. "I don't let Mexicans serve me at Burger King," she says. "Unless I'm getting chicken nuggets, which are already made up. Otherwise, they spit in your food."

Morales says she dares not leave her property unattended for more than 15 minutes because "they come inside and ransack the place. The women are the worst. They are not fragile little senoritas. They'll stick you with a knife if you get too close. The men will charge you with a machete." She says she once had nine dogs, but all are now dead because Mexicans killed them. "I had one, a little ball of white fluff with big blue eyes, and they just stabbed him to death. They stomped on another one, and broke his back."

They attack her, too. Morales says she was once at home, in bed, when an illegal immigrant burst in and ordered her to make him some food. Luckily, she had her pistol - one of five she keeps in the bedroom - on the side table, and she was able to grab it and frighten him off. Then, she says, there was the time she was standing on her porch when an illegal immigrant came up and started waving his penis at her, saying: "Don't you want some of this?"

Maybe Morales is exaggerating, but not about the numbers. Although the US grants permanent residence to about 1 million people a year, at least 700,000 people still try to enter the country illegally every year, most by way of Mexico. The Douglas branch of US Border Patrol, responsible for just 70 kilometres of border, last year apprehended 70,000 illegal immigrants.

For generations, the US made only cursory efforts to stop the flow of immigrants, in part because they provide cheap labour. But as Australia has recently discovered, there comes a time when some in the community rebel. In 1996, the president, Bill Clinton, responded by building a huge fence along the border with California.

But that didn't stop Mexicans from wanting to enter the US; it simply created a lucrative people smuggling business. Immigrants now pay "coyotes" to guide them through the desert into Texas and Arizona.

It can be a deadly journey: Border Patrol agents last year found 346 blistered corpses in the sand, including the skulls of children. Those who make it across the border end up on private land, where tension is at boiling point. Last year, the eight-month pregnant wife of a ranch owner shot dead an immigrant who broke into her house. He was unarmed and starving; she was alone and terrified.

Agent Thaddeus Cleveland, of US Border Patrol, says the US Government is tackling the problem by fortifying the border, employing more border agents and trying to break the smuggling cells. Jack Foote's plan is a bit different: he wants to confront the smugglers head-on.

"After our last operation in the desert, the wife of the ranch owner took my face in her hands and kissed me on the lips and said: 'Thank you for the first decent night's sleep I've had in two years,"' he said.

Critics say Foote's group is racist and paranoid, and there is no doubt that they are deeply nervous about strangers.

At one point during the Herald's visit last week, a car came up the long drive towards the ranch where Foote was staying and all the soldiers immediately checked their weapons.

"You got an identity on this?" said one, as the vehicle makes its way up the gravel path. "Negative," said another, as he inched towards the gate, with his machine-gun at the ready.

I stepped off the patio to see who was coming, which sent Morales into a spin. "I'd stay behind the house if I were you," she said, pushing me back against a concrete wall. "And if you hear popping, hit the ground, because that's gunfire."

As it happened, the car was carrying a bunch of French journalists whose appearance was entirely anticipated, since they, too, had requested permission to interview Foote. All were very interested in the weapons, which Foote says they have "not yet" had to use.

But, during an operation called Hawk, in Texas earlier this year, police charged one Ranch Rescue member with pistol-whipping an immigrant and setting a dog on him. The ranger who made the arrest, Doyle Holdrige, told local reporters that the immigrant had a "knot on the back of his head about half the size of your fist" and that "pistol-whipping illegal aliens is not something that's going to be tolerated in this country".

In a decidedly American twist, the immigrant, Edwin Mancia, engaged a lawyer and is suing for damages, which outrages Foote, not least because he says the pistol-whipping never happened. A French photojournalist, Eric Boye, backs Foote's story, saying: "I know exactly what happened. I was a witness. No one hit them. There was firmness but no brutality or violence." Foote believes the case is being driven by human rights groups that are trying to bankrupt Ranch Rescue, and he is at least partly right.

There are some who would say that the rise of vigilante groups on the Mexican border is typical of the gun-toting madness of the US, but there is another way of looking at it. Maybe America's vibrant democracy is working exactly as it should: people in one state complained about immigrants, so the Government cracked down. The immigrant problem then shifted to another state, and the ranchers there were having trouble being heard because there are so few of them.

Ranch Rescue's practice of rounding up immigrants at gunpoint got attention the way no petition ever could. It forced the Government to increase the number of border agents, from 3000 to 10,000 in less than six years, and to fortify the border with increased patrols, iron fences, night-vision cameras and spotlights. And the immigrants who were harassed are getting redress through the US courts.

But many people remain uneasy, among them Cleveland, who says he would rather not have Ranch Rescue patrolling the desert, heavily armed and wearing fatigues. He says it's a "security issue", adding: "I'm not sure these people are into respecting Mexican human rights."

Like many of the new Border Patrol recruits, Cleveland is a southern Baptist, who served his country in the military and was raised on the border. He has been trained to use his voice, his uniform, his very presence to get control of the groups of Mexicans he finds scuttling through the desert. "You rarely have to draw a gun," he says.

"Most of the people we find are pretty desperate. Some haven't eaten for 14 days, and they are so grateful to see somebody who can save their lives. We give them water. I've lost count of the number of times I've given them my lunch. We do get trouble. Sometimes they throw rocks. But mostly what we find is good people - men, women, children, and the elderly - who are just trying to make a better life for themselves. And I know that if the tables were turned, and I'd been born on that side, one of them would be me."

[.cnI redruM]

Sometimes that's what's necessary. There's an urban legend that Arizona mobilized its National Guard to prevent California from diverting away a large portion of the Colorado River.

Sometimes violence is a rational response, rather than a sign of dementia. Laws against illegal immigration are valid and someone needs to enforce them.

[danneskjold]

Gotta watch out for those Baby Vigilante Ranchers...

[Wonder Warthog]

I see that the Aussie reporter has a very active imagination. Certainly she isn't reporting any real facts.

[jim35]

..."It would take a particularly patient and sympathetic person to tolerate the intrusion and Morales is not that person. She is a racist"...

Morales... isn't that a Hispanic name? Strange kind of racism here. Could it be that she's simply correct in her assertions? That maybe it's Americans protecting their property, who get their burgers spit into by the Mexican nationals who are working at the burger joint?

[TigersEye]

Unadulterated hogwash wouldn't you say?

[Mr.Atos]

She is a racist. "I don't let Mexicans serve me at Burger King," she says. "Unless I'm getting chicken nuggets, which are already made up. Otherwise, they spit in your food."

Mexican is not a race it is a nationality. And it sounds as if Morales attitudes may be a little tainted by the ordeal she has to live with as a result of these roving bands of savage nomads. The fact that she dislikes them is her prerogative. The fact that she does not trust them seems based on experience. And the fact that she does not want to solicit their services seems born of a desire to not support the illegal status of their existence here, which is admirable.

Hatred and violence is certainly not advocated. But, when the government fails to act to protect the lives property and sovereignty of its citizens, it is moral for them to act on their own behalf.

[First_Salute]

A vigilante is a person who engages in a judicial process and executes the decisions taken from that judicial process --- in other words, after arrest, they proceed where the matter is actually required by law to be processed in the common law courts of a community or state within the United States.

The story above, is not about any vigilante, at all.

The story above, is about American citizens exercising both their individual police powers, which we have as sovereign people, to effect an arrest under our laws.

Any able-bodied citizen in reasonably good physical and mental health, is so-authorized under our common laws, to affect the arrest of a person or persons intent on, or having already, broken the criminal statutes.

A young man on some campus, this very evening, will probably intervene on behalf of some young woman who is being acosted, or worse, raped.

That young man is affecting an arrest, should he choose to restrain and hold the assailant to be bound over to the appropriate officer(s) of the law, whom we commonly refer to as police officers.

In the movies, and in some stories, the public eye is treated very often to the hysterical desires of leftists (such media producers) to promulgate fear among the populace, and redefine such noble actions, which are part of our lawful duties as American citizens, to be anything other than ... because "the political left" desires the people to be entirely subject to the state.

Fine, if you desire subjigation, go live in Australia where the people have submitted to the rule of the state over their lives. Or try Canada. Perhaps Great Britain. Or any other of the nations which have lived with the knowledge that, when the the people there get lazy and want somebody else to fight for their liberty ... they come to U.S.

[TigersEye]

Strange kind of racism here.

Very strange. Mexican is a nationality not a race.

[American in Israel]

Hatred and violence is certainly not advocated. But, when the government fails to act to protect the lives property and sovereignty of its citizens, it is moral for them to act on their own behalf.

And when a Government will not protect it's own people, it abrogates it's right to govern. However, nowadays it seems that is the norm. A whole lot of people are redefining government in their own image behind the scenes it seems.

[Bedford Forrest]

The Sydney Morning Herald is a heavy left rag. The article contains many howlers, the usual intentional misuse of the term "assault rifle", etc. But the worst distortion is its failure to mention that the Douglas/Agua Prieta area is a major conduit for drugs and illegals of the sand goblin persuasion. Given the writer's dripping condescension toward the Real Americans whose rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness have been systematically trampled upon for forty years, perhaps she needs a little taste of what our neighbors to the south really think of sweet smelling gringas. Drop the bitch into the middle of Naco, in the middle of the night, with no car, no cash and no gun.

[TigersEye]

You beat me by four minutes. LOL Stupid Aussie! (the author that is) Bet there weren't any submachine guns there either.

[mtbopfuyn]

Sad and funny at the same time. However, they do have every right to defend their property.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

LOL - Ah.... for a little - in the headline.

[ohioman]

Mr. Foote is a true American Patriot.

[UCSC Republican]

Actually, I believe that that urban legend you speak of is based on fact.

Los Angeles dried up Owens Lake, and then began getting its water from Mono Lake, some 350 miles away. As this lake began to drain, their attention turned to two plans. One was Alaska, which could theoretically provide water to the continental West for a couple hundred years, or go into Arizona and divert the Colorado River. I think once LA saw the armed people just across the border in AZ, the idea was given up.

[Travis McGee]

I agree, but he's nuts to EVER trust a news "reporter".

[Wonder Warthog]

"Morales... isn't that a Hispanic name? Strange kind of racism here."

Yes, I caught that one too.

[Wonder Warthog]

"Unadulterated hogwash wouldn't you say?"

Indeed!!! LOL!!!

[TigersEye]

... side-arms powerful enough to blow a person's brains out.

What good is one that isn't?

His web site says: "News media [are] a group of pathological liars and socialist tools. Propaganda and indoctrination are their objectives. Please keep this in mind when reading any of their drivel."

There's little doubt that is true. This article is further proof. Propaganda and drivel.

But before we can meet he outlines some conditions. "When you get to Douglas [a town of 15,000 people in Arizona that backs up to the Mexican border] you check into a hotel, and you ring me," he says. "Then I'll give you directions to our location. When you get to the main cattle gate, you open it. But don't get out until you're sure the dogs are in the house. Just stay in your car and honk, and I'll send somebody out to get you."

Aussie's talk funny. In America we call that 'directions' not 'conditions.' Out west you don't find a ranch without 'em. I bet nasty ranch dogs are common Down Under too.

... water is dispensed from an urn (although why this should be so is unclear, since the house has taps).

A lot of yuppie journalists pay $2 bucks a glass for bottled water. Why is unclear since almost all restaurants have taps.

I could have blown a hole through his (the dog owner's) chest from where I was standing.

Why the heck would she want to do that? Bad childhood experience with a dog owner? Maybe that's how they measure distance in Sydney.

Maybe Morales is exaggerating, ...

And maybe not. Plenty of reports confirm the frequency of such occurrences.

A French photojournalist, Eric Boye, backs Foote's story, saying: "I know exactly what happened. I was a witness. No one hit them. There was firmness but no brutality or violence."

Easy enough to dismiss this testimony. Not because he's French; because he's just a photog not a 'real' journalist like this author lying socialist hag.

Like many of the new Border Patrol recruits, Cleveland is a southern Baptist, who served his country in the military and was raised on the border. He has been trained to use his voice, his uniform, his very presence to get control of the groups of Mexicans he finds scuttling through the desert. "You rarely have to draw a gun," he says. ... " We do get trouble. Sometimes they throw rocks."

So even trained, uniformed, armed (and probably not usually alone) BP agents get attacked. Must be why private citizens are training, arming (always have been actually), grouping together and establishing a presence. 200 hundred starving, desperate, criminals crossing one persons property every night. SOUNDS DANGEROUS TO ME!

If it weren't for newspapers willing to print tripe like this this woman would be unemployed. She couldn't hold a job at Burger King having to compete with an illiterate Mexican who doesn't speak English.