Posted on 07/01/2007 3:49:37 PM PDT by HiJinx
PALOMINAS — Native Montanan Connie Foust was, admittedly, almost completely naïve about border issues when she first moved to Palominas in 2004.
For example, during one trip to check on the home that she and husband Bill were building approximately five miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, Connie spotted a backpack left on the side of the road by an illegal immigrant.
Connie Foust. To contact Connie, or subscribe to her newsletter "On the Border - Connie's Perspective" email her at: boogiegram2@msn.com. Photo by Jonathan Clark.
Thinking that it had been lost by a schoolchild, she asked Bill to hang the backpack on a fence post so that the child might find it and avoid a scolding from his mother.
Then, during a subsequent visit, Connie saw a group of six people — including a woman she estimated to be 70 years old — walking down a road near her new home.
She asked her builder who the people were. “They’re illegal aliens,” he replied.
“That was my first indication that we had any kind of issue down here,” Connie recalled. “So I started looking at it, I started watching it and I started seeing it.”
Soon, the previously naive 60-year-old grandmother had been transformed into a tireless grassroots activist. Today, she is a volunteer and administrator with the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps who, in her spare time, writes border-related articles for a nationwide audience.
Meeting the Minutemen
Sometime in early 2005, shortly after she and Bill moved into their finished home, Connie happened to catch a TV interview with Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist.
“What he said made sense to me,” Connie said. “The government wasn’t being responsive (to the border problem) and so citizens needed to step up.”
When Gilchrist mentioned a Web site where people could find information on the fledgling Minutemen, Connie logged on. Then she traveled to Tombstone to meet Chris Simcox and some of the other folks involved in launching the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, the arm of the Minutemen that would carry out civilian border watch campaigns.
She decided it was something she wanted to be a part of.
“There’s a public perception of the Minutemen as a bunch of redneck bubbas who have control issues, or who don’t have a life,” she said. “But what I see are educated, well-read and truly patriotic people who want to secure their country for their children and grandchildren.”
After the inaugural MCDC patrol in Cochise County in April 2005, Connie continued her involvement with the group in an administrative capacity, helping to vet Minutemen applicants to screen out racists and criminals.
Soon she was the group’s national vetting director. She also served as a sector chief during MCDC musters, and traveled to Texas in April to help run the group’s efforts there.
“I credit this organization with the national debate we are having today on immigration, Connie said. “Had we not been sitting along the border and bringing the issue out nationally, people would still be coming across unchecked, and there would be no debate.”
At the same time that she was helping the Minutemen get the word out on border security, Connie began publishing her own weekly e-newsletter called “On the border — Connie’s perspective.”
She uses the one-page forum to talk about her activities with the MCDC and to offer her views on why the immigration reform legislation that is currently being proposed in Congress amounts to amnesty for lawbreakers. Some 1,500 people are now reading the articles, she estimates.
Connie gives her posts a more intimate feel by peppering them with personal anecdotes, such as a notification to readers of her most recent edition that she was headed to Montana for the birth of a new grandchild.
Humanistic concerns
Connie’s home office serves two of her greatest passions. On one side of the room she keeps her sewing machine and various quilting supplies. On the opposite side sits her desk and computer, which she uses to write her essays and follow border and immigration issues.
The screensaver on her computer’s monitor shows a photo of a young couple that Connie and fellow MCDC volunteers helped to rescue in the Altar Valley on Father’s Day after the pair was abandoned by their border-crossing group in 105-degree heat. The 18-year-old woman’s eyes stare blankly forward as a Border Patrol paramedic’s intravenous tube stretches from her arm.
The woman was comatose when the MCDC found her, Connie said.
“I feel so strongly about what happens to these people in the desert,” she says. “I feel so strongly about how the coyotes (human smugglers) take advantage of them. It’s hard to say you’re a Minuteman and you feel that way, but I do.”
To Connie, the solution is obvious.
“We’ve got to close the border,” she said. “They wouldn’t be there in that terrible shape if the border were closed. It’s very simple.”
Asked to describe her most memorable border experience, Connie recalls another incident in the Altar Valley about a year ago.
She and Bill were running a load of batteries to a Minuteman outpost when they saw two men — both Maya Indians — lying on the side of the road.
They had been walking for hours and hours without water. One man’s shoe had completely fallen apart and his foot was badly cut. He was in terrible pain.
Unfortunately, Connie and Bill had forgotten to bring any water bottles with them, and so they gave the men the only beverage they had: a bottle of frappuccino from Starbucks.
As the men gulped down the drink, Connie prepared to call the Border Patrol.
“I got on the radio and called, and one man asked, ‘Immigration?’ I said, ‘I’m calling la migra,’ ” Connie recalled. “And he started to cry.”
“When you see a human being suffering like that, and you see that they’re on the ground cut up like that, you have a sense of humanity,” she continued.
“I felt bad about it, but on the other hand, he needed to go home.”
Ping!
Demand a border fence! Build it NOW!! Beef up the border patrol and close our borders!
U.S. Senate switchboard: (202) 224-3121
U.S. House switchboard: (202) 225-3121
White House comments: (202) 456-1111
Find your House Rep.: http://www.house.gov/writerep
Find your US Senators: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Toll free to the US Senate:
1-800-882-2005. (Spanish number)
1-800-417-7666. (English number)
Courtesy of a pro-amnesty group, no less!!
This should be interesting.
I defended the man through thick and thin, but his insistence upon granting amnesty to illegals was the last straw.
I am all for letting the Democrats impeach him, because it will keep him too busy during the last 18-months of his term to get even with us for thwarting him.
Seems the only fence our public officials care to contemplate at this time is one built between conservative talk radio stations and their hosts and the public that chooses to listen to them for information our government doesn’t want to get out.
Build the damned fence you idiots in D.C.
Does everybody realize what a fricken Dog’n Pony Show those troops on the border were? Mr. President, you should be ashamed.
Thanks HiJinx, I’m going to subscribe to her newsletter.
Congrats my FRiend, principle over party equals a real conservative. Pleas consider our friend, Duncan Hunter, at the primaries.
The only time those Teams are used is when the Attorney General believes the escape of the person sought will threaten the lives and safety of the general population.
I'm not current to present policy, but in the past the AG himself or one designated deputy had to OK their use.
This told me Bush, via Gonzales wanted to make a statement about his love of Mexico and the governing class there.
When I shared these thoughts, I caught a lot of flack from 'Bot's, asking what was my DU name. Now?
And I suspect there will be a couple of more this type of insane events on Dubya's part to ensure Hillary follows him into the Oval Office. And I hope and pray that I am wrong.
Nope.
My heart and my $50 per month campaign contributions belong to Fred.
Duncan can't beat Hillary.
Fred can, with both hands tied behind his back.
Fred Thompson is the only one who can beat Hillary.
We shall see at the primaries. Fred is the only other candidate that even comes close to being a conservative. I could except Fred as a president, but got dollars pinned on Duncan right now. Both on the same ticket could give this great nation a boost!
BUMP
Thanks for the ping!
I feel sorry for some of these people. They have a corrupt country, that in spite of being blessed with bountiful resources gives no hope to its people. Mexicans TAKE BACK YOUR COUNTRY! It’s worth the time and energy. (Don’t just come to “escape” in the US, because WE are doing the SAME with our government!)
See my tagline...
You are right, it is interesting.
Nice Lady.
Based on old pesos!
The looters of Mexico want to have the freedom to loot America.
After spending several years starting oil exploration crews for Pemex, I think I have The reason Mexico has become so bad.
I like the Mexican people in the fly over parts of Mexico. The mid level and workers of Pemex are good. It is the government and the high up in Pemex that are the vultures and looters. The peso was about 8 cents (12.5 to a dollar). When Pemex found the sito grande, a very large oil pool that covers parts of the states of Chiapas and Tabasco also a long ways into the Gulf of Mexico.
Pemex borrowed billions to produce this great oil find. The looters (government) stole most of the money and what they did buy was junk oil rigs and drill pipe, etc. 1,000 pesos which was worth about $80 now will not buy a coke (old pesos). This was due to the looters stealing billions from the Mexican people.
Instead of overthrowing the looters the Mexican people had an out, they had no weapons and they could cross into America and have a much safer life. This hurts both Mexico and America as Mexico lost some of it’s hardest workers. The gangbangers and welfare frauds also came over from Mexico as they could rape and pillage at will.
The government of Mexico is propped up by the billions sent back by the illegals and by our government having borders that are too open.
The only chance I see to help America and Mexico is to seal the border, deport the people who are not here legally. We also need to arm the Mexican people so they can have a chance against the looters with their armies.
I’m right there with you, brother. I no longer donate to the RNC, I send my money to the Minutemen. They’re just doing the job our American goverment won’t do...
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