Meet the Nativists

By Susy Buchanan and Tom Kim, Intelligence Report. Posted March 2, 2006.

Introducing Rep. Tommy Tancredo, Glenn Spencer and Jim Gilchrist -- the political leaders of a growing xenophobic movement in the United States.

The Intelligence Report is a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

One of them says he'd like to bring nuclear weapons to the border. Another vows to stop the alleged Mexican invasion of Idaho. Several have links to white supremacist hate groups; others are given to dire warnings of horrible diseases, "barbaric" practices, and secret Latino conspiracies to "reconquer" the American Southwest. These are the nativists -- the new crop of activists who are driving the movement that exploded last spring with the Minuteman Project in Arizona, a monthlong effort by armed civilians to seal the border with Mexico.