David Neiwert: Mainstreaming the Minutemen

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Great. First we get a senator who endorses the Minutemen. Then the governor of California.

Now senior government officials from Homeland Security are endorsing the concept:

"We need more Border Patrol agents, there's no question about that," Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Robert Bonner told members of the House Government Reform Committee. CBP is in charge of the Border Patrol.

Bonner said his team has worked up a proposed increase in agents. He said the number is in the thousands but declined to be more specific, saying he still has to walk the plan through the Homeland Security Department.

... Bonner said CBP also is evaluating the effectiveness of using citizen patrols in a more formal way. He referred to the Minuteman Project, which set up citizen camps along a 23-mile stretch of the Arizona-Mexico border in April to observe and report illegal activity.

Minuteman organizers claim their efforts helped the Border Patrol apprehend 335 individuals illegally trying to enter the country, and deterred others who would have tried.

"The actions of the Minutemen were, I believe, well motivated," Bonner said. "There were no incidents, there were no acts of vigilantism, and that's a tribute to the organizers and leaders of the Minuteman Project."

Now, I suppose you can say that the Minutemen were "well motivated" -- if you ignore all that talk about how Latinos are ruining the country and the presence of folks like the Aryan Nations and other white supremacists. You could even suggest it was well-run -- if you ignore the fact that neither the quality of vetting the participants (very few of the promised weapon-permit checks were made, for instance, and numerous white supremacists were in fact enrolled, despite promises to refuse them) nor the levels of participation (some 1,300 were promised, and only about 300 showed) were even close to acceptable.