Minutemen End Vigil, Claim Success

AP via AZ Daily Star ^ | 5/1/05 | Arthur H. Rotstein

[IonImplantGuru]

NACO, Ariz. - Volunteers recruited over the Internet to monitor illegal entrant activity along a stretch of Arizona's border ended their monthlong efforts Saturday as they began - peering through binoculars along a dusty border road.

Members of the Minuteman Project hailed results as a huge success, and organizers plan to expand the mission to the other states bordering Mexico, as well as to parts of the Canadian border - in Idaho, North Dakota, Vermont and Michigan. They also plan to take on employers who hire illegal immigrants.

"This could not have been done without all of you. You did this together - you the people," co-organizer Chris Simcox told some 150 Minutemen and supporters at a last-day meeting outside a church in Palominas.

Simcox said the project has inspired millions of supporters across the country and reiterated a message he delivered to congressmen last week in Washington: The people will lead themselves "in an effort to secure our borders, to protect our families, our children, our neighbors and our way of life."

[IonImplantGuru]

A good call to have this 'pilot project' last just a month, in one of the nicest Aprils I've seen in a while in this part of of AZ. It's gonna start getting hot out there now.

And please: spare me any of your "...but it's a dry heat..." jokes!

[Mears]

I hope this continues and maybe the idiots in Washington will start paying attention to the people that put them into office.

[frannie]

This is TRULY a NEIGHBORHOOD WATCCH !!!!!!!!

[grizzly84]

those volunteers are patriots who should be hired and payed to secure the borders IMO.

[InABunkerUnderSF]

What???

No shootings? No lynchings? No casualties of any kind? No major civil rights violations?

The Liberals and their media prophets must be very depressed.

[bigjoesaddle]

I didn't know this was a temporary thing? Too bad. will it start up again?

[IonImplantGuru]

This particular gig was scheduled for just 1 month from the git-go. There has been talk by the organizers about longer-term stuff over a much larger chunk of the border - this whole thing covered just a small length of border east of Nogales AZ.

To my knowledge most of the illegal traffic is west of Nogales, a lot of it on Tohono-O'odom indian reservation land and I'm thinking the Tohono would snuff any Minuteman-style vigilance on their land. Their tribe historically straddles the border and movement back and forth across the border is normal to them.