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Immigration See other Immigration Articles Title: The Minutemen stumble into instant opposition in Texas. The Minutemen stumble into instant opposition in Texas. By DAN MALONE A Minuteman from Texas — who gave his name only as Haskell — scans the border near Douglas, Ariz., in April 2003. ‘The first time they cross that line, I’ll hammer them.’ Garza: ‘If their elected leaders were doing their jobs, we wouldn’t have the Minutemen.’ Simcox: ‘We’re not vigilantes.’ The sign reflects the belief of some extremists that there is a Hispanic conspiracy to reconquer the southwestern U.S. and rename it Aztlan. We are not vigilantes, and we are not anti-immigration.” Chris Simcox was talking to a fresh group of recruits for the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps. The organization, which has made headlines nationwide in recent months for its armed “citizen patrols” along the Arizona border, is branching out into Texas. The meeting at a ranch near Hillsboro on Saturday was the first of several training sessions scheduled across the state this week, and a reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram dutifully recorded Simcox’s statement. But charges of vigilantism, anti-immigration rhetoric, and racism, nonetheless, are exactly what the group has faced since it began its patrols and started organizing in Texas. In fact, you might call the meeting outside of Hillsboro a case of the group not starting up, but starting over in Texas. The group’s first Texas president resigned because he believed some members were just as interested in booting Hispanics out of political office as in keeping illegal immigrants out of the country. Another member angered a Texas sheriff with loose talk about shooting illegal aliens. The King Ranch, one of the largest in the United States, won’t let the Minutemen patrol any of its land along the border. And the Southern Poverty Law Center recently wrote, in its Intelligence Report magazine, about finding members of a violent neo-Nazi organization among the ranks of the group’s Arizona recruits. The Minutemen, it seems, may be facing a rough ride here in the Lone Star State. Al Garza, the new president of the Texas Minuteman chapter, said his volunteers are only filling a void created by the federal government’s inability to stop illegal immigration. “The ones they should be concerned about is their own ... government,’’ Garza said in a recent telephone interview. “If their elected leaders were doing their jobs, we wouldn’t have the Minutemen.’’ U.S. Customs and Border Protection has about 11,000 agents patrolling the Mexican border. Even so, thousands of people elude the authorities every day. By some estimates, as many as 4 million people enter the country illegally in some years, and the problems they bring with them sometimes wreak havoc on lives and property. Just last week, New Mexico Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson, the nation’s only Hispanic governor, declared a state of emergency in four border counties that, as he told CNN, have been “devastated by the ravages and terror of human smuggling, drug smuggling, kidnapping, murder, destruction of property, and the death of livestock.’’ When the Border Patrol cracks down on coyotes in one place, the people-smugglers move to another. The pipelines through which human cargo passes constantly shift. Earlier this year, one of these human pipelines began emptying its contents in Texas’ Goliad County, more than a hundred miles from the border. Before the Minutemen arrived, Goliad possessed the solemn distinction of being best known for a wartime atrocity committed long ago. On March 27, 1836, Mexican troops, acting on orders of General Santa Anna, marched more than 300 unsuspecting Texas prisoners of war to the outskirts of the town, took aim, and shot them to the ground. Their remains, which were later gathered and buried in a nearby mass grave, are marked with a monument to the “Goliad Massacre,” one of the bloodiest days of the Texas war of independence. Today, the outskirts of Goliad are a battlefield of a very different struggle. Shots haven’t been fired in this war yet — but some fear it’s only a matter of time. Bill Parmley is a petroleum geologist who lives in a rural community on the outskirts of Goliad. Earlier this year, he grew frustrated as the area around his land in South Texas was being overrun with illegal immigrants. The evidence was frequently sitting along the farm-to-market road that runs in front of his home. “They were coming through here in a caravan, three or four [vehicles] at a time,’’ he said. “They’d dump the people, and someone from Houston would come pick them up. They’d leave them here for a week at a time. There would be 20 or 30 [people] in your driveway. You’d try to get the license plate of the first vehicle, and before you could, there would be a second vehicle.’’ Stranded for days in a strange place, the illegals did what they had to survive. Parmley said it was not uncommon for ranchers to find that their cattle, sheep, or goats had been slaughtered by starving immigrants. Parmley and others first tried to get help from state and federal officials. They wrote and called politicians and bureaucrats. When that failed, Parmley started thinking about the Minutemen, whose patrols along the Arizona border had been making the news. He decided to contact Simcox. In June, Parmley said, he flew Simcox to Texas, and the two men agreed to form two Minutemen chapters, one for the Goliad area and another for the entire state, with Parmley as president of both. Members trickled in as word of the newly formed organization began to spread. The group began reporting suspicious vehicles and strangers to Goliad County Sheriff Robert De La Garza. And for a while, the problem seemed to abate. “The sheriff had come in here and seized 160 vehicles in the last six months,’’ Parmley said. “You can’t fault him and say he’s not doing something with it. He’s probably one of only three sheriffs in the state that was pursuing illegal aliens.’’ Other members of the organization, however, remained critical of the sheriff — and Parmley began to suspect they were motivated by something other than working on Goliad’s immigration problem. Parmley said some of his members had previously approached him about “ trying to get the Hispanic people who are in office in Goliad [out] and replace them with white people.’’ But Parmley wasn’t interested. He thought the sheriff was doing a good job. And Parmley had been working on immigration problems with local officials of the League of United Latin American Citizens — an overture that further alienated him from Minuteman membership. The split didn’t seem likely to heal, and Parmley resigned less than two months after Simcox named him president. “I don’t know of any other word to describe it other than racism,’’ he said. “They had a secret agenda before the organization ever got started. They rolled it into the Minutemen.’’ Parmley’s resignation made headlines across South Texas and seemed to confirm suspicions held by some that the Minutemen might not be so alarmed about illegal immigrants had it been whites pouring across the border. After De La Garza learned of Parmley’s resignation, the sheriff said, he confirmed with his own sources that some of the Minutemen were working behind the scenes to get him out of office. Furthermore, he was flabbergasted when the wife of another Minuteman, in a conversation with him and other South Texas law enforcement officials, broached the possibility of shooting any illegals found trespassing. “They were talking about the illegals and what they could and couldn’t do’’ when the woman asked, “If these illegals come onto your property, can we shoot them?’’ Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 2.
#1. To: Grumble Jones, lodwick, christine, crack monkey (#0)
Texas alert ping!
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