Firsthand limited report of some activities on the third day of the Minuteman Project

Today was Sunday, the Sabbath, so I was not supposed to be involved with Minuteman Project activities. This evening at about 5pm I decided to take the family for a ride in the area that the project was operating. I headed south of my house and didn't get a mile before I saw my first Minuteman Project patrol area. They were stationed just off of the main highway on a dirt frontage road and near some culverts where illegal aliens are often seen.

I passed the first group to see another just a few hundred yards up the highway on the same frontage road. The other side of the highway included some residential properties. I went a little further and saw the same thing. I saw an easy way to get onto the frontage road and turned around and pulled onto it. I came across a group that consisted of a guy from Arizona and a couple from Georgia. The husband was an older guy that I had seen the previous two days on an oxygen tank. His wife was younger and had a nasty cut just above her chin. She said that they had just seen and reported a group of 5 illegals trying to move through their area. Upon seeing them she promptly tripped and slammed her chin on the ground.

Casey Wian from CNN - Lou Dobbs Tonight - was there interviewing the couple. I took a quick picture and left.

I went a little further South and saw another group. I stopped to talk to them too. There was a black guy and a white guy and a gray dog. They were being interviewed by a reporter from the Orange County Register.

About that time my camera's batteries gave out. When I left the house the battery meter said it was full, but suddenly it was dead. I hate this digital camera, it does that ALL the time.

I went home and retrieved batteries and called one of my friends who has spoken to Casey Wian many times. She wanted to meet back at the location where I had seen him. I went back and the CNN crew had already left.

My friend showed up with a bunch of other people. Now that the Georgia woman with the cut on her chin wasn't on camera being interviewed we talked to her. Her chin was now badly swollen and turning black and blue. A medically trained woman looked closer at the injury and said that she needed to report to the medic. I volunteered to drive her the ten miles to the medic's location while her husband continued monitoring his assigned area.

We headed towards the head shed and when the highway turned East we saw a number of flashing blues and reds and bright white lines down by the San Pedro River. I wanted to check out what was going on but had to get this woman to the medic.

I went to the campground where the headshed is located, showed my badge, and was directed to one of the buildings. I found the comms room and they took her in to the medic. He said he would assess her and let us know what needed to be done. I told her I would return and left.

I travelled toward the flashing lights and got as close as I could. I couldn't find the road that lead to the San Pedro River area where the vehicles were. I got close enough to see what looked like fire dept. vehicles to include a water tanker. I remembered seeing smoke in that general area when I first left the house. I didn't see any Border Patrol vehicles and determined that this was probably a response to the brushfire I'd seen earlier.

I went back to the head shed and checked on the Georgia woman. She was almost done with the assessment by the medic. I walked around a bit to see what else I could see. Not much to report - maps, comms, a bulletin board with some info on it, people hanging out and talking. I did get a picture of the Culpepper flag flying out front.

The finished assessing the woman and said that she required stitches and needed to be transported to the E.R. in Sierra Vista. I drove her back to her husband and they were going to follow me the 15 miles to the hospital in town. I had to drop my family off so I had them wait at the post office until I could do that.

Once I returned they had realized that they had left their hotel roommate in the field without a ride back to town. They had be give them directions to the hospital so that they could pick him up and then drive in to town themselves.

There was tons of media watching the most visible patrol groups like those along the highway today. They did catch groups of 4 to 5 illegal aliens a few times today, nothing like the numbers we normally see around here. There was an earlier injury but I couldn't get any info about it.

One of the Minuteman Projects patrol points was established across the street from a friend of mine who lives at the base of a canyon a few miles north of the border. This person used to be a die-hard, anti-gun, open borders liberal. She moved out into the canyon and started having problems with illegals. Load vehicles would brazenly pull into her driveway and yard and a driver would step out and wave a flag. Suddenly, dozens of illegals would swarm out of the bushes across the street, into her yard and driveway, and then into the vehicles. This would happen every night just before dark. I was informed about the problem and went to work getting something done to help her. The Border Patrol apprehended 50 illegals in her yard last week. She allowed the Minuteman Project to set up a patrol station in her yard. She has armed herself and is becoming quite outspoken about the border situation. Nothing like a dose of reality to turn a liberal into a conservative real quick. She's on her way.

I heard a number of the Minuteman Project airplanes flying around my house today. Since I live in a medium to high illegal traffic area they were patrolling near my house. I'm still working on getting on some of the planes to help out. I found out that they are looking for volunteers who know the area and some of the high traffic illegal alien areas to help the pilots patrol those areas. I can certainly help there and will be getting with the right people tomorrow to volunteer.

I've got a handful of pics I snapped today, but not much. I won't be reporting every day as I can't be involved every day. I work full time and must attend to that and family requirements. I'll get with the MMP when I can, help out here and there, and I do plan to do some patrols and will report my experiences later.

I just received this firsthand report of the third day of Minuteman Project activities. It was sent by JackelopeBreeder and it references idratherbepainting (some of you may remember them). I arranged their meeting with Pauline Lubens, a reporter from the San Jose Mercury News which is also referenced in this report.

Buenos nachos, muchachos.
Today was a busy day for the Minuteman Project. Patrols don’t officially start until tomorrow, but yesterday and today were both spent getting teams oriented and trained up on the tricks of the trails – the Ilegal Alien Trails, that is.
(As I type this, just over a hundred MMP members are sitting quietly in the night watching those trails.)
The morning began with the standard briefing and assigning new arrivals to teams. This went smoothly and teams were deployed across the length of the border and in other areas of interest. Unfortunately, a good bit of my anonymity went down the tubes as Fox News, Univision, and Telemundo had video crews present and I was introduced by name as being in charge of the teams in the canyons.
The media went out with us again. I hope everyone gets to see one set of video taken by Fox News. A team of Minutemen from Grand Junction, Colorado had found the absolute mother of all lay-up areas along a ridgeline in Coronado National Forest. The cute young Fox News babe went dancing up that ridgeline like a mountain goat. Imagine a field of discarded trash, clothing, backpacks, and assorted waste a half mile in length. Several areas had been improved into semi-permanent status with tarps and tentage. Fox got the entire area on tape. I really hope this one shows up on TV.
Shortly afterwards, we engaged in a practice exercise with the Minuteman Air Force, getting both ground and air personnel familiar with comms and procedures. It took a remarkably short time for all to learn exactly how to put the aircraft exactly over a point of interest.
Illegal alien traffic remained extremely low today. We only caught five in the western sector and it took luck, time and a little detective work. Fellow LePer idratherbepainting had gone out to the highway to meet a photo-journalist from the San Jose Mercury News, but when she got to the meeting point the first thing she say was a glove penned to the barbed wire next to where she parked – current coyote signal that this is a pick-up point for illegals.
She called me down from the canyons and as I drove up I spotted a strange scene: a nice neat line of crisply folded McDonalds bags (food for five) and a plastic bag full of gallon water jugs, all in plain sight on the shoulder of the highway. Dumbness on the part of the delivery boy, exacerbated by the fact that he left all the receipts. The water had been purchased 30 minutes earlier and the food 20 minutes before I found it, from stores 6 miles north of the location.
There being no sign of the rightful owners, we photographed it in place, then placed the potential litter in the back of my truck as a late lunch for idratherbepainting’s dogs. I kept the water. Another MMP team was moved into the area while she and I and the photo-journalist started a wider search. We found further widespread cast-off items, but our five tourists without visas were running late and didn’t show up for another two hours. The actual spotting by MMP and the Border Patrol apprehension was exhaustively captured on film by a photographer from the New York Times.
Oddly, perhaps, most of the media has been friendly and most articles have been fairly favorable so far. I guess it’s because they get the same rude welcome to the realities of the border that the out of town Minutemen receive. I get the same question over and over from both groups: “How do you live with this situation day after day?”
I have to admit that I do not have any good answer to that question.

From the Federalist;

Meeting with Mexican President Vicente Fox, President Bush went so far as to disingenuously refer to citizen-volunteers of the Minuteman Project as "vigilantes." Perhaps Mr. Bush did not yet receive the
memo for extending PC terminology into this topic.

These volunteers are not "vigilantes" -- they are "undocumented persons," specifically,
"undocumented Border Patrol agents." They are also "willing workers matched with willing employers" (border-area residents happy to have greater protections). And they are simply "doing jobs that Americans
won't do" (that is, the jobs the American President and members of Congress won't do, but are constitutionally-mandated duties for common defense against border invasion).

Contrary to the President, the Border Patrol is apparently asking for more "vigilantes," with its "Operation Be Alert" program encouraging citizens to report suspicious activity along the nation's border. Citizens can report such activity by calling the U.S. Border Patrol hotline: 1-877-USBP-HELP (872-7435).

Meanwhile, Wednesday, four Iraqis were detained at Mexicali airport,Mexico, for carrying fake Dutch passports; two others with fake Greek passports were caught at a highway checkpoint. While scant information is available at this time, we seriously doubt the would-be insurgents were taking advantage of their recent liberation to visit Disneyland.

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