Posted on 10/25/2005 3:10:31 PM PDT by DumpsterDiver
ACLU says Incident Confirms its Suspicions About Minutemen
HACHITA, NM – Today the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico expressed concern over reports that a member of the Minuteman vigilante group illegally detained two migrants near the Mexican border last week.
The ACLU said it has learned through discussions with the Border Patrol that a Minuteman volunteer from Colorado was arrested after he was found with two migrants in his car. According to the Border Patrol, the volunteer came across the migrants after they flagged him down for food and water while he was driving in Hidalgo County. The ACLU noted that the volunteer's actions contradict the Minutemen's standard operating procedure, which states, "Minutemen do not verbally contact, physically gesture to or have any form of communications with suspected Illegal Aliens."
"If the report is corroborated, it would confirm our suspicions that the Minutemen are, at best, not well-supervised and, at worst, inclined to take the law into their own hands, including unlawfully detaining people who they think are undocumented immigrants," said Ray Ybarra, Racial Justice Fellow for the ACLU of Texas, who has been monitoring the activities of the New Mexico Minutemen.
"We don't yet have complete information on the arrest," he said. "What we do know is that this individual was taken into custody, but that the charges were eventually dropped."
In contrast, the U.S. Attorney's office in Tucson is prosecuting Shanti Sellz and Daniel Strauss for transporting three migrants to a hospital on July 9, 2005 after discovering them suffering from symptoms of severe dehydration. Sellz and Strauss are volunteers for No More Deaths, a humanitarian aid organization.
Ybarra questioned why Sellz and Strauss, who were acting as good Samaritans, would be more aggressively prosecuted than the Minutemen. "Letting the Minutemen violate the law without accountability sends the signal that vigilante activity is welcome in New Mexico. This can lead to a very dangerous situation for migrants and New Mexican residents alike," he said.
The articles I read back in July, said that they were transporting the illegals to a church.
Sellz and Strauss were arrested on July 9 with three illegal entrants in their truck. They were driving them to Southside Presbyterian Church and said the men were vomiting and had bloody diarrhea.
Jose Garza, Border Patrol Tucson Sector spokesman, said that was not true. Last week, the Tucson Sector said the three illegal entrants being transported were not ill and refused medical aid once in custody. snip - source
A ping from me to youse two.
Dontcha love how the American is the bad guy and the invader is just a harmless immigrant?
ping
Chagas? Oh, never mind...they were okay, after all.
I'm confused. Did he detain them or did he pick them up?
How much do you want to be that the Minuteman volunteer was also coming to the aide of the illegals, rather than leaving them to die?
How about enforcing the laws against illegal aliens? Since illegal aliens are all criminals, I thought citizens arrests were legal. Hope this won't turn into another case of Americans being forced to give up their homes to illegal aliens.
It looks that way to me since the charges against him were dropped. From the ACLU's press release:
According to the Border Patrol, the volunteer came across the migrants after they flagged him down for food and water while he was driving in Hidalgo County.
That incident abt. church/dr is not the one that happened near Hachita- that incident happened near Tucson and involved a group HELPING illegals and they were suspected of actually smuggling illegals and their story was they were taking them to church/dr and the illegals told a different story.
The incident in this article that happened near Hachita,NM was a new Minuteman volunteer, he had been through the indoctrination where they are told the rules- especially no contact. The story is he found an illegal woman and child and transported them to Hachita- very much against the MM rules, and no one is sure why he did it. He may have just been soft hearted and not wanted to leave them out in the elements. We were having rainy chilly nights when this happened. The man was wrong- regardless of his reasoning and the minutemen discharged him. The issue now is the ACLU is spreading all sorts of rumors that the man had some sort of sexual crime in mind or something- they want to make a big deal out of it. Local LE investigated this and interviewed the woman when it happened and basically they decided he was just foolish- no evidence of anything else. He transported them to the MM HQ for this area, the MM called the Border Patrol and reported the incident themselves and let BP and local LE handle it, they made no attempt to hide the incident or anything of the kind.- just a strange incident. I personally wonder if he was a plant into the organization to make the MM look bad- only thing that makes sense to me.
The ACLU is grasping at straws and looking for any little thing they can find that would show the MMP in a bad light.
ping
"I personally wonder if he was a plant into the organization to make the MM look bad- only thing that makes sense to me."
Ditto
That &#$% ACLU ticks me off!
If the ACLU feels comfortable calling the Minutemen 'vigilantes', I suppose I can feel comfortable calling the ACLU a bunch of anti-American, God-hating pinkos. Okay, I would have felt comfortable calling them that anyway. The truth seldom offends me.
I agree - No Contact is primary just for the reasons outlined in this article. This is truly a case where no good deed will go unpunished while the traitors of the ACLU are looking for any scrap of "wrongdoing".
Throwing bottles of water over is acceptable as is life-saving first-aid. Anything else is tough sh*t. This guy should be looked into further and renounced for disobeying rules everyone is required to agree too.
One thing I need to point out is that cell phones do not work in most of this area, it may not have been possible for him to call someone from where he was. As far as what I understand there were no other MM with him, he was in his own vehicle and I think had gone somewhere for supplies and was returning when he found the woman and child. The MM are using radios here mostly- but since he was not really on patrol when this happened he did not have access to a radio at that time. He should have left them & called it in asap- I guess he either just couldn't bring himself to leave them out like that or he was a plant.
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