Posted on 07/28/2002 8:25:40 AM PDT by Tancredo Fan
Vigilante or Minuteman? Rancher goes high-tech to nab immigrants, smugglers
By BILL HESS - 7/28/02
Herald/Review
DOUGLAS -- Plans of a Californian to introduce a private citizen's border patrol into Cochise County are not new.
One area rancher who is already patrolling the border on his own says he welcomes the newcomers and thinks they are needed.
Some think Roger Barnett is a vigilante, handing out justice without the benefit of law.
Others see the man as a modern Minuteman, defending family, friends and property against intruders -- hundreds of would-be illegal immigrants and dozens of drug smugglers trying to use his ranch as an avenue north.
Barnett shrugs off being called a vigilante. "It doesn't apply to me. From what I've learned a vigilante goes out and captures them, has a trial and executes them."
Barnett's 22,000-acre ranch is just two miles from the U.S.-Mexico border -- a perfect pathway for those seeking to enter the United States illegally. He owns about 7,000 acres of the ranch and leases the rest from the State Land Department for grazing his 250 head of cattle.
Barnett actively seeks out trespassers on his property and then holds them for the U.S. Border Patrol.
In the past, he has been accused of threatening illegal immigrants with weapons. He has been investigated by county and federal officials, but no charges have been filed.
He also has been praised by county and federal officials for saving the lives of illegal immigrants by giving them water and food.
A soft-spoken man, who easily laughs and jokes, Barnett said he knows not to cross the line between legally protecting his property and taking the law into his own hands.
"From what I understand there is a special FBI investigator up in Phoenix waiting for me to do something to jump on me." Laughing, he added, "He's going to sit up there a long time."
Last year, Barnett said he and his family were responsible for turning over more than 2,100 illegal immigrants to the federal government. Since the first of this year, the number is 1,644. In the past couple of years, more than a ton of marijuana has been found on the ranch and turned over to the government, Barnett said.
The largest group of illegal immigrants he has held and turned over to the U.S. Border Patrol included 86 people and the largest number of drug smugglers was 18.
He combines the ways of the Old West and modern technology to patrol his property.
Born and raised in Bisbee, Barnett traces his family's connection to Cochise County to the late 1800s.
An experienced tracker, Barnett will spend hours following the footprints of trespassers. He learned some of his tracking skills from U.S. Border Patrol agents, he said.
Instead of a horse, Barnett is more apt to patrol the ranch on weekends in a pickup truck, with an all-terrain vehicle in the truck's bed to get into the more rugged land. A businessman with offices in Sierra Vista, Benson, Willcox, Tucson and Phoenix, Barnett said during the weekdays he stays at his Sierra Vista residence.
Even though he's away from the ranch, the search for trespassers doesn't stop. He has installed high-tech sensors along paths he knows smugglers and would-be immigrants use to make their way north.
Saturday, while riding along one of the many dirt roads that crisscross his property, a monitor in the truck would go off now and then.
Pointing out the driver's side window, Barnett would indicate where one of the 11 sensors is buried. An antenna that blends into the landscape extends from each sensor to send the alarm. The alert also goes off at the main ranch house.
The system provides a digital message telling Barnett which alarm was triggered and why.
"It's picked us up," Barnett said as the truck alarm sounded.
When a vehicle goes by a sensor, a number two appears. If it is people setting off the devices, the number one appears.
The 2-year-old system cost Barnett about $25,000 to install.
He decided to set up his own surveillance system when he came to believe the federal government just wasn't going to do the job. Most of the Border Patrol agents want to do their jobs but the agency's leadership won't let them, Barnett claims.
Barnett believes the United States should use troops to safeguard the border.
He is convinced that while most people living along the border understand the problem, the rest of the country has no idea what is happening.
Barnett supports Glenn Spencer's plan for an American Border Patrol. The Sherman Oaks, Calif., man is planning on moving to Cochise County in the next few weeks and establishing the patrol along the border.
Barnett said the organization will provide information to the people of the United States on what is really happening on the border.
Spencer will be bringing in a lot of high-tech equipment to be used in providing real time video of border incursions and will gather other information for the American people and law enforcement agencies, he said.
The Southern Poverty Law Center -- a well-known civil rights organization headquartered in Alabama -- lists Spencer's Voice of Citizens Together and American Patrol as hate groups.
The American Border Patrol is not listed. A new group, Spencer has stressed it is separate from his other enterprises. At the same time, Spencer is accepting contributions to the American Border Patrol through the American Patrol.
The Southern Poverty Law Center publication calls Spencer, "one of the hardest line anti-immigrant ideologues now operating."
Barnett said the Southern Poverty Law Center "probably considers me a hate group. What they come up with wouldn't surprise me a bit and I don't care. They are so far left of center it is unreal as far as I'm concerned."
Barnett said he hopes the people of Cochise County will give Spencer the opportunity to prove his value in controlling the border.
Barnett said he will support Spencer giving him the right to install hidden cameras on his property "as I believe all the ranchers will do."
"I think it might take a little while but it (the American Border Patrol) will go over. They (country residents) are still unsure, unclear of what he (Spencer) is going to do. But after they find out what will happen they will support it," Barnett said.
There are many who are "champing at the bit" waiting for Spencer to show up and start his operation on Sept. 1, he added.
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You obviously don't understand Americans.
Alright, you made me look some stuff up in relation to what you and I have been saying:
Here are two pertinent quotes:
An employer wrote in 1739 that the only way to make workers sober and hard-working, was to “lay [workers] under the necessity of laboring all the time they can spare from rest and sleep in order to procure the common necessaries of life.”
Another, in 1714, wrote, “The poor have nothing to stir them up to be serviceable but their wants, which it is prudence to relieve, but folly to cure.”
I suspect the flooding of the country with immigrants of all kinds, is designed to increase the supply of labor and thereby lower salaries and thereby keep the people hungry enough to work hard and put up with stuff.
Didn't slow them down in China, India, or slow down the poor in our own crowded ghettos.
It's not overpopulation, it's the kind of prosperity that comes from highly industrialized societies, like Japan, most of Europe, and the U.S.A.
That's the government putting the squeeze on the middle class. Here there is a state law that puts a cap on property tax ---so to get around that they just keep raising the value of property in reappraisals to kill the middle class.
Also to maintain a large welfare class I think. At the same time we're being taxed to death to provide for a very expensive public educational system, we're bringing in millions of people who have no education at all. It doesn't make sense ---why not just quit educating Americans if we really need that many low-skilled workers and save the taxpayers some money.
Just because the powers-that-be believe diversity is good for them, does not mean they understand that diversity has another side--my post is about what "they" believe, not what "is" true.
But at all events, I am sure the powers-that-be are aware of the down side of diversity, but they also know that so long as people enjoy a minimal amount of prosperity (not too much, though), they will tolerate each other's differences.
Think: most of the racial/religious disaffection comes from the bottom of the economic ladder, while the higher economic classes tolerate and even excuse the worst outrages from the lower classes.
(I'm no expert on Yougoslavia--but might that example actually reinforce what Voltaire said about not having any one segment of the population outnumber all the other segments? Was not the trouble in Yougoslavia in part from a clear minority at odds with a clear majority?)
All they have to do is grow some stones, cajones, huevos, what-cha-macallits, and throw off the yoke of oppression.....simple.
Then we can learn from and follow their lead.
Whole lot of old mine shafts for illegals to fall in around there....... We used to find bodies all the time that were burnt almost black from the sun. Dangerous place to make an error in judgement IMHO. Trespasing on any Americans property with out permission is again IMHO a severe error in judgement.
As to that FiBi FLEA sitting on his perch waiting for the Rancher to make a mistake versus going after the illegals who are already making a mistake on a daily basis screams volumes about the state of our Nation. Fibi's are nothing more than a bunch of gundecking shitbirds anymore as far as I'm concerned.
Stay Safe Travis....
In a little over 18 months, this part timer has handed over 3600 illegals and a ton of pot to the feds. All the while running his ranch, and paying his taxes...taxes which apparently aren't buying any border security here.
No wonder there is an FBI agent just waiting to lock him up. He's making the government look bad.
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